It was time to make the trek back to Shanghai for Clara's return trip to the US, after her three-week visit/stay with me here in China.
After spending all of last night out at the Indian Diwali festival (see another blog post for details, colorful photos, and videos on that topic!), we packed Clara's remaining items up. At 5am, we took a 45-minute taxi ride back into Ningbo to the Ningbo South bus station. Our bus left at 6am.
A little more than an hour into our 2.5 hour bus trip, the bus stalled. The engine was turned off and we sleepily waited. Minutes passed and I groggily woke up to gather my bearings. We were in the middle of some road where a police blockade was set up. There was no oncoming traffic on the other side of the freeway either. And, being the only laowai on the bus, we didn't do anything but sit and observe for a while. We had a one-hour buffer in our travel time calculations before we HAD to be at the airport.
After about a half hour, passengers started getting antsy. The driver started screaming angrily out the window at the po-pos. Sometimes it is hard to tell if Chinese people are actually angry (because some tones are just so harsh and they oftentimes speak excessively loudly anyway). But in this instance, it was apparent that the driver, and the 48 other passengers were livid. I invoked my google-translate privileges on my iPhone (yay 3G + VPN!) and attempted communication with the couple behind us. Apparently the road/bridge spanning the bay was closed due to fog. Really? The fog wasn't even that bad. We could still see the road for at least 150 meters in the distance. That's enough, right?
After spending all of last night out at the Indian Diwali festival (see another blog post for details, colorful photos, and videos on that topic!), we packed Clara's remaining items up. At 5am, we took a 45-minute taxi ride back into Ningbo to the Ningbo South bus station. Our bus left at 6am.
A little more than an hour into our 2.5 hour bus trip, the bus stalled. The engine was turned off and we sleepily waited. Minutes passed and I groggily woke up to gather my bearings. We were in the middle of some road where a police blockade was set up. There was no oncoming traffic on the other side of the freeway either. And, being the only laowai on the bus, we didn't do anything but sit and observe for a while. We had a one-hour buffer in our travel time calculations before we HAD to be at the airport.
After about a half hour, passengers started getting antsy. The driver started screaming angrily out the window at the po-pos. Sometimes it is hard to tell if Chinese people are actually angry (because some tones are just so harsh and they oftentimes speak excessively loudly anyway). But in this instance, it was apparent that the driver, and the 48 other passengers were livid. I invoked my google-translate privileges on my iPhone (yay 3G + VPN!) and attempted communication with the couple behind us. Apparently the road/bridge spanning the bay was closed due to fog. Really? The fog wasn't even that bad. We could still see the road for at least 150 meters in the distance. That's enough, right?
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