On July 15th, South Korea celebrated independence day - liberated from Japan. The evening before, friend Trevor organized an 'open mike' for anyone to sing, dance, joke. lots of singing with guitars went on - really cool idea. Nicole and Tracey also had a good idea - to take the day off and head to Seoul for the Black Eyed Peas concert! we can never get up to Seoul for concerts cause they always seem to be on weekdays, but Robin and i decided we'd go, hang out in line to get some tickets, and enjoy the show.
And we did! we took the bus up there, made it to Olympic Park, saw there was no one in line for tickets so headed towards the park...where we were approached by Church of God people. Who believe that God is a woman. hmmmm...so they asked some questions and wanted to survey us, and everyone decided that the 'preacher's wife' should answer the survey. so i did, we basically had to run away from them after, and went on to the park.
Not 10 steps later did someone - literally - come running up to us - and we knew it was more Church of God people. After explaining that we had just talked to their friends and answering more of there questions, we again had to run away from them.
We got inline for the tickets and we were 7th in line!! whoo hoo! and our tickets were directly behind Nicole and Tracey's so that was great! we decided to go for dinner, and as we were walking down the path - yep! - more Church of God people. This time Nicole had had enough and told them we were in town for the concert, and could they please take our picture by the banner. they did. then we had to run away from their questions because they followed us almost to the street.
Went for dinner - good chats with some great girls! and headed back for an amazing concert with Nicole basically got on her camera. we were finished at 9:15pm (shockingly, but we think it's so people have enough time to make it home in Seoul - which i'll tell you about!!) and went to catch a taxi to make it to the bus station for 10:30. even in Seoul, this seemed like a reasonable amount of time. but we were wrong. because we soon discovered that taxis pretty much don't stop for people who are holding their arm out like they do automatically in Iksan. Guess they have choices since so many people need a ride, and we think they have certain areas that they will go to. you have to yell our your destination to a taxi as he drives by to even get his attention, and he'll decide if he's going that way or not. taxis would be waiting infront of us at a stop light and wouldn't even listen to where we were going. it was now 10. none of us had any luck.
so i saw a taxi approaching the light, along with other cars, and this time didn't care. if we don't get on the 10:30 bus, we don't get back to Iksan and we have to leave at 6am for Nicole to make it to work on time. the rest of us had a bit more time, but no one wanted to stay in a hotel. time to get home then! so i walked out into traffic to the taxi, held on the passanger door and kept telling him the bus station about 5 times before he finally said yes! yeay! yes is good! we pile in and realize it's 10:07 and if he's speedy we may make it. then we got on to the freeway and saw the cars and knew we wouldn't make it. so Tracey explains to him that our bus leaves at 10:30 and we haveto get there on time. we made a plan that if we got there before 10:30, Tracey and Nicole would run to buy tickets and Robin and I would run to the bus to stop it from leaving. we arrived at 10:27. Transportation is extremely punctual in this country. We ran around looking for tickets and for the bus, and realized, to our defeat, that the taxi took us to the wrong side of the terminal and we'd missed our bus.
we had one more chance to make it home - the 11:10 3 hour slowest train. so we taxi-ed it to the train station and made it just fine. all fell asleep and somehow woke up 3 minutes before we should get out in Iksan.
little bit of sleep, but it was an adventure worth taking! thanks girls, for inviting me!
Met with our New Zealand friends who are called Kiwis, Arna and Hosea last Saturday for some biking at the university. The weather was great, Arna got some great shots of nature and we had a good time exploring.
1 comment:
Hi, Leah! It's been such a long time since we talked to you. I've really enjoyed looking through your blog. It always makes me a little jealous to read about other missionaries, but also excited because I can live vicariously through them. I'm hoping we can make it back some day. I'm glad to see things are going well for you guys! We had baby number 3 seven months ago, and we're in Atlanta now. We love and miss you!
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