Lost in the woods? No! in Shenyang!

Haha. I feel like so much has happened this week I do not even know where to begin. The one story that should be the most fun, however, is my getting lost story. When I first arrived back in China, I was all prepared to go out and do things on my own. After all, I have to learn somehow, and I'll be here for a year. However, somewhere between not knowing where in the slightest I was going on some days, and the 94 stairs up to my sister's apartment, I became a little discouraged in this idea. :) Imagine that.

When I was in the States, and still preparing for my trip, I took a journey one afternoon. I travelled on the interstate nearby to a city that I barely knew and proceeded to take any and every turn I came across, per His nudging. I took so many turns after a while that I could not have gone back that way if I tried. I ended up at one point on an old old blacktop that had no lines and looked similar to some of the dirt roads around home. It was then that I leaned completely on my Dad. Finally, sometime after dark, I ended up in a town that I knew, not too far from home.

Now, I know what this trip was preparing me for. I accompanied a friend to the apartment of a mutual friend of ours on Friday. The problem when I left though, was that I was leaving to go home alone, and I realized at some point that I had not followed the spoken directions like I thought I had. I was lost. So I walked. I finally found a main road, which was bound to have bus stops. It did!! Unfortunately, it did not have any buses that I was familiar with. So I walked some more. I finally saw the bus I was looking for going the opposite direction, but I did not know which way I should be headed. I must have looked terribly lost though because eventually a college student stopped me and asked me if I needed help getting a taxi in broken english. That in itself was amazing. My sister said that she has even pulled out her map before and tried to look lost so that someone would help her, and no one did. With the help of a map, she pointed me home. I did not catch a name, but she was most certainly used by my Father.