The Amazing Race.....to church

Lets just say that having flexibility, preparation, and a pocket dictionary in a foreign country is a MUST. Throughout the week, I had been researching to try and find an English-speaking international church. It was really exciting to find one in the nearby city of Taejon. My co-teachers and a Korean friend all helped me as they explained how to use the bus system (something we had not yet done), which station to get off at, and how to then walk the last 30 mins to the church. My co-teacher even offered to come meet us in the morning to help us get on the right bus for the first time, an offer which I mistakenly did not accept. I was certain it wouldn't be that difficult and we had maps and it was explained to us several times.

Now Sunday morning comes. We gave ample time for ourselves in the morning to get there. After our 15 minute walk to the bus station, I realized I had left everything at home or at the school, the maps, the Korean translations for the taxi drivers, the bus number, everything. But, hey no problem, I remember it was some bus with 21 in it (which I later realized was bus #190). Ok, so we somehow pay using broken English by asking the people around us for help, get on the bus, and start heading in the right direction. Until... we get off the highway and start driving further and further into the mountains. our bus is packed with people in hiking gear and we soon enough discovered that we were in a national park and everyone got off the bus to go hike this mountain. What next? We asked our bus driver what bus to get to Taejon, and he pointed to another bus. We are trying to get on this bus but have NO idea how much to pay. Soon enough we just gave them about 5,000 won (a little under 5.00USD) and he shot back a handful of coins at us. Now, we were off again, on the main road to Taejon.

In approaching Taejon (I was feeling good at this point!) we start looking for the station we had to get off. We had remembered certain landmarks and were trying to recall that. Well, all the stations were looking quite the same. We just decided to get off at one (which ended up being at least one stop too soon). At that point, we realized that this was not the right stop, so we flag down a taxi and say to him "Christian International School" which is the school in Taejon that is affiliated with the church. He continually spoke some words to us in Korean and as we didn't understand anything, I just responded "I don't know" after every question he asked us in Korean. About a 7,000won taxi-drive later, we end up at this RANDOM school in which we have never seen before. We said "aniyo, aniyo" which means NO, NO! He called someone who could speak a little English and Michelle worked through it trying to communicate with her. He then started driving off to another place. The person Michelle had been talking with called back and said that she thought she knew what place we were talking about and said it was 1 hour away! WHAT! no way was it 1 hour away nor were we going to rack up the taxi miles and money, so we just asked him immediately to let us out of the taxi.

Once we got out of the taxi, we walked a short distance to a shopping store, maybe similar to a large Walmart or Target. Once we got there, we went to a worker behind this desk and asked if anyone spoke English. They all just kind of smiled and looked at us. We continued to ask where the bus station was, because at this point, we were just going to head back to Gongju (our city). Somehow we managed to ask them if we could come behind the desk to use their computer. They kindly let us and I looked up the church and printed out the Korean translation of the name.

Now, at this point, we are 25mins late for church. We go outside of the shopping center and flag down another taxi, show him the Korean translation of the church name, and he gives us a nod indicating "yes, I know where this is..." and we are off! Finally we get there....at least 25,000 won later, 2 buses, about 7 different people through broken English and 2 hours later.

Once we got to the church, we went in. There were many people from all around the world, Koreans, America, we heard some British accents, and a couple people from our city. We went out to eat afterwards with some other teachers who live nearby and were directed (in English) as to how to get home, a straighshot and much less expensive.

It was a busy day! I enjoyed the adventure of it all, but learned that I have to be prepared because everything takes longer in a foreign country due to all of the different barriers. Whew!