Getting lost in China... and not dying!

  The first 18 years of my life were very quiet and sheltered. I had never traveled to another country and at most had spent 2 weeks away from home. At no stage did I ever think that I would find myself completely lost somewhere in the south of China, all alone, in a city I barely knew the name of or could even pronounce. My name is Wesley and I thought I would introduce myself by sharing my weird and wonderful stories of a quiet South African boy who for some reason decided to go to China and live and teach English there for half a year.

 

After only 2 weeks of being in China and living in dorms with over a hundred other people, I had finally moved to the south of China and was living almost on my own, on my first weekend I decided to visit a girl I barely knew for reasons I’m not really sure about. The English teachers at my school assured me it would be really easy and straight forward. Little did I know that a few hours later I would be completely alone in a weird city, with no English anywhere to be seen, heard or understood…

 I got some instructions from the people at the school I taught at. They gave me a few lines of Chinese characters with the destination I wanted. They put me on a bus and all I had to do was follow some simple instructions. Somehow (probably because of the lack of English everywhere) I got on the wrong subway and ended up in a weird part of the city. I looked around and walked for 3 hours before I saw a sign with a picture of a bus on it. I got to the bus station and showed them the Chinese characters. After 2 hours of waiting in the station I was on a bus to the girl’s city. I arrived at 1:30 AM. To end the story off, I finished this amazing travelling experience by getting my wallet stolen as I arrived… China was a blast!