i guess this has a little about med school in it too because for anyone curious that has not yet heard, i have been accepted to the DMU class of 2012- this girl's goin to MED SCHOOL when she gets home!!! :) :) :)
(just a side note, sidebar for zach, i had actually considered staying in china or even going to another country to teach if the med school thing didnt work out this year- thats how much i enjoy this!)

so, the bus...nothing too exciting happens on the bus around here, normally. i would say that it is pretty comparable to any old public bus system in the united states- well minus the fact that i have no clue what the bus driver says half of the time and i cant read the bus maps inside the bus here (slight difference ;)). when jenna and sherly came to visit us from the shiz a few weekends ago, they did say that our buses are a lot less crowded than theirs. generally, if its not morning or evening rush hour, or the weird lunch period for students, then the buses are not too bad here. we normally get seats, etc. ANYWAYS, there must be a reason i decided to write about these buses right? there was an event today that triggered a few other bus memories for me.
like i said, there have rarely any exciting bus-capades but memory 1 i have of a bus fiasco is probably my favorite. nothing actually happened on the bus except that it changed its route. see in chengde, you learn the bus routes quite quickly...the new number 10 goes to school, old number 10 to the mountains, number 6 is local, blah blah blah. so we always take the number 10 to school. so this is like week two of jeremy and i being here (dont tell him i wrote this :)) and him and i are still riding the bus together frequently until we get the hang of our classes. so, we're sitting there on the number 10 bus whose route only ends at our campus- this is its final destination- and the bus turns down a different road. jeremy near about peed himself i think. he starts going "should we get off? i think we should get off? maybe we should call maggie....should we get off???" i told him to cool out and said that if we ended up somewhere else we'd just call someone but i was sure it was just taking a detour. the bus ended up going to our school, but some bridge had been out. thank goodness too because it saved jeremy from a heart attack.
so then there's today...i walked to the end of my road because i had an 8am class and i wanted to go get a snickers before class (weird craving). there is only one store i know of that is open before 8am and its in the opposite direction of my bus stop so i walk down there and caught the #10 at an earlier bus stop. as everyone is getting ready to board the bus, the bus driver starts yelling something, and all but 3 of us decide not to get on the bus. i think to myself, this is strange, but we'll see what happens. so we hit 3 more stops and the bus driver is still yelling at everyone and no one else is boarding. i finally get worried and realize that i am one of 2 people left on the bus. i approach the bus driver and try to ask him if he is going to my school. now, keep in mind that the only chinese i can use applicable to this situation involves the name of my school, "have we arrived yet," and violent gesturing. this did not go well. see, most of the time when i deal with people who speak only chinese, i am in a situation where there is time and patience to speak slowly, act out motions, etc. mr bus driver was in quite the hurry. he did the thing where he started yelling chinese at me louder and louder thinking it would make me understand and finally, he actually threw his hands in the air and cupped his head in his hands shaking it in disgust!! i thought this would be a good time to leave the bus :). i caught the next #10 which i think was a good idea because i recognized some other teachers on there, but i definitely ended up in front of a man with a glorious cold who insisted on sneezing and coughing down my neck the rest of the trip. not a successful day on the bus.
my experience today brings me to my favorite tidbit story ever! about 2 or 3 weeks ago, i was sitting on a very not-crowded bus on the way back from campus when a girl my age and her elderly mother boarded the bus. the girl comes over and grabs the pole next to me and her mother proceeds to pop a squat...ON MY KNEE. i swear there were other seats open...i swear. and one thing i really like about the chinese culture is their willingness to give up seats for older people and all that, but really?? sitting on me? i kind of tried wriggling around, clearing my throat, doing anything subtle to get her off. nothing worked. i didnt know how to tell her to get off politely in chinese so i finally moved my leg rather dramatically. the look that woman gave me at that moment would have scared the bravest of men. it definitely said "how dare you!??!" along with many other things. i decided to just let her sit there for the rest of the trip....i mean really....what else could i do??

until next time....ohhhhh china.