So, on Saturday evening we were sitting in our apartment. I had noticed that there was a small bit of mold growing in the corner of our bedroom. I sprayed it with mold killer, and left it on for about 15 minutes. Then, I wiped it with an old rag. When I went to wipe it away, however, it didn’t come clean. Instead, the wallpaper peeled and revealed even more mold! I went to talk to Jason about it, when we noticed that there was mold in our living room as well. We peeled away the wallpaper in the corner and discovered, to our horror, an entire wall of black mold. After using bleach and mold killer, we realized there was nothing that we could do that was going to successfully kill our mold.
The only experience or knowledge either of us had with this was my small bit of research spent on the black mold that grew in my high school. I researched further, and discovered that both of us had suffered from a lot of the symptoms of black mold exposure. We also found a really awesome blog called “My Stinky Billa,” that acknowledges and offers solutions to the problems that arise from the construction and design flaws that plague Korean billas (which is Konglish for “villa”). Essentially, the walls are made of concrete and there is no airflow, which makes it very difficult to keep your apartment dry and mold-free. After discussing it, we decided that our mold problem existed prior to us moving in, hence the mold caked on every layer of wallpaper we peeled off. We were going to tell our school that we needed to move. We called our coteacher and she set up a meeting with herself and our school director on Monday night.
On Monday, we went to school and had our meeting. Our director told us that in Korea, people live like this and that there’s nothing wrong as long as the mold is dry. His plan was to dry it out and to cover it with another layer of wallpaper. We informed him that we felt this was a health hazard and that we could not live like this any longer. He then agreed to help us move. That night, I slept in a co-teachers tiny apartment because I didn’t feel comfortable sleeping in our mold-encrusted billa, and Jason slept at home. In the morning, our director met us and took us to five different billas with a realtor. Finally, we found our lovely new home. It’s spacious, clean, and has windows in every room to help with air flow.
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