[Part 1] 181. Ulsan again... 난 바보같아

I thought that I had the whole day to myself to study and clean the room and bathroom.

But someone had to send me some disturbing messages and being me, I couldn’t wait till 1-2 weeks later before we next meet again so I made the impromptu (and I hate to admit, rash) decision to go down to Ulsan immediately to meet, talk and sort things out face-to-face, without telling him. I thought I would be able to catch him just as he was done with church but who knew, he (claimed he) was at a sports stadium by the sea, without his car and with an almost dead battery, by the time I reached his neighbourhood -.- and that he won’t be back till really late at night. GG.

I couldn’t find my way to his place because the taxi driver wasn’t sure either so I alighted, and basically relied on my poor navigation and usage of Google Maps (which I was using for the 2nd time in my life), walking around in circles before I finally managed to find his place. The neighbourhood is so complicated and even though I’ve been there a few times, I only walked around the neighbourhood at night so I didn’t know how the surroundings really looked like in broad daylight. Stood outside his place like a fool for awhile before leaving a note and making the arduous journey back to Busan again.

I didn’t even know which bus to take back to 학성공원 because the taxi fare went up recently and I wasn’t going to waste anymore money taking a taxi. I saw on the board that bus #235 goes to Haksong whereas the place wasn’t listed for the other buses’ routes. I love it that Korea’s bus stops are generally quite high-tech and there’s an electronic board for you to check out the bus routes too so I used it to double-check if the bus does go to Haksong. Unfortunately, below the 일반 route, there was this word “양천” and I thought it could be hanja for something else and not a place name so I asked a kid what it meant and he gave me this look and said that it’s the name of a village. Ok.
So anyway, I was certain that I could only take bus #235 so I started waiting for it. One bus passed by. And then this kind-looking man in his 40s came up to me and told me that #235 takes a long time to arrive and that there were many other buses at that bus stop which go to 학성 too, where he’s headed to. He had heard me talking to the kid. So we took the next bus that went to Haksong and it turned out that he was heading to Busan too so we transferred to another bus to get back to Busan together. Thank goodness for him!

I guess I’m more calm now than I was at 2pm because being on the road for almost 6 hours travelling to and fro Busan and Ulsan in a day kind of cleared my mind. What a day this has been.

Had to find my way around this neighbourhood where all the buildings looked alike to me after awhile and I felt like I was in a maze