An Introduction

My husband has always wanted to live in an apartment over a shop or store of some kind. Makes sense. We’re people watchers. No, we’re not creepy stalker-types; we’re writers. We just moved into a one bedroom, one-story walk-up. We live above a gift shop. There’s a coffee house two doors down, next to that a little Italian place, across the way a burger café, a little bakery, and not too far down a true English pub. We live on Main Street. Just up from here the bend in the road turns into Market Street. Although I can’t be sure why, as the bend in the road leads to the end of the road, and all the shops are here on Main Street, even the little convenience store.

The door to our building stays open all the time. Except on weekends. Weekends on Main Street is a mad house. But the rest of the time, it just stays open. The door to our apartment is always unlocked. As are all the apartments here in the Village. Seems kind of counter-intuitive with laptops out, all our personal possessions contained in 300 square foot cubes. But when we first arrived the guy who brought us to our apartment simply shrugged and said,

“This is Korea.”