Going home

After the fireside, we took the 2-3 hour bus ride back to Taichung, where our English branch is located.  According to our branch president, the bus stop right next to our church supposedly had buses running till 11:50pm.  We got back to the church at around 11:35pm.  As we were all standing at the bus stop, a taxi drove up and the driver was trying to talk to us in Chinese.  None of us speak Chinese, so we had no idea what he was saying.  Then our knight in shining armour showed up astride his scooter.  Kevyn, a guy from our branch came to the rescue.  We asked him to translate for us.  Of course the taxi driver was trying to drum up some business, but at the same time, he was trying to tell us that the buses weren't running that late at night.  It was the train that stopped running at 11:50pm.  The train station was about a 20 minute walk from where we were and we weren't sure that we remembered how to get there.  If we walked, we probably wouldn't have gotten there in time anyway.  There were seven of us, so four of the others got in a taxi and drove.  Luckily, only a couple minutes later did another taxi show up.  We arrived at the train station with 5 minutes to spare.  After buying our train tickets to Fengyuan, we stood around like lost tourists.  On three differnent occasions, different train station workers came up to us to inspect our tickets.  Two of them said that we were on the right platform.  Or at least that's what we think he said.  The third informed us that we bought the wrong ticket.  During the day, you can buy a "local" train ticket, but at night after a certain time, you are supposed to get the "express" train ticket.  We were not about to buy another ticket, so we wandered away from him.  He lost interest anyhow, and left us alone.  The train that was supposed to leave at 11:50, didn't show up until 12:25am.  I have learned to recognize these characters: 豐原 (Fengyuan).  We didn't get home until 1:00am.  What a long day!  I have never been so happy to climb six flights of stairs.  It was necessary to get to my rock hard bed.  Oh bliss.

Waiting for the train.

Really tired.

Erin is looking for the train.

No train.

Still tired.