Bus Journey

Part 1: Thursday (10/11)
Late last week I went with a school official to the Police station to register my address with them, I think. She did all the paperwork I just sat in the lobby while she did it. Afterwards I got the 525 bus. It should have been a short 5-10 minute ride... About 15 minutes later I realized we had just left the town that I lived in, so I decided to take a spur of the moment bus tour. It really is an interesting experience when you are on a bus with 30 others and you can't communicate with each other... After about 45 minutes of riding the bus, there was something that caught my eye and I decided to get off, and catch a different bus back. I got off the bus and walked around this market, and then decided it was time to head back.
So being the smart foreigner, I pulled out this green chinese phrase-book of mine and looked up "Which bus goes to ...". I tried asking the first person, and they of course didn't understand me. So I tried showing them the chinese in the book, that was a failure... he couldn't read. The nice thing about being in a country with so many people is; well exactly that, there are so many people, so I moved to the next person. They still didn't understand me, but the could read. She pointed, said something I couldn't quite understand along with 4 numbers "4001" which I took to be a bus number. I started heading back down the street, asking others along the way, getting several different bus numbers, and after 30-40 minutes find the bus stop.
I was relieved to see the 525 bus pull up. As I got on, I thought it odd to recognize the middle aged woman taking money. Then it dawned on me, this is the exact same bus that I had gotten off, and that was why she was smiling like that... Well I did kind of feel kind of awkward but managed to get beyond that in short order. I had decided that I was not going to miss my bus stop again, and started asking some guys how to get to my town. It turned out they were studying at the engineering university in my town and got off with me. I gave him my cell phone number and we parted ways.

Part 2 Tuesday (10/16)
Two days ago, I received a text (message) from the student I met on the bus; giving me his name, number and asking if I remembered him. I replied that I did, and we set a time to get together Monday. He texted me yesterday late morning and saying that he now had a class at that time, could we meet Tuesday? I replied that was fine, (I was out buying a desk lamp anyways...95Y) and stayed in the city shopping. Tuesday we were to meet at the KFC (The people here love KFC!), so I went there and waited for him. He came and brought a friend from class, and we started to talk. He asked me eventually started asking me about American customs that were different from theirs and I told him it's not acceptable in America to hawk a luggie (sp?) in public. Then it suddenly came to me about sneezing (I think was some HS prompting) and what we say when someone sneezes; so I told them.
Talk about a golden transition; he told me about his parents were Family members, but he is not. He went on to say that his parents read this book, that he couldn't remember what it was called (in English), so his friend told him to describe the book to me. He said the book talked about how in the beginning this Father created the world. I let him know what that book was called in english, and he asked if mine was written in old english. I explained to him how there are about 6-7 main translations, and how they all say the same thing, just slightly different. To make this already to long story short, we are planning to get together and read through a modern english version.