Chapter 5 : Hawaii (Part Two)

I quit the job on the third day and walked to the homeless shelter, as I did not have any money for bus fare or a bus pass. While working I ruined a good pair of tennis shoes I had just bought a few weeks earlier, when I was still staying at the YMCA. There was a young kid in his early twenties I was working with at the time that was staying in the homeless shelter who said to me one day. “James,” he said, “There is one-way to look at this situation we are all in. I then said, “What is that?” and he said, “It’s up from here.” and he was right it was up from there to where I am at now.

One day this other friend of mine in the homeless shelter asked me if I wanted to go with him for a ride around the island on the bus. He said he knew a way to use bus transfers where we could ride around the whole island all-day in one direction and wanted to know if I wanted to go with him? I said, “Sure why not what else did we have to do”.

I had already applied for all the jobs I could that week and I went to the interview and met Sunny who was doing the hiring for the teaching job in South Korea and she said she would let me know as soon as she found out if I got the job or not. She said she would get in touch ASAP and for me to be patient. What choice did I have but to wait, as I was not going anywhere off the island to the mainland any time soon.

We left for our little adventure; we headed in one direction on the bus and got a transfer, then got on another bus going the opposite direction and when we tried to get another transfer the bus driver refused, because we had the wrong transfer to go the other direction. In the mean time I watched as this person at the front of the bus said real loud, “I need to get to the airport, I need to get to the airport”. I thought to myself at the time, “Well, you are not going to get to the airport on this bus it is going in the wrong direction away from the airport and heading downtown”.

The only way she was going to get to the airport fast was for her to get off the bus and take a taxis to the airport. My other friend and I both decided his plan was not working for some reason, so we decided to get off the bus back at the shelter. So we got off and so did the woman that was in a hurry to get to the airport. I thought to my self, it was odd what she was saying and I watched her for a while until for some reason I looked away and she was gone, as fast as she had arrived on the bus. It was like she had disappeared and I did try to watch her walk away but something made me look away, after I did she was gone and nowhere to be seen again, along with the person she was with at the time.

I then went inside the homeless shelter to check for messages that I might have on the bulletin board and there was a message there for me from Sunny? Sonny had left a message that she would be in the K-mart parking lot waiting for me to get back, because she needed to see me because I had been hired for a teaching job back in South Korea. I rushed out the door because the message was a few hours old and I did not know if Sonny was still there waiting for me in the K-mart parking lot across the street for me to get back and get her message in time. Sure enough as my luck was beginning to look up, Sonny was there in the K-mart parking lot with her daughter waiting for me to show up.

I went up to Sonny in her car and she said “get your stuff you are leaving on a flight tomorrow morning for Seoul, South Korea but the job is further south of Seoul by three hours in a city called Kumi City, South Korea and you will have to take two fights one into Seoul, South Korea and a connecting flight to Dague. Where you will be picked up and driven the rest of the way, which is about a 45 minute to an hour drive from Dague, South Korea. She asked me if I still had my passport. Thinking back just now I do not remember how I got a vacation visa. I think Sunny already did it as Sonny was also Korean herself.

Sonny said she would be back in about an hour she had to drop off her daughter and pick up her son. That way it would give me time to get my stuff out of my locker. She said she would be paying for one nights stay at the YMCA and we needed to go buy me some new cloths and shoes to work in. Which meant new dress shirts, slacks, and socks, shoes and all new underwear too. A new haircut as well, I could pick up the rest of my stuff from the shelter stored in the storage area that you can only have access to when you leave the shelter for good, permanently. I could pick it up on my way to the airport in the morning with a taxi.

Go to Chapter 5 : Hawaii (Part Three)

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