Lost... again

I just got back from a very very loooong evening! Where to begin... welllll.... let's start with the fact that I always get lost. I swear I have this curse or something that I always get lost or if I have no say in direction I make the person that I am with get lost... and I'm so talented at this that I don't even have to say a word, don't even have to give the slightest input, they will undoubtedly get lost! My sister, Kristy, even mentioned this fact to me one time. My friend Katie and I had gone down to Indiana to visit some of my family there and while there we decided to head down to Kentucky to visit the Mammoth Caves. On our way back we got completely lost and drove hours in the wrong direction... almost made it to Missouri before we figured out we were completely and utterly lost and were driving across the bottom of Indiana instead of going up through Indiana. On the car ride back my sister said (not the exact words but close) 'Kayla, not being mean but how come is it that every time your in the car we get lost?' Sigh... it's true, I will admit, it seems to be my lot in life to get lost! 

Anyway, on to my evening! After Gabriel woke up from his second nap of the day at 4:00PM we decided to go to one to the local towns to get a bite to eat. We got a taxi to our town, Yongmun-myeon, and took the 10 minute train ride to a town called Yangpyeong.

When we got to Yangpyeong we weren't exactly sure where to go. Though we have been there before, we had always gotten a ride, not taking the train, and had only gone to a store called Mega Mart, so from the train station we didn't know where to go. We ended up getting a taxi to take us to Mega Mart since the restaurant we wanted to go to was close by. I don't know if you call Domino's a restaurant... but we were craving pizza and we thought 'what the hay, it's the weekend'. We got to Mega Mart and walked over to Domino's and ordered our pizza. I have to say, I never liked Domino's in America, but even though it may be that it is some of the only normal pizza we can find I have to say that here in Korea it is not that bad! 

After we ate we decided to shop a little bit for food. We were running out of some of our necessity's and since the stores in Yongmun-myeon don't offer a lot of variety we decided to stop at Mega Mart. We found all that we needed and also a lot of other cool stuff that we may have to pick up in the future. We left with one semi large plastic bag full of food and decided that we should head back home since it was getting close to Gabriel's bed time and we didn't want to haul our fresh bag of food around.

We found a taxi station and hopped in a cab... this is where our adventure begins! We told the cab driver to take us to the train station, he didn't seem to understand us so one of the other cab drivers who was standing outside the window decided to 'translate' for us. After the two men exchanged a few words in Korean our cab driver seemed sure of where he was going and took off. He did take off in the direction of the train station so we weren't really worried... it wasn't until after 7ish minutes of driving that we realized that we should have been there by now. We thought maybe he was taking a different way back to the train station so we didn't say anything, after all what could we have said, we don't speak Korean and he didn't understand English. We realized something we very wrong when we started to get more out in the country and up the mountain a little more. The train station was in town, not in the middle of nowhere. 

I told Josh that he needed to somehow ask the cab driver to stop whenever we got to the next town and we would get a bus back or possibly a different taxi... but the next town never seemed to come... we were in the middle of nowhere! After about 15 minutes of driving we finally came to a mini town and that is where our cab driver thought he was supposed to drop us off anyway. He drove us to some very odd building down an ally and dropped us off at a back door. We had no clue where we were and didn't know how to tell him that this was completely wrong. We were made to get out of the car and then the cab driver wanted his money... money for what? The wrong place? Arg! Anyway, we paid him his money and he took off. We found a bus stop but there was nobody there, no place to buy tickets and there were no buses in site. Great! Not. 

So there we were, in the middle of nowhere with a bag full of food, a tired, hungry baby and had no idea how to get back to Yangpyeong or Yongmun. We walked to a local restaurant and tried to get them to call us a taxi or tell us how in the world to get back but no one spoke English and we didn't have our Korean dictionary with us so we were at a loss. We tried a local motel but for some reason could not find anybody there. So we stood on the side of the road and contemplated what to do. It was Gabriel's bed time so he was crabby and hungry and we were lost. WONDERFUL! I told Josh that he better start trying to hitch hike because I wasn't going to stand there all night, he didn't really want to but he stepped up to the road and stuck his thumb out. The very first car that drove by stopped for us! THANK YOU GOD!!! 

The couple that stopped for us appeared to be a rather wealthy couple, they were dressed very nice and had a very fancy car. The guy hopped out of the car and asked us, in English, where we needed to go. We told him the Yangpyeong train station and he happily agreed to take us. We felt rather bad about putting our very dirty stroller in the back of his fancy car but he didn't seem to care and was just happy about giving us a ride. Throughout our car ride we told him how we ended up in the middle of nowhere and he and his wife were very mad about it, they told us many times that they were very sorry about how we were treated and told us that we should not have paid the guy. We also found out that the gentleman giving us a ride has been to St. Paul, MN many time for business so he was very excited to meet other people from MN that were in Korea. He said that he and his wife never go anywhere on the weekend because Korea is too hectic, especially driving, but this weekend they randomly decided that they wanted to get away and take a little vacation. I would say sounds like a God thing to me! 

After more talking we found out that they were actually driving past Yongmun and they offered to drop us off at English Village so we didn't have to take the train. We were very thankful considering we had no idea what time the train was supposed to leave at and Gabriel was already super tired. We took them up on their offer and they drove us all the way home. They were very excited to see the school, they were amazed at how big and fancy it was and after they dropped us off they said they were going to drive around it to see everything. We were so thankful that they stopped for us... and that they spoke English and we didn't get lost again! As we were walking back to our apartment Josh and I looked at each other and both said that it was a total God thing that they picked us up, we are very thankful!!!