Meeting the Neighbors

Our bathroom floor has been constantly wet, so last night a plumber and our landlord lady came over to check it out.  Little did I know this leak (which was a broken pipe) would create a very interesting night.  The only thing we could understand was that it was going to take a long time for someone to come out...and then we finally realized they were going to wait with us until they came and until the job was done.  The landlady was full of smiles, and even though she understood that I couldn't understand her she talked with me for about 4 hours.  I'm not going to say there wasn't some awkward times with the communication barrier, but it once again showed me how friendly people are here.  I had my horrible Korean notes covering the coffee table trying to communicate.  It was pretty pathetic, at one point I was bringing in the plants for her to look at.  Charades also entered the picture.  She at one point walked me to her beautiful house and showed me her garden.  She filled a bag full of grapes, peppers, cucumbers and tomatoes for us.

People were in and out of the apartment all night.  The landlady's husband came over.  We also met our neighbor across the way from us and her little son who liked to jump on our couch.  The landlady loved giving him kisses, and he made the cutest disgusted face when I tried to feed him gummy bears.  I later learned that the landlords don't usually help out with problems, because they just own the buildings, and the school owns the apartments and takes care of them.  They just came because we were new in the neighborhood and they wanted to make sure everything went ok.  A Korean co-worker was trying to explain to me this attitude or feeling Koreans have toward their neighbors, but he said it was hard to translate into words.  He didn't really need to explain what it was, because I think I got to experience it first hand. 

(Side note:  they said we couldn't use the shower for 3 days while the tiles reset...guess who was a grease ball for their staff picture today?)