If luck existed, today it would be bad!

It all started with milk.

Ashley has been wanting to make homemade yogurt for awhile. After waking up this morning she reminded me of this and asked me how much money we had in the account. We get paid on Tuesday and since we paid off all of our student loans this month we have pretty much used it all. We literally have about 9,000 won available in our account (about 8 bucks), but Ashley was begging for that milk. I told her I would go and get it later, but she reminded me every 15 minutes that it would take 9 hours to complete the entire process and so she wanted to get started on it early. So, at around 11:30am I left on my bike for the store to purchase the "much needed" milk.

I got the milk no problem and checked out very quickly. I got back on my bike and attempted to maneuver through the cars in the parking lot. I say attempted because when I went by the very last car in the lot I lost my balance (because of the milk jug) and made a small scratch on someone's vehicle! I was a little shocked by what happened so I stopped and looked at the scratch. The owner happened to be standing right by his car and his wife was in the car. Perfect! He did not speak any English and when I realized he was asking for money I opened my wallet to show him it was empty. Since we did not have any money left in the account and I was without a cell phone I panicked. I am actually a little ashamed of what happened next.

I attempted a hit and run on a bicycle! A Lespo (not lesbo) bicycle to be exact.

I say attempted once again because as I got back on my bike and made a run for it, I failed to move anywhere. The owner of the vehicle grabbed my shorts and pulled me back. After this event the couple proceeded to call the police. At this point I just sat down on the ground next to my bike still clutching my milk. I was in shock and a crowd of 20 Koreans just smiled and watched.

When the police arrived I called Ashley to try and get someone to translate because guess what...the police did not speak English either! I let the phone ring about 10 times. No answer. The police motioned for me to park my bike and get in the police car. I actually placed my hands out and asked about handcuffs (as Ashley would say, "so dramatic!"). They did not cuff me they simply took me back to the police station to file a report.

At the police station I was finally able to get ahold of Ashley and a person from school who could help explain my side of the story to the police and translate what the police were saying. I knew things did not look good but one officer told me, "Don't worry." After discussing all options, the couple wanted 150,000 won for the damage (I wish I could show you how small the scratch was!). The only way I could get this for them was to try and pull money out of the ATM using my credit card. We drove back to the original scene of the accident and I attempted to pull the money out. After two tries I exited the building and told them it was not working. At that very moment Ashley was coming by in the car and I motioned for her to park and come help with the whole situation. I thought I could at least use the phone to call someone with money in order to take care of the situation. It was at this moment that the day got even worse...

Ashley's Version:

Okay, this is where I come in. Taylor had called and told me what happened and said I could stop by the police station to pick up the milk if I wanted to. One of the other teachers had called and asked for a ride to the bus station, so I went to drop her off. I did a loop around town, attempting to find the police station, but with no such luck so I headed home. As I approached the stoplight at the Nonghyup grocery store, I saw Taylor standing on the curb to my left. He started waving me down, so I thought I should go see what was going on. At this point in time, I was in the middle lane, and I had already slowed down because I had seen Taylor.

The light turned green, there were cars waiting behind me, so I turned on my left blinker and attempted to get into the left turning lane without checking my blind spot. I ALWAYS check my blind spot before merging, but I guess I was distracted by seeing Taylor standing there on the side of the road with a police officer. The next thing I know, a black sedan sped by and sideswiped me! It only scratched his car, but dented my front left fender, scratched the paint and cracked the headlight. It really wasn't all that bad, but you should have seen this guy throwing a fit. He was practically kicking and screaming. He looked about 20-21 years old. Apparently he was driving his father's car, so maybe that's why he was so irritated. He was irritating me though, because he kept moaning and shaking his head and yelling "AHHH Jinja-yooooo" That basically means "Really!?" That's what I should have said back to him because of his annoying temper tantrum.

What a day, huh?

Well, the police came fast, because they were already across the street dealing with Taylor and his bicycle accident. We called our friend Mark, who is Korean-American and speaks both languages pretty fluently. I say pretty fluently because he's much better at English than Korean but his Korean was good enough in this situation. They got statements, then took me back to the police station. Taylor rode along, so this was his second time in the back of a police car within about 30 minutes for 2 different offenses!

I didn't have any I.D. or anything on me, because I was just dropping our friend off at the bus station, which is about 3 minutes away from our apartments. So, in addition to calling Mark to come translate, we called Akila to go by our apartment and get passports, alien registration cards, and other forms of I.D. I didn't have my International Driving Permit because I had stupidly left it on my desk at work. They ended up letting us go after doing some paperwork, and told us to come back in 45 minutes. Just enough time to run to school and grab my International Driving Permit. This time I let Taylor drive. When we arrived at school, we finished off the remaining Reese's peanut butter eggs that someone had sent us from America (Reese's are Taylor's all-time favorite candy.


We arrived back at the police station. The traffic accident investigator told us that since I was getting over into the left lane without checking for cars, it was more my fault than his. But he said it was something like 60/40 or 70/30 my fault. We'll see what insurance does.


After talking about the incident, he took us over to another building where I had to get fingerprinted. I had to put my thumbprints on like 10 documents, then they scanned like 2 separate images of each finger on both hands. I felt like I was a criminal! They also made copies of my Alien Registration Card, International Driving Permit, and my Oklahoma Driver's License. While waiting for the officer to finish up, we saw this sign for CSI.


If there was CSI Korea TV show, I would not watch it. Anyway....that was our day.

My thoughts on the day:

They are similar to Taylor's. There were a lot of "if only" thoughts. Our main problem, which is not that big in the scope of things is the money aspect of it all. We have been following the Baby Step Plan from Dave Ramsey for almost 2 years now. Step #1 is to save $1,000 for an emergency fund. Step 2: Pay off all debts. Step 3: Add to your $1,000 emergency fund and bring it up to 3-6 months worth of savings. We made it to Step 3! But the problem was that we were so eager to pay off our final amount of debt last month that we used up some of the emergency fund to pay those debts off. While we do have some money left in our accounts in the States, we didn't have any money in our emergency fund here. Payday is in 2 days, so we had to borrow money from another teacher to pay the $150,000 Won ($138) from the bike accident.

One more thought from the day: I'm so proud of my husband for how he responded. Normally (no offense, honey) he doesn't handle stressful situations very well. I thought it was over when I got in a car accident less than 30 minutes after his bike accident. But as I pulled over to the side of the road and he crossed the street, he was completely calm! I couldn't believe how well he handled the whole day. I was completely taken aback and pleasantly surprised at his quiet, calm strength. It helped me get through my whole incident calmly.

Taylor's thoughts on the whole situation:

I feel calm and collected, even after everything that took place today. I don't believe in bad luck or karma and don't believe that God made this happen to teach us a lesson. Through all of this I did learn a few things. I thought we were both doing very well with how we handled our finances. We were until we broke some of our own rules. We did not have an emergency fund saved up! Then, it would be no problem and we would not have to worry about paying back a co-worker in two days on pay day! Another thing I took from this is to remain calm in unexpected situations. I would much rather get into small accidents like this for the rest of my life then have to deal with a terminal illness or a life threatening car accident. God is good all the time and bad stuff still happens. It is how we respond and what we learn from these hard times that makes us better people.

P.S... the reason this all happened today- the yogurt- didn't turn out anyway. It's been in the oven for the past 6 hours, but my lowest heat setting was still too hot and it got ruined. BOO!