Most of them smoke, although they take care to do so outside the bus.
Some of them take your ticket when you get on the bus, others take your ticket as you get off the bus. I have no idea how this determination is made.
Most of them wear dress shirts, and some wear ties. Some of them also personalize their space, with bobbleheads, flashy curtains, family pictures, etc.
Some of them wear driving gloves. I don’t know whether that’s related to the fact that most of them drive fast, use their horns often and pass whenever and wherever they feel like it — regardless of whether it’s safe to do so.
Anyway, onto my bus driver tale.
So, a few weeks ago I’d gone to Daegu to do a little shopping and have some lunch. Later, I came back to the bus terminal, bought my ticket and waited to get on the bus. A few minutes later, I hopped aboard, said hello to the guys in the first couple of rows and took a seat.
Self-portrait of the bus driver
Then, one of the guys motioned for me to move closer to him, so I did. As it turns out, he was the bus driver. He was sitting next to a Buddhist monk. (I know, I know, it sounds like a joke: A monk, a bus driver and a Marine walk into a bar — and all sorts of hilarity ensued. Sorry, that’s another story.)
At first, the only words the bus driver kept saying were, “Obama! King house! Washington!” I figured he was talking about the White House, so I whipped out my iPod and showed him a picture of a U.S. map and pointed to Washington, D.C., at which point he cried, “Yes!”
Clearly, he was very excited about President Obama (as folks outside the States always seem to be.) But then he did something that many Americans likely couldn’t do: he correctly named the presidents in reverse order all the way back to Kennedy. (I was impressed. Each one also got either a thumbs up or thumbs down. Again, I was impressed.)
The conversation eventually turned to me:
Yecheon. You. Why? (Why was I going to Yecheon?) A common question to which I always answer, “Um, because I live there.”
You. English teacher? Where? (Are you an English teacher in Yecheon?) “Yes. At Yecheon Girls’ High School.” (This usually provokes a wink-wink, nudge-nudge response. I always try to tell them, “It’s not like that,” but I don’t know how well that comes across in translation.)
Then, using a mixture of a few Korean and English words, hand gestures and photos (on his phone and my iPod), we exchanged a little information about ourselves. I learned that he has one son who attends a university in Seoul and majors in English, he loves to take pictures of nature, particularly flowers, and what part of Yecheon he lives in. I was able to tell him what part of town I live in. He was quite surprised to see the size of my family, as are most folks.
Anyway, we were supposed to depart at 3:40 p.m. With about a minute to go, he suddenly broke off our “conversation,” ran to the front of the bus and resumed his role as bus driver — right on time.
