Another day, another bus ride

First of all I would just like to clear up the Internet thing. I'm going to the immigration office in Daejeon today to apply for an alien registration card, which I'm told will take probably 10 days. Only after I get the card can I get Internet at my apartment, so it's going to be probably at least another 10 days, which is a total bummer.


I'm making progress on the bus thing. Now I just approach the bus, say hello, and ask if it's going to my destination to get to school. This eloquent conversation goes something like this:

Annyeoung haseyo? Shipjaga?
Hello, how are you? Shipjaga?

Then the driver either nods or shakes his head. Someday maybe I'll actually know what bus is mine. This day will probably not be any time soon.

I can now recognize the hangul for my town for the ride back! 부여 means Buyeo. Now I can look at the buses and find ones with those symbols and have a more educated guess on if it's the right one. It's pretty cool because now when I look at all the shop signs and stuff I can tell which ones say "Buyeo" on them!

Yesterday I asked Mr. Kim for a register of all the teachers so I could learn their names. He gave me a list along with the class roster for grades 3-6. Get this: on the list of 23 people working at Seokyang, seven have the last name Kim.

So yesterday the third grade class was pretty awful... just constantly talking, getting up and walking around, etc. Mr. Kim apologized after the class for their disruptive behavior, and that's when he dropped the bomb that a lot of kids here are orphans! You can actually SEE the orphanage from my school. In the teachers' lounge after lunch the special ed teacher Mrs. Jee told me 43 (of 150, I think) students are orphans. Wow... that's really, really sad. At least she said that the kids like the woman in charge of them and that they seem happy. When I have a chance I want to ask Mrs. Jee if she knows anything about maybe volunteering there or something. We'll have to see.

I'm off to the immigration office soon, but hopefully I'll get back to Buyeo by 6 because I've been invited to the foreign teachers' soccer team practice! Let's hope I don't embarrass myself too badly.

Also on another note: I have an enclosed balcony in the back of my apartment where my washer and gas pipes, etc. are located. This balcony is a total deathtrap - the wood underneath the floor must be rotting, so there are soft spots and there are legitimate holes (P.S. I am on the fourth floor)! Only they're invisible because they're beneath this faux wood stuff they have on the floor, so whenever I go back there (which is not often) I feel very Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark because I'm super careful where I put my feet. Anyway, Mr. Kim told me the admin people from Seokyang are going to my apartment today to check it out, and OF COURSE last night I started rearranging all my furniture so the place is a total mess. Right now my bed is in the front room of the apartment, aka the biggest room in the place, and I have an office, and I'm trying to move my office into the main room and my bedroom into the office so that I don't have to entertain people in my room. Also maybe my kitchen table can actually then be put to use. But the admin people don't know that, so they're just going to think I'm a slob (which is sort of true).