Fear is now rampant among the foreign teachers here in CQ. They seem to think there is some sort of ever-increasing curse involved with me traveling to and from the city - the Curse of Lin, if you will. Thing is, they just might be right.
It all started about 2 months ago when I visited my friends in Changsha. It was nearly impossible for us to get a cab...even the one that agreed in advance to take us from the airport back to my friends' home. When I returned to CQ city, the driver that planned to take two other teachers and myself back to our town defected. Then, so did another. We were effectively stranded. Thankfully, the teachers had made friends with a lady at their hotel who was originally from our little city (about an hour away) and she worked with a taxi driver to get us to yet another taxi that could get us home (though he did complain vehemently about how I could not understand his local dialect...that much I got!).
The next trip into CQ, we were sure everything would go just fine. We had a private driver from the school and I would be with the dean's husband for the entire trip as we bought supplies. However, after dropping off the dean and her assistant, the driver informed us that we were on our own as he needed to have the vehicle repaired...urgently. Thankfully, our lovely waiban (aka the person appointed to handle us foreigners) acted on our behalf and made sure the driver did return us safely home (if only about three hours after the agreed upon time).
Given my history of deflecting drivers, none of the other foreign teachers were all too anxious to join me when I decided to go into the city about a month ago. However, I determined to be a wiser, more prudent traveler this time around. I decided to leave in the morning to avoid a time crunch and I took a student with me (we were planning to visit her classmate in the hospital). We decided to take the bus...surely a more reliable system! It was a bit of an ordeal (as per usual), but we made it into the city alright after a highway closure and a police checkpoint. Along the way, I found out that my student is not a local CQ person, but is actually from another province altogether. This proved important as it means that she does not understand the local dialect, but only the "common" language of Mandarin.
After riding the bus to the end of the line and arriving in CQ city, we discovered that instead of being located in the bustling district we were told of, the hospital would actually be much further out of the district and out of the city altogether (by about an hour...then up a mountain). We made it there in time for a late lunch with my recovering student, about 4 hours after we first began our journey. We had some amazing dumplings, climbed a nearby mountain that claimed to be home to "Forest Disney" (what, isn't that what you do with all recovering surgical patients?!), returned my student safely to her hospital room, and headed back to the bus. Unfortunately, it took a bit more time to return to the bustling part of the city where we'd catch our return bus home. So, my student asked all the friendly, old men on the bus to confirm our stop, only to have them respond to her in the local dialect. It was actually a bit reassuring for me to see a Chinese person experiencing the same level of struggles/frustration that I do when trying to get around. We hopped off the bus when cued and began sprinting through the city to find our ride home. We had just missed it. The last bus back to our town left at 5:30 pm.
What happened next? Did we find another way? Did we ever make it back? Are we still stranded???
(Stay tuned for part two...)
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