i’m dedicating this post to my landlord mr. lee. not because he has just done something great. he’s just noteworthy in general.

mr. lee is probably the best landlord i’ve ever had. all my previous landlords have been different degrees of useless or terrible so maybe i’m giving him too much credit but honestly i like and trust mr. lee.

firstly i should thank my lucky stars that mr. lee speaks english. i don’t think there are many foreigners in korea who are lucky enough to have english speaking landlords. besides the other foreigners in my building, i don’t know and haven’t heard of anyone who does.  usually if there is some kind of problem native teachers need to rely on sign language or get their co-teacher to call the landlord. so it’s a relief to be able to go directly to mr. lee with a problem, it’s also a relief that he fixes it almost immediately.

so mr. lee is a good landlord when it comes to doing the landlord job but he’s also cool for other reasons. one of them being that he likes to take us out for dinner. whenever a new foreign  teacher arrives he rounds the rest of us up and then takes us to the restaurant (it’s always the same one) and completely spoils us with delicious food. he does the same thing when a teacher leaves. sometime he does it just because.  during these dinners mr. lee lets the makkeoli flow… sometimes too much. makkeoli is korean rice wine that i think tastes pretty good. it reminds me a little of hunter’s dry which is nice because they do not have ciders in korea : ( not everyone likes it as much as mr. lee though. mr. lee downs bowl after bowl of makeoli (we drink it in bowls, that’s just how it’s done) and then gets a bit inebriated. he would like nothing more than for us to join him but we all explain that we need to get up early in the morning and teach children. something that cannot be done on a hangover.

although i don’t think mr. lee ever gets hangovers. i’ve often seen him the next day all bright and fresh and cheerful working around the building. it must be a korean thing.

mr. lee kind of lives in the building. he generally occupies whichever apartment is empty at the time. his real home is actually in incheon (a couple of hours away) and that’s where his wife and children live, he tends to travel back and forth pretty regularly. however him and his wife have quite a volatile relationship. according to him she is absolutely crazy and unreasonable. of course he would say that. however she has been hospitalized for nervous breakdowns a couple of times, so she definitely has problems. korean don’t really talk about or deal with mental health, which is a crying shame. a lot of  korean men drink themself into a drunken stupor every night and it’s tolerated. of course i’m not saying everybody does it but that kind of behaviour barely lifts an eyebrow over here. koreans also don’t seem to get divorced, they just live apart. because that is more socially acceptable.

so before this turns into a post about the social mores of south korea… lets get back to another thing that makes mr. lee cool. he is very chilled out. he’s always got a smile on his face and likes to laugh. he’s not uptight and annoying like some landlords. he’s more than happy for us to throw a party on the rooftop and he’s also more than happy to help us with the random things we might need for the party. he went and bought me the correct lightbulb for my bedside lamp because i was completely clueless. and he sometimes gives me a lift to the community swimming pool which i think is quite sweet.

he also cleaned my apartment for me! for some reason my windows needed an upgrade and while this was happening mr. lee (or one of his minions) went ahead and cleaned the apartment, as in scrubbed the bathroom spotless (where there are no windows). this is absolutely awesome because i’d been meaning to get around to it for a while now. but have never actually cleaned a bathroom before so wasn’t looking forward to it. yay!