Subway Adventures, 2.0

It's summer vacation in schools in Korea. My university semester finished back in June. I was supposed to teach some other summer classes, but there hasn't been a lot of student interest. I have three students that I teach two hours a day right now, and that's it. In the public schools, most teachers are either doing special English Camps, or else they are participating in the ritual known as desk warming. Basically, there are no classes, there are no students. But the government requires the teachers to be at work. So they have to go into school and sit at their desk and play on the internet for 8 hours a day.

My friend Rachel teaches at a public school. She is in the desk warming contingent this week. Last night, we decided that it'd be great fun to have a mid-week sleepover. In order for this story to make sense, there are a few things you need to know.

a) I tend to have issues with public transportation and I desperately miss my car.
b) Rachel lives in a different city than I do, and in the best of circumstances, it takes roughly two hours to get between our houses.
c) Korea has a rainy season, and we are right in the middle of it.
d) There are a TON of different subway lines in Seoul, and each one has their own quirks and personalities. Line number 1 is above ground, and it is the oldest, creakiest line in Seoul.

Just to make things easier, take a look at this subway map. I live at Giant Red Star 1 and Rachel lives near Giant Red Star 2.

Line 7 (where I live) and line 1 (where Rachel lives) connect, so the simplest way to get there is ride all the way down to the end of line 7. I made it to Rachel's house last night with no problems, and we had a grand time and stayed up way too late. This morning, Rachel had to start deskwarming around 8:30, so we left her house about 8:15ish. This means I should have been home by around 10:30. 

This is where the rainy season part comes in. This morning, it was raining rather hard and it didn't seem like it was going to let up. I was on line 1, and every time the doors opened, a bunch of rain blew in, and it was generally uncomfortable. But I only had 11 stops to go on line 1, which should have been about 20 minutes. 

I get 9 stops along on line 1 (which brings us to Giant Red Star 3) and the train opened its doors and some people got off and some people got on. It was the normal routine. But the doors didn't shut right away. This isn't terribly unusual, especially on line 1. However, after about 10 minutes of the doors staying open and rain blowing in, I started to get annoyed. The driver started making regular announcements, but I couldn't understand more than a few words of them. The other passengers weren't leaving the train, so I figured it was safe to stay on. 

This state of affairs continued for another 5-10 minutes. Announcements kept coming. Rain kept blowing in. Nobody was moving. Then a few people started to trickle out. But there were far more people who stayed on the train, so I stayed too. After about 30 minutes, I knew there was something seriously wrong. I started trying to look up words and sentences to figure out how to ask what the problem was. Thankfully, the woman sitting next to me spoke some English, and she took pity on me. 

According to her, the line 1 trains had been shut down due to excessive rain, and in her opinion, I should get off the train and try to find another way to get where I needed to go. ::sigh:: A bunch of other people got off around the same time. I walked down towards the station exit, and there was the closest thing I've seen to an angry mob in front of the little information desk trying to figure out what was going on. I needed to get to Giant Red Star 4, which was only two subway stops away, so I decided to just go find a taxi and be done with it. 

I knew since it was raining, it'd be a little difficult to find a taxi. What I hadn't counted on was the fact that I was in the middle of nowhere and everyone else was trying to get to the same subway stop as me. So, I joined about 150 other people standing by a bus stop trying to flag down a taxi. Keep in mind, it's pouring down rain this whole time. Buses are coming by and splashing water on the curb. Taxis are taking 4 people at a time who are all going in the same general direction. It was a mess.

This is a fraction of the people waiting at the bus stop. Of course, because we were in the middle of nowhere, there weren't any buses that went to the subway station that I needed. I kept trying to get in on one of the taxi groups, but the drivers didn't want me to get in their car. Some of them told me "no foreigners", some of them just waived me away.

I was talking with Rachel on google chat, and she and her co-teachers were trying to figure out a way to get me home. I also called my friend Amy who is really good with the bus system to see if she could figure something out. Things weren't going very well. 

Finally, Amy figured out that I could take one bus to a subway station on line 9, in the Northern part of the city, take line 9 down to the Southern end of the city and transfer to line 7 to get back to the Northern part of the city. It would have taken about 2.5 hours. Rachel figured out that I could take a bus and then walk about 15 minutes and end up at the original station I was shooting for. Neither of these seemed like very fun options, but I didn't have a choice.

Believe it or not, this is what the middle of nowhere looks like in Korea. I was stuck by letter A, on the left side of the picture. There just wasn't much happening. 

Despite the fact that there wasn't much happening, the buses were all full. There were two buses I could have taken. I watched 7 of them go by, all of them so full that they didn't even bother to stop. Koreans know how to cram into public transportation. When Koreans consider the bus too full, I don't want to be anywhere near it. 

I stood (in the pouring rain) at the bus stop for over an hour and a half trying to find a taxi or bus that could get me SOMEWHERE so I could find a way home. My duffel bag was soaking wet. My jeans had absorbed water all the way up past my knees. Thankfully I was wearing flip flops, so my shoes were none the worse for the wear. Finally, a taxi pulled up and he yelled out that he was going to Onsu station, which is where I originally needed to go. He spoke a little bit of English, and he was quite willing to take me along so he could practice. The taxi ride cost $4, took about 10 minutes, and then I got on the train and headed home.  I unlocked my apartment door just after 1:15, a mere five hours after I left Rachel's house. 

As all of this was going on, I was unable to understand how a country that has a rainy season was apparently unable to function when it rained... Then I got home and checked facebook and google+. These are some of the pictures I saw. 

 Korea has apparently had the worst rainy season in 100 years this year. We've gotten about 34 inches of rain in July, and apparently half of that has fallen in the last 36 hours. There has been some crazy flooding and such going on. They are expecting another 12 inches or so tomorrow. This is some crazy, crazy rain. All in all, I guess it's a good enough reason to have some public transportation issues ;)

All I know is I was quite glad to make it home, and I was even happier to sit down in dry clothes with a nice hot cup of tea. Today definitely ranks up there in the "most stressful days in Korea".