Life in my little room

So I figured it's time for an update from my typical workspace (also known as my bed... the only piece of furniture I can use on a regular basis).  Life in Korea has been rather quiet over the last month, given school is not in session and I have no information with which I can begin lesson planning.  Ergo, most of this month has been spent reading and working out at the local gym.  Not that I mind at all, it's rather nice to be paid to sit and wait.  Though I would rather have spent this time preparing for school, not having the textbook, school schedule, class sizes, etc. etc.  make that more or less fruitless fancy.

Spring seems to be teasing us here, with warm days and bitter nights.  Today it's in the mid 40's F, which makes for lovely walking around weather.  Sadly, I seem to have caught yet another cold (at least I hope it's a cold) and have been rather lethargic for the past few days.  I am beginning to suspect my recurrent illnesses are linked to the mold problem that has plagued my little home for the past few months.  Though I have mentioned the problems I have been having with my school, no one has really given me any advice or assistance.  I suppose I could have harangued them about it more, but that's not my nature.  Instead, I finally broke down and began to deal with the problem myself.

Here is the problem as it first appeared about three months ago.  Significant, but not unmanageable, damage to the walls.  I informed by Co-Teacher of this issue, but his only advice was "move your bed away from the wall."

That... kind of works....

The real problem with my apartment became apparent in later months when I discovered that my exterior walls were not significantly insulated.  This means that this wall is drastically colder than all the others in my apartment, causing all the moisture in the rooms to condense and drip down the wall.  You can see the beads of water in the picture to the right.

 This is the damage as it stood today.  I've cleaned off the walls half a dozen times over the past three months, but mold reappears after a few weeks.  It slowly creeps across the stained walls silently reasserting itself upon my living space.  Fed up and short on vinegar I decided there was only one solution left.  The results are below.

Needless to say I do not look forward to explaining this to my landlady, who I have never seen since I arrived six months ago, I suspect it will be a terse conversation.  Yet, to be perfectly fair, I had planned on ripping out the wallpaper myself no matter what.  If only to ensure that the wall was properly treated to kill the mold before being pasted with wallpaper once again.  I imagine that I will be tearing down the rest of the wallpaper soon so I can bleach the concrete wall and talk to my landlady.