Public Transportation and us.....

So I don't know what the fares are for the kids. We want to pay honestly, but the bus drivers don't really want us to stand there and ask how much, and I felt kind of bad just walking by them, because then they'll think the arrogant Americans are just taking everything for free. So on the way home from Church a member that served his mission here asked the bus driver for me. So it's half price for elementary school kids and babies are free. So from now on, I'll give each kid 450 Won to throw in the hole as we get on. I might as well give them a T-money card so we can just save money by swiping on and off the bus. One poor lady didn't get off the bus and the driver closed the door and she had to get off at the next stop. So she swiped her card- then had to get off at the next stop and ride back. She had a very unhappy look on her face. That would probably bother me too. At least she didn't pay to go beyond her stop. That's the funny thing about this place. You could just about cheat and scam your way through life here and be OK at it. They all just obey the rules because they're supposed to. It makes this a really safe city, but honestly some Americans wouldn't do that well here because no one is looking. Amanda sat down on the ride home near a Korean gentleman and she was talking to him a little and after awhile turns to me and asks "How did he know I'm an American?" Children are so colorblind- and that's a good thing, but the question made me laugh. I had to tell her to look around at the other people on the bus and see how many of them had blond hair and green eyes. He had a really cool little TV phone he let her watch and was teaching her Korean words. I hope these kids can pick up the language really fast. It would be good for them.
So we've figured out the bus situation, we ride the 149 to Seoul Station and the 1711 to the Chapel, but then they told us they've built a new one south of the Han River, so we'll see what we have to do to get there in the end of August when we move in. Maybe it'll be faster and cheaper to take the Subway, since I'm sure a bus going over the river on the bridges will take forever.
Our place is about 1/2 a click to the Ichon Station and it's a major station so you can get anywhere you want from here.
Saturday was spent getting the apartment set up. And telling the kids to stop stomping around. They're going to struggle with that one- we just don't want to get in trouble here for being loud. We do hear the neighbors upstairs a little, but we don't want to be bad neighbors here- we're the only Americans in the whole building as far as we know!
I went out in the junky car to get some food on base and got cut off in traffic (that's a whole other post!) and ended up going all over Seoul trying to find my way back. 1 1/2 hours later, I found the base and all the stores were closed, so I got a pizza and carefully made my way back. It's even hard to find the street we live on if you're not paying attention, it gets right by you. Then you have to carefully pull down 2 levels to the parking garage. They cram a lot of people into a small area around here. It's sure different than Papillion, Nebraska.
Here's a pic of Spencer and Tabitha at the Korean War Museum. It covered all the military history from the current ops in Operation: ENDURING FREEDOM back to the wars fought against China and Japan thousands of years ago. Pretty cool. This culture has been shaped by that for many generations.