Tuesday, October 2, 2007

Does this bus have windshield wipers…?

The day after the wedding I left for a four day trip to Tecpan, Chimaltaengo to visit Andrew and current PCV! There were two other trainees going to the same area, so we decided to all go together, so as we are waiting for the bus the flood gates opened up and it started to down pour! There was so much water that the road flooded and started to come on to the side walk, it was crazy! Finally in the middle of the down pouring our bus came…we ran to get on and were thankful for dryness! As we are pulling out, the other girl and I notice that our bus does not have windshield wipers…I could not see out the window and I am pretty sure that he couldn’t either…maybe just the outline of lights! All I kept thinking was, well this is just another experience to add to the list!

Tecpan is an interesting city…it is about 20,000 people but 98% of the people are indigenous and some do not speak Spanish, they only speak Cachikeal (sp?, it is one of the indigenous languages)! It was really good though to see how a PCV lives, works and spends a normal day! I learned a lot that I do not think I will learn from training…such as, how much work you will really do, how to cook on your own, what are the most important things to buy right away, etc! It was nice because I was able to see that not everything is going to go by the book and that not everything you do have to deal with your program…some the most successful things that Andrew has done have been with his secondary projects! One of those projects is organizing a children’s library for the town (way cool)!

When I returned for my trip I had to go to the training center to work on some “homework” so I finished up and was walking home with a friend when we came upon a huge crowd in the road, as we walked around and began talking to people, we found out that there was a “wreck” and the police were not letting people through! We decided to head back and see if we could get a bus back to our towns…we did find a bus but that bus decided since it could not get through, it would just drive up the wrong side of the Pan American highway and then drive down the other side the wrong way to our turn off! Let me tell you it is not a wonderful feeling to see a semi coming at you straight on with no control over the situation what-so-ever!

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