A STUDENT STORY: Make sure you are on the right bus!

There were many crazy stories I remember from my exchange, but there is one that stands out as a very large learning experience, which occurred about a month into my exchange back in 1990.

One of my new friends from school had planned a birthday party at his house and I was super excited to go. One of my concerns was that I wouldn’t be able to communicate to my host parents the details of the time and place, so I asked my friend to call my host parents and ask them directly. He called that night and they told him it was fine, but they weren’t going to be able to drive me since they were also going out with friends that night. They told him to make sure that I got on the right bus – the last bus of the night going to my town.

As you might guess, he put me on the wrong bus. I didn’t know for a while that it was the wrong one, initially because the only difference in the route was that this bus ended before it got to my town. When we got to the end of the line, the bus driver was of absolutely no help and just told me to get off the bus. This was before the days of the cell phone, so I was stuck. I didn’t really even know where I was or how far I was from home. Then I spied a phone booth. I tried to call my host parents, but as they had told me, they were not home.

So I sat down on the curb and started to cry. As I was sitting there, a little old lady – or perhaps an angel in disguise – asked me if she could help. Somehow, with my broken German and a flash of my passport, she was able to understand what was happening. She took my hand and led me to the police station where she found a police officer who spoke English. He agreed to drive me home – in a police car. As luck would have it, I pulled up in the police car just as my host parents were arriving home from their dinner. Everyone thought the situation was hilarious except for me, at the time. I was so mad that they were laughing at me.

When I told my friend the next day at school, he and all my friends also got a good chuckle out of it. Looking back a couple of weeks later, it was pretty funny. I learned two valuable lessons that day. Lesson one was that sometimes you have to laugh at yourself.

Lesson two was to always have your host parents’ phone numbers, your host neighbors’ phone number, and anyone else’s phone number who can help you when you are lost!