A little over a year ago, I was sitting in front of a computer in the foothills of the Himalayas, overjoyed to have finally received an email from my predecessor in Japan. He told me a little about the town where I would be living and the school where I would be teaching. But he didn't tell me anything about the apartment I would be living in, which I considered essential information. In response to my questions, he wrote: "The apartment in two words, IS PURE CRAP!!!" and "My suggestion when you see your apartment, cover it up!!!" (I may have been as appalled at his punctuation as I was at this description.)

I looked around. I was in India. People made houses out of boxes and dirty blankets. Giant spiders invaded my mom's house at regular intervals. I was sure it couldn't be so bad. Plus, it was cheap -- about $60/month for a two-bedroom apartment. I bought a big quilted wall hanging in India to "cover it up!!!" and hoped for the best.

When I arrived in August, the apartment didn't look so awful. Yes, the tatami was old and crackly in some rooms. The linoleum in the kitchen was a permanent gray. And some terrible soul had covered the ceiling of the bedroom with those glow-in-the-dark stars, but really, the ugliest aspect was the millions of tacks and scotch-tape marks dotting the walls where my predecessor had tried to "cover it up!!!" The place was just misunderstood, I thought. I was going to help it.

I immediately set to rearranging the furniture, ridding myself of the awful overhead fluorescent lights and fixing the other small problems that filled me with overwhelming depression whenever I looked at them. I didn't start the serious work until the spring, when I knew I was going to be staying for another year and the winter cold had retreated, releasing me from my living room captivity.

Because I'll only be living here for another year, there's only so much money and effort I've been willing to put in to fixing it up, but I'm so happy with what I've done so far, so much happier than I was when I first moved in. And because I love apartment makeover stories, I thought I might celebrate the one-year mark with a series of posts about what I've done to make my apartment the homey, comfortable place I always knew it could be.

"PURE CRAP"? I have two words for that: pure crap.

Next in the series: my living room, or How a $10 Wall-hanging From India Can Make Everything Better.