We had an interesting time trying to get to fellowship yesterday. We live way on the north west side of town and our fellowship is on the South side of town. On the map we live out where the arrow is pointing toward "Qingcheng Mountain". Fellowship is down south past the Provincial Museum. Normally, we ride our scooters to fellowship, which takes about 50 minutes. Nate's scooter has been broken, so we took a taxi to fellowship yesterday, or at least we tried.
We live outside of Chengdu city proper, so the taxi's are different out where we live, and they don't know there way around Chengdu very well. So, we got in a Xipu taxi (Xipu is where we live) and had the driver take us to Metro, a large store that the Xipu taxi drivers know how to get to, where we would then switch over to a Chengdu taxi which would take us the rest of the way. The metre was at 27 RMB when we got to Metro, but all we had was 100 RMB bill. Unfortunately, the taxi driver didn't have enough change for our Y100. She got out of the taxi and was asking people on the street if anyone had change for Y100. She even stopped another taxi and asked that driver. But no one had any change. So I told the lady to drive us to McDonalds which was down the road a bit where we would buy something with our Y100 and then be able to pay her. So we get to the McDonalds, and guess what....it was closed. She finally found a taxi driver who would break her Y100, so we finally worked it all out. So now we are standing at the closed McDonalds trying to get another taxi to take us the rest of the way to fellowship. We waited and waited and waited. Normally you can get a taxi within a few minutes, but we waited about 15-20 minutes, and not one empty taxi had come by. We were standing pretty near a bus stop, so we finally decided to take a bus the rest of the way...We had to run to catch the bus though by the time we made the decision. So we got on the bus, and I realized that I didn't have two Y1. I only had a Y10, so I asked the bus driver if he had change, but he didn't so I went around the bus asking if any one could break my Y10. One lady gave me two Y5, but I still didn't have two Y1. Finally a really nice guy just gave us Y1 so we could pay for the bus ride. ha ha. The bus ride took about 20 minutes. It took us over 1 hour and 15 minutes to get to fellowship, a trip that should have taken at the most 30 min. Fortunately, we had left really early because we were trying to get to fellowship early because we were teaching Sunday School, so we were only 15 min. late. Oh..the excitement of living in a different country.
The ride home wasn't quite as eventful, but still interesting. Once we hailed a taxi, I had to sit for about 5 minutes and convince the driver to take us all the way back to Xipu. When you tell a taxi driver that you want to go to Xipu there response is "Xipu!!!!" "Xipu?" Xipu?!!!" And then they normally say they won't take you, so then we beg. :) This driver was fairly new and hadn't been that far out before, so once I had convinced him to at least take us most of the way, he got on his cell and started calling all his friends trying to figure out how far out this place was. I finally convinced him to take us just to our school, which is a little closer to in-town Chengdu. By the time we got to school, I asked really nicely if he would take us the rest of the way to our house. I told him that we lived very close to the school. He laughed and said yes and then told me that my Chinese was very good. ha ha.
We would buy a car if we had the money...we are thinking of saving up and trying to buy one, especially since once we have the baby, we won't be riding our scooters all over town. We will probably have to save for a long, long time though. Until then, we just keep up the adventure. :)
