Someone could pay more than others.

I was living in a house where I had found by a website, when I had been in Korea. The rent fee was 850 dollars per month including utilities. I had checked whether I could use a laundry, rent fee included electricity, water and gas before I had left Korea. After I had come to USA, I had been able to meet many friends. From those friends, I realized my rent fee was not cheap comparing to other housing rent fees.

I wanted to move into a new house which is cheaper than my home. Furthermore, the distance between my home and Intrax required me to take a train for 45 minute. It took around 1 hour from door to door. Because of these reasons, I decided to move.

There were two roommates in my floor. After a few days from my first day, my roommate was changed, new roommate came home. He was from Hungary. He told me he was traveling all over the world. He said he loved a travel, and staying in Chicago would be quite short time like stopping by. His age was 40 year old. However he not only looked so young, but also had a kind of young mind. Thus, I could be friendly with him easily. We used to go out for eating dinner in restaurants together. Someday, I was arranging my clothes which were needed for cleaning. I had to go to a coin laundry shop, because there was no a washing machine in my house. At that time, my roommate said “why don’t you use a washing machine in first floor”. I was surprised since I had never heard there was a washing machine in the house.

He told me my landlord allowed him to use the washing machine. I said I had never heard about it. Then he asked me how much I paid for rent. As I told him I paid $850 for rent, he was surprised and then he talked to me he paid $400 per week. I was shocked about it. He lived in same house, floor as me, and even his room size was smaller than me, but he had to pay $188 more than me per a week. It sounded weird, because I thought it wasn’t fair at all. He seemed annoyed, but he explained it may have been a kind of an America rule. In America, someone who was able to pay more money than others should or can pay more. It was not weird in here. Just, my landlord had looked for someone who was able to pay $400 per a week. He had told the landlord he could pay the money for rent. That’s it.

Though I already heard about explanation from my roommate, I couldn’t understand it. It was strange still to me. My roommate’s the attitude to try to accept this situation seemed to be weird. If I had been in Korea or if I had been my roommate, I would have complained about it in a negative way. However he didn’t do anything in terms of this transaction. At the moment, I thought that I may need more time so as to understand the America culture.