25 September 2026
Spending so much time alone with Yenah's grandmother's house while working. Each day I've been getting up early, having my morning coffee, and sitting down to work at the kitchen table. As the sun rises, the tall white curtain spanning the length of the living room window starts to glow; one half of the curtain is reinforced by another pink one, so the diffused light that floods into the living room is half pink and half white. It bounces off of the orange wood floor, which creates a warm, saturated, matte environment in which highlights and edges are dulled—a dreamlike effect.
Only two small horizontally-sliding screened windows open to outside air, and green tree leaves cross in front of the view out of both, so the feeling is one of light in abundance outside surrounding the house. Plants seem to grow well on the windowsills too.
My days here have been spent mostly in silence, but it's a busy silence. Just down the street is an elementary school, and I hear the rhythmic phases of its days—pale yellow buses snorting to a stop to delivery sleepy children in the morning, high-pitched voices (some screams) as lunch hour arrives mid-day, and the frenzy of happy squeals and teachers saying goodbye (“안녕히 가세요”) as school is let out for the day in the later afternoon. Some school bells intermittently throughout the day as well, and some days there is singing—groups of children singing.
Another thing about the mornings: magpies like to visit in the morning, and a handful of times I've pulled back the living room curtain to see them jockey for position on a persimmon tree. They're pretty brutal, hip-checking each other off of branches. On days where I do laundry, the laundry machine sounds like alternating white noise waterfall sounds and MRI-machine-like hollow knocks. Mosquitos are frequent visitors at this time of year, so once or twice a day I'll also hear their sharp whines buzz by my ear (I've killed probably upwards of thirty of them in the last month).
The water here is so, so soft, especially compared to London, and the sinks (one in the bathroom and one in the kitchen) rush when turned on with a dutiful urgency that sounds like a mother shushing her baby. Similar to the stream a few blocks away from the house that runs all the way to the Han River.