Sometimes traveling makes me crazy

Friday Bethany and I left for Seoul for our church retreat. And it was an ordeal. Anytime you travel in Korea, it turns into an ordeal. Public transportation is great and you can get literally anywhere you want, but you will probably have to take busses and trains and taxis and subways and airplanes.

I took one bus, met Bethany, and together we got on a different bus. That bus got stuck in a lot of traffic, and we arrived at the train station at 7:39. Our train was supposed to leave at 7:41. We had a printout confirming our tickets, but we needed to get actual tickets, so we pushed our way to the front of the line, but of course the 3 employees were already busy with 3 super needy customers. Luckily Jesus sent us an angel in the form of another employee, and he asked us if we needed help. We told him our train was leaving in literally 2 minutes, and he said “follow me” and started running.

We ended up in some back room employee offices, and he kicked this lady off her computer to get us our tickets. Then he said “follow me” again and started running even faster. We were running through all these secret passageways with our purses and bags, trying to keep up with this guy. He sprinted up the escalator. Sprinted. He took those stairs 3 at a time and was already at the top when I was halfway up and thinking “I can’t do this anymore.” My legs were burning. Bethany was behind me, and some other latecomer was behind her and he was pushing her up the stairs. We got on the train, sat down, and one minute later it pulled away. And we were laughing SO HARD. The people around us for sure thought we were crazy.

Plus we were in first class with all the serious businessmen reading their newspapers and writing on their ipads. Why were we in first class? Because Thursday evening Bethany realized our tickets were for 7 AM on Friday instead of 7 PM, and the only 2 seats left on the train we needed were first class seats. Upgrade! Except it’s really not that different. There are less seats and they’re slightly bigger, but that’s all.

So after 2 busses, a train, another bus, and about 5 1/2 hours, we made it.