Happy All Souls' Day

I've just eaten some very spicy ramen while uploading new pictures to the flickr site. I'm now waiting on my teaching visa; I thought I was going to have to go to Japan, but as it turns out, my previous visa is transferable. I'll start teaching in a week or so. Until then, I've got lots of studying and exploring to do. Nols and I bought bikes, and I've been enjoying the degree of independence they afford us; yesterday I rode to the nearby city of Namwon, looking for coffee beans, among other things. No dice! Each morning I am greeted by the expatriate aroma of freeze-dried coffee, despite my best efforts to upgrade. We'll see how this progresses.

We've been shuttled around from apartment to apartment; there's no question that the bureaucratic spirit runs high, here. Noelle must leave her apartment because soon it will be my apartment, but I can't move in now because my contract hasn't started. Furthermore, we're not to take the extra appliances, dishes, and furniture in the old apartment to the new one yet, even though the new apartment (that we don't even need to be in, if I can't move in officially for another week) lacks some basic things. Ah!

However, hanging out and poking around is a lot of fun. We're, to some degree, the talk of the town; numerous strangers and acquaintances have demonstrated a solid knowledge of our goings and comings. Still, there are ten thousand people here, so our notoriety is confined to certain small circles. There are three foreigners in town, now; the other is a guy from Edmonton named Rodney who's been here for a number of years, but supposedly is something of a hermit. We've had two abrupt conversations on the street (he sticks out like a sore thumb, which, I suppose, I do too), during both of which he's intimated that the school district will be putting a lot of pressure on me to teach a number of extra classes.

Everything is going very well.