Day 307: Crazy Ajumas

Today was a POLY field trip day, and for the first time in a while it wasn't a cop-out field trip. We took the kids and went to a pottery workshop! It was at this Korean pottery shed way out of Ilsan out in the country - rice paddies, narrow roads, and under-construction high-rise towers encroaching from the city's periphery. The roads were really skinny with sharp curves. There were several times where I honestly didn't think that the bus was going to make a corner without getting stuck or hitting a fence or a building. Keep this in mind...it'll come in factor later on...

The pottery session was fun. All the kids got to decorate these cone-shaped hanging flower pots that will later we 'blazed' and mailed back to school. Even all us teachers got the chance to make one. On mine I carved in all the names of my kids and I'm hoping it turns out alright. All in all a very fun field trip enjoyed by all.

The trip home proved to be rather....interesting...with an unexpected delay. Each class has their own mini-bus, and so we piled back in to head back to school. Well only two of the five busses made it back out the original way we took in. Three busses couldn't round this one corner cause it was just too steep for the bus to turn. The Parrots bus happened to be one of those busses 'stuck' behind.

The three drivers decided to back up to the pottery workshop and take a different road back to the city. This road was a dirt one that wasn't well-worn, but looked fairly straight and easier to navigate. Well after not even a half-kilometre down this other alternative road we came to a stop again. We weren't even on a corner so I couldn't figure out why we had stopped moving. I was in the middle bus and so I couldn't see ahead as to what obstruction lay in front of the busses. All of the bus drivers left the busses to go out and take care of the apparent "situation" in the road...

The "situation" turned out to be a crazy ajuma (old Korean lady) who was in the middle of the road blocking the busses and refusing to move. And no, she wasn't in another vehicle - she was standing there in the way. And screaming! Apparently she was pissed off that the busses were driving in front of her house and decided to put a stop to this. Addie in the first bus had a full view of the show and reported that she was totally livid and just kept yelling at the drivers in rage and shaking her finger at the bus. Why us passing by her home pissed her off so much, I don't know, but she sure had a bee in her bonnet over this!

Given that we had no other way out, the drivers could not back down. Even the lady from the pottery shop came out to help us and had to physically pull the crazy lady off the road cause she would just NOT move! Finally, after about 15-20 minutes of this fiasco, we 'escaped' from the clutches of that cranky old bag and drove on by. I caught a glimpse of her as we did and man was she ever enraged! Whew!

We made it back to school quite a bit later than the first two busses who were surprised at our ordeal. Who knew that the Korean countryside could be so treacherous and exciting! ;-)