Valuable Information Post (V.I.P)

My Apartment Address:
Danggam 4 Dong
Danggam Jugong Apartments 102 Dong 705 Ho
Busanjin-gu, Busan
614-766

Basically, I now live at Danggam Jugong Apartment 102, room 705 and Busanjin-gu is the district in the city of Busan.

The School Address:
Yang Dong Girls Middle School
Yang Jeong 2 Dong 25-5
Busanjin-gu, Busan
614-851

Apparently mailing to this address is more reliable and quicker than to my own address according to the previous ESL teacher who lived and worked here.

Today I woke up at 8am, went to sleep at 8pm by the way. I went for a walk in the rainy weather from 9am to 10am just to get familiar with my surroundings. That proved to be tiresome as I had to walk up few hills! Then by 10:30am, I came back to the Internet Cafe to post my previous blog and then went back home around 12:30pm to take a nap until 5pm. 6pm I decided that I should take the bus and see where my school is exactly located at. So I took the 179 bus like the previous teacher (Kylene) told me to but I didn't know how long the bus ride would be. So, I asked the bus driver (clearly he did not speak English) but another lady overheard what I was asking and offered to help. She and another lady decided to get off with me and we took a taxi together to E-Mart. From there the lady pointed towards a massive hillside. I knew from Kylene's message that the Yang Dong school was up a hill. So I knew that the old lady was telling the truth and being honest with me. I walked for a good 10 minutes to see a school. It had playgrounds and a track. Nothing was written in English so I walked further up the hill to see another school: Yang Dong Middle School for Girls! I was so confused because I didn't know that I would be teaching an "All Girls School".

Yang Dong All Girls' Middle School!
Anyways, I saw this old man at the building and he told me that this was Yang Dong. Another man and his wife were there and they spoke a bit of English so they were able to call Im So Hyea (the senior English teacher) and she told me that this is indeed where I should be at tomorrow. At least I know where the school is at now! Phew.

I walked all the way down to where I was dropped off by the taxi, walked across to E-Mart and I showed the picture of the prong/adapter thingy that Chris (the friend I made at my building) told me to take a picture of using my iPhone. Smart of him to inform me that because it saved me time and effort to talk to the people working at E-Mart. Well they didn't have the item that I was looking for. They had adapters with circle inputs and rectangle outputs, I needed the opposite.

Well, I walked to the bus stop that said 20 and took the bus, to realize I wasted 1,100 wons ($1.10 CDN) because the next stop was the subway station! I just got off and walked to the next bus stop that read 179 (opposite direction - good thing for paying attention to where I was going) and headed home. It was easier now since I had a visual landscape of where I live. I guess being a visual learner helps in this sense.

My weekend has been going by super fast because everything is still a blur but it has helped me understand how foreigners in Toronto feel when they come to a big global city! I have a new appreciation for the lost foreigners in Toronto! The Korean people are so HELPFUL! They helped me big time like the lady on the bus, the old man, another man and his wife at the Yang Dong school and even the PC Internet cafe room because I didn't know what he said so I gave him another 1000 won thinking I had to owe more but he said "no" and gave me change for the 2000 won that I handed to him. This was earlier in the day when I used the internet from 10:30 to like 12:30pm. Now I am back at the internet cafe at 9pm to get a proper idea of the map of Busan.