Welcome to Apartment C!

There are twelve Fulbright English teaching assistants (ETAs) in Kaohsiung this year. The twelve of us were randomly divided into three different four-bedroom apartments. We drew our room numbers from a bunch of pieces of paper on a tray. I drew room C-2.

And it was good.

Apartments A & B are just a few blocks away, in the same apartment building as each other, but Apartment C seems to be in a world of its own. We've had trouble putting a description of our apartment into words. Where apartments A and B are decently furnished with modest decorations, Apartment C was furnished to look like a combination of a beach house, college dorm room, and garage sale.

This can only be illustrated in pictures.

You walk into the door, and what greets you?

Observe: drying rack, odd fish/shells-glued-onto-mirror aquarium (complete with a coral sculpture), Hello Kitty bowling pin shrine. Also in the right bottom corner, you can see the head of our "guard dog," a random stuffed dog in our doorway.

Turn to the left, and you see the most out of place decoration:

Yes, that's a ~2ft light-up Santa Claus, holding a beer flag, underneath a carving/weaving of teddy bears. Um, what?

Continuing through the common room, you see our luggage and shoes corner, along with the closest thing to artwork we could find:

And a final shot of our actually very spacious, comfortable common room, showing off the interesting rug combinations, and my roommate Dani holding one of the pillows (note the lovely pillow covers...)


Now, I didn't want to barge into my roommates' rooms and photograph their dirty laundry, but trust me that theirs are equally hilarious. Vicky lives in a room with a Japanese-style tatami floor (see this link if you're not familiar) and a Hello Kitty closet; Dani has a pink flower chandelier, bright pink closets, and a lampshade consisting entirely of stickers; and Dan (the token guy) lives in a child's room with a small twin bed and miniature desk, and everything is decorated with Tweety Bird stickers. He's a basketball player, so watching him sit at the tiny desk is especially hilarious.

My bedroom is actually the most tasteful/stark of them all. The funniest part is the light, which is bright and surgical-like, and it takes about 15 seconds of serious blinking to turn on or off. Here's a quick snapshot of my room:


And finally, I'll finish the post with a few pictures of the view from my room. Look forward to more description of what's around in future posts... but for now, enjoy these shots in and around my new home!



So there you have it. Enjoy the pictures, leave some comments, and look forward to many more posts!