Beijing Bus Rides

I guess it's a little soon to post. But my attempt at riding the bus was quite an interesting one. For me at least.

So, I made my goal for today. I tried riding the bus to work. Made it out the door dressed in two pairs of pants, my rocking Christmas tree socks, three shirts, a wool jacket, scarf, hat, mittens, and of course my tennis shoes (which do not provide the amount of warmth I need. They are meant for running, not walking in freezing temperatures.) On the way to the bus stop, about 50 meters away, I contemplated over and over whether or not to just stop one of the 50 cabs that had passed by when I see bus 677 coming up behind me. My instinct was to start running. The tennis shoes must have missed a jog on the pavement. (The owner of my apartment told me Liu qi qi- 677 to Ying Fu-- my office). So here I am running. The bus stops, I'm catching up, and it starts to take off. I slowed to walk and was about to give up, when it stopped again. I made it!! YAY!

I get on the bus, swipe my card like a good little citizen. And begin the journey to work. I recognize every stop we take. Except, instead of turning right towards work, we kept going straight. I figured we would just turn right at some point and come back around. But, we kept going straight. I had a feeling I was in trouble. I kept checking the signs to see which stop I needed. I knew that my office was on 广顺南大街 (guang shun nan da jie)-- I checked the bus sign again and saw the 广顺桥南 （guang shun qiao nan) basically the guang shun south bridge... I figure, this must be the bridge right by work. We get to a main intersection and I find a landmark that I know-- a very large rainbow. I'm relieved to know that I am aware of where we are. Now if we just turn right.....nope, we turn left. Keep going further north away from my school. It was time to get off the bus. As I got off, you must swipe your card again... I thought I did, but it didn't make the nice beeping sound. I think it might eat up 1 kuai on my card instead of the 0.4 jiao it should have. oh well. So, I flagged down a cab and made it to work, on time, thankfully.

I was hesitant to try the bus again to get home, but I checked the schedules, and checked them again, and again to make sure I would get the right one. And I did. There are only three buses I can take 656, 621, and 976. That will be engrained in my head (and written on my hand) from now on.

Classes were good. My wonderful VIP was wonderfully boring today. But he didn't fall asleep, thankfully. I had my small star green class. We had a new student, which made it awkward and challenging. The four kids and I are used to our systems and the know all of the words I teach, with a new student it mixes up the group and I will end up having to play catch up with him for the rest of the course. The four children are also very well behaved and cute as pie. This one seems to be the little trouble maker. The first thing he did when he walked in class was stand up on the table and start rolling around. My very well behaved children looked at him like he was crazy and didn't speak one word to him. I included him and tried to be warm and comforting, but he wasn't having it. He just wanted to play, which is probably what his mother told him he would be doing in class. That is not the case, and many a children come in balling and continue balling thru class because they "thought they were going to a play group that would be all fun and games and now they are stuck with this weird white woman who has blonde hair and doesn't look like mommy or any of my teachers or my mommy's friends and talks funny and I don't know what she's saying and I keep telling her I want my mommy and want to leave and she doesn't know what I am saying, she keeps smiling at me but it isn't funny and I just want to go home wahhhhhhhhhh." That was the mind of a 2-4 year old in my class.

Time to have a drink and enjoy my Friday evening. May stream a movie online as I have nothing else to watch and I can watch brand new movies right from my very own home. Night.