Day 19: The Wheels on the Bus Go Round and Round...

Well, today was an interesting day. It all started when i woke up with a nasty sore throat. When I talked to Jenna first thing in the morning, I sounded like a ten year chain smoker. Needless to say, singing time in the kindy would be rather difficult today.

Secondly, we had a teacher (1 of the 6) missing in kindergarten due to illness. She went to the doctor yesterday, got loaded up on medications, and has been drowsy since. Our schedules are perfectly made to function with six teachers, so our rotations were a bit off and quite crazy. We combined Chloe's class, the one who was sick, with the other two younger kindy classes, thus each class now having eleven students, rather than eight. One might say that it was rather difficult.

Third, our wifi has been out in our apartment and I felt as though I should contact my parents to let them know I am in fact alive, since I hadn't talked to them in days. I walked down the street to the nearest wifi hot spot, which happened to be an American pizza shop, ironic. I skyped my mom inside this classy little restaurant and got funny glances upward towards me, away from their iPads, to silently tell me to shut up. I'm sure most are familiar with this ever so pleasant look. At that moment, I realized yet again how loud Americans are, without even trying to be.

Now for the fourth and final reason. Today, Lexi, Jenna, Courtney, and I decided we wanted to take the 205 bus and see if we could run into a place where we had driven by on Saturday. We figured that if we stayed on long enough, we would pass it again. This sounds like common logic, right? Well, apparently buses in China don't have the same systems as busses in the US.

We rode the bus for about twenty minutes, until they kicked us off, because we were at the last stop. Apparently, we were going the wrong direction and needed to take the 205 the opposite way. We hopped on the bus and rode it in hopes that we would somehow, at some point, make it where we had hoped. We actually rode it so long to where nothing looked familiar anymore, and we were at the last stop, again, but the other end of the route.

We rode the 205 bus from start to finish, without finding our destination. Round trip, we were on the bus for about 4 hours, just sitting and having the people on the bus point at us, laugh, then mumble something in Chinese. Moral of the story, ask for directions, to someone who speaks English, always call Carmelo/Gloria, and don't play guess and check when finding locations in foreign counties.

Pictures:
1: At the last stop, round two. Note: empty bus,
2: Jenna and Courtney, sad.
3: Kasey and Lexi, sad.