I am not a fan of moving house. Some people find the change exciting and enjoy the packing and the unpacking. I’m not one of those. I don’t mind unpacking as much – creating order out of chaos appeals to my OCD side – but it takes ages for me to settle and I really, really hate packing. Moving house in a foreign country is a whole new level of misery.

The question of me moving has been discussed on and off for months. When I first moved here, I was told I would be living within walking distance from the school. Then that changed and I was told it would be a few months before I could move. Then, in November, I was told I’d be moving soon. Then I was told I’d move at the end of January. And so on and so on. So, you can imagine my dismay when I discovered on Tuesday that they wanted me to move now, only to a place not anywhere near being within walking distance of the school. In fact, when they first mentioned it, they referred to an area that isn’t even on a bus route. I was, I think understandably, unimpressed. After explaining repeatedly, to people who only use private cars, that a place not on any bus route may as well be in Siberia in terms of convenience, they finally got around to explaining where the place actually is, at which point I – being the only person familiar with the bus routes – figured out that there would be a bus. After a lot of stress I really didn’t need.

Then I discovered, on Thursday evening, that I would be moving on Sunday. The practice of only informing people of things three minutes before they happen seems to be a Korean ‘thing’. Several of my friends have also commented on it. Perhaps there is something cultural that de-prioritizes proper advanced planning. It bothers me. A lot. Particularly in a case like this, where the short notice meant that all the work of sorting and packing, along with all the emotional ups and downs of moving, has to be squeezed into three days. I asked how the move would happen. They said they’d organise movers to come in and move the furniture. I also got to pop into the new place so that I’d know what I needed to bring with me. Armed with this information, I started packing on Friday. This largely involved taking everything out of cupboards and all the pictures off walls and putting them in piles.

On Saturday I was woken early by worries about moving. I spent the morning sorting through things and then made a couple of trips to the new flat with a backpack full of things like books and plates and frying pans. I would have continued during the afternoon but I had plans to meet a friend downtown, a friend who is leaving shortly and whose company was infinitely preferable to the packing.

As happens when the company is congenial and there is ice-cream and strawberry dessert, the time just flew by and before we knew it, it was evening and we decided to grab some dinner before heading home. The ice-cream and strawberry creation, accompanied by miniature bottles of Rose, was at Café Lucid, which I hadn’t discovered before but which was lovely and quirky and the perfect place for sitting and chatting for hours. For dinner we ended up, after walking in a large circle, at Gulliver’s Travels – an ‘antique restaurant’. An antique restaurant is not, for the record, a place that cooks and serves up antiques, as the name may suggest. Rather, it is decorated with an eclectic collection of antique bits and pieces, paired with old record covers, big wooden tables and comfy chairs. The food was pretty good and the atmosphere lovely so we, not surprisingly, lost track of time all over again and before we knew it, it was nearly 10pm.

Sunday was far, far less fun. I woke up early so that I could get everything done. The movers were coming at 2pm so I had time to finish packing once I actually managed to drag my exhausted body out of bed. I packed up another backpack full of stuff, as well as a grocery bag (think Woolworth’s canvas bags) full of tins and dry pasta, and headed to the new flat. At the new flat, I unpacked the bags and put stuff in cupboards and drawers and then headed back to the old place to get the next load. These trips involved me walking down the hill to the bus stop (5 to 10 minutes), waiting for the bus (10 to 15 minutes), taking the bus the 10 or 15 minutes to the area of my new flat, unpacking (15 minutes), and taking the same bus back and walking back up the hill (20 minutes). I managed two more trips across to the new place before 1pm, taking everything I wanted from the kitchen.

The person from my school who was organising things phoned me at 2pm to tell me that he wasn’t able to be there just yet but that the movers had arrived. I let them in and watched in frustration as they packed everything in the house into the same crates to move them, as if they were all going to the same place. They spoke no English and my very few words of Korean had deserted me, so we were entirely unable to communicate. I was moving from a two-bedroom apartment to a one-room flat. The new place is just a bit bigger than a university res room. There was no way all this stuff would fit. The Beommul-dong flat is also the place where a series of foreign teachers have lived over several years, many of whom have left things behind: basketballs, weights, a large table, books and videos in which I have no interest, a huge hi-fi system with speakers and radio and tape deck, a pressure cooker. None of these are things I wanted, especially in my tiny new flat. I watched with growing impotent panic as they packed them all up.

Just then, to make things worse, the landlord’s wife came in and started talking at me in Korean. I couldn’t understand her. And I was already miserable and stressed and tired. I tried to explain that I didn’t understand. She just kept on and on talking at me in Korean, getting louder and more and more annoyed. By the time my boss arrived, ages and ages after he was supposed to be there, I was close to tears. He proceeded to have long conversations with various people before we could finally leave. I suspect that the problem was that the landlord and his wife – neither of whom I had actually seen much of at all before this horrible day – had not been informed that I’d be moving out. Either way, it was not a fun few hours.

We arrived at the new place and I had another struggle to convince the movers and the person from my school that they could not just dump all the stuff at my new place. I stood my ground fiercely and eventually got just the few things I wanted moved in. They left and I went upstairs and collapsed on my couch and stared at the the things I needed to unpack.

The silver lining of the whole experience is that I quite like the new place. It really is tiny, one room which includes sleeping area, sitting area and cooking area – picture a bedroom closet next to a refrigerator and the sink and cooker, just a couple of feet from the edge of the bed and the couch – plus a little bathroom. But it on the second floor on the top of a hill and the windows that look out across the top of buildings towards tree-covered hills and, most importantly, I can see the sky. Blue sky and clouds and stars and everything. Just up the road is a large art gallery and theatre (Suseong Artpia) with another small tree-covered hill. Nearby (probably within 10 or 15 minutes walking distance) is Suseong Lake. The hill I have to climb to get home is much, much gentler than the one I used to walk up from the bus stop and also shorter. There are better and closer little shops. At the end of the road, literally 10 minutes walk away (I timed it) is The Hut where we generally gather on a Friday night to drink dongdongju and eat kimchi pancakes. Almost all my friends live in the area. There is a range of little restaurants and take away places within a couple of blocks. A lot of the top fancy restaurants in town are nearby. Inside, the flat is done in a colour scheme of back and white, instead of the sickly, faded pink and green which was starting to drive me mad. And there is far more light and air because the windows aren’t shaded by other buildings.

So the destination isn’t all bad, but I think I’ll try and avoid the experience of moving house in a foreign country again, at least unless I can be absolutely sure that the people involved all speak English and I have a little more time and a little more control. Oh, and just for the record, there is a washing machine in my new shower, too. Only in Korea…