This is Why I have a Driver

You know you are in trouble when you ask for directions to the airport expressway and the response is, "which airport?" On Tuesday, I went to an attache spouse lunch downtown. I drove in a car with two friends. My driver stayed back with my car because I needed our Ayi and him to pick Huck up from school.

We reached the lunch without incident, by following a map. However, when it was time to leave, we could only get on the road going in a different direction because of a median. So we got on and then saw the sign for the road we wanted but it pointed in two different directions.

We chose the wrong direction.

Then it happened again, and again. The problem with getting turned around in a foreign land is that you cannot read the signs to get yourself back on track. The problem with getting on the freeway in the wrong direction in China is that you cannot just get off at the next exit and then get back on in the opposite direction because it's not like in the US.

So, before we knew it, we were miles away from anywhere we'd ever been. Finally, we pulled over at a gas station. I was the only one in the car who could speak any Chinese, so I hopped out of the car with a giant map in hand. Back in the US, if a pregnant woman got out of a car with a map, everyone there would be eager to help. Not so in China. I walked up to several men who just stared at me. Finally I asked, "can you please help me?"... Blank stares.

So, I tried someone else who finally helped. I asked him to show us where we were and he pointed and then he pointed us in the direction of the airport expressway.

We got back on the freeway and came upon a toll booth where I asked which way we should go to get to the airport expressway (our way home) and recieved a reply of "which airport do you want?" Oops, we were quite a distance from home, but at least that got us going in the right direction. It took us 2 hours to go what normally would take 45 minutes.