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During the trip, we put our suitcases out of the room at the hallway on the morning of checkout at each hotel and the porter collected and carried them onto our charter bus. In Spain, we saw our suitcases gathered at the lobby and one of the tour members found her suitcase was unlocked. She went to it to lock, saying she had certainly locked when she put it at the hallway. That made other members check their suitcases and some of theirs were also open. Some members said a doorknob of the room was jiggled from the outside during the night. My mother told them that I had had my pocket picked on the bus and how stupid I had been. She sounded as if I was the champion in this danger competition in Spain. But someone claimed her bag had been slashed on the bus and my mother fell silent finally. We went to Toledo by our charter bus. It was a long ride with a few stops for snacks or a rest room. I was listening to my most favorite band, Tulip, on my Walkman. As I passed beside the bus driver wearing headphones when I got on and off the bus, he noticed I liked listening to music. When I got back to the bus after one of the rest stops, he spoke to me. He was a local man and I didn’t understand Spanish, but he seemed to talk about music. He held out a cassette tape. Imagining from his gesture, it seemed the tape was his favorite and he suggested listening to it. It was Spanish pop music and I enjoyed it during the whole bus trip. When the time to get off the bus approached though, a doubt crept into my mind. Did the bus driver lend the tape to me or give it to me? Judging from his initial gesture, he could have given it to me. But if he intended to lend it, keeping it would mean stealing. If he had given me, however, returning it would mean discourtesy. I no longer had luxury to listen to the tape but focused my thoughts on whether I should return it or not. When I got off the bus, I gave it back to him because I didn’t want to be a thief. I showed my gratitude and how good it sounded as much as I could with my gesture just in case I was giving back something he had given. Instead of pushing it back to me as in ‘Keep it!’, he took it, but rather brusquely. Thanks to his ambiguous reaction, I still haven’t known which he had intended…
