We were up at 5 this morning and standing at the bus stop by 6 and there was just enough room for 2 more people to get on so by the time we got to Antigua we had picked up 8 or 10 more people. [This leg of the trip takes 20-25 minutes.] I never really understood when teachers talked about 'critical thinking skills' and the art of teaching those skills. I believe I am seeing what the lack of those skills is all about. It never seems to cross anyone's mind that perhaps the bus if way more than completely full! Common sense just never clicks in with these drivers. I wonder if they have counted how many humans they can stuff into one school bus- I mean 6 seated in each row and nearly a double row standing and the ticket guy crawling all over everyone to get from one end of the bus to the other. Exiting from such a packed bus is more than a trick. Don has one leg that is a glorious black and blue since he is bigger than me (and everyone else on the bus). I have blue spots here and there on both legs because there is no room to move. You knock people on the head with your bags and stomp on feet and squeeze your way to the door. So far I have been lucky because the ayudante always helps me down from the bus.
While waiting for the luxury bus I got in my morning walk up and down the center median this morning. We were about 40 minutes early. It was chilly enough that you could see your breath but we were comfortable with long sleeve denim shirts.
The more direct luxury bus (there is only room for two people and there is an arm rest on the isle) leaves promptly a 7 am for Panajachel and just graciously lets the folks working for Child Aid off at the school on their way past. [ This leg of the trip is 1 hour]. Kristin had work/meetings to get through this morning and Don and I went to the rooms with the computers. The program he download for 4 hours yesterday only partially worked on a couple of computers. We could end up with one computer for younger kids and one for older kids and the rest is just junk.
We were a novelty to the kids at the school and they soon found all kinds of ways to make it necessary to visit us and the computers. We are near the pre-school kids and they were having some much fun running in and out that it became necessary to tell them to stay outside. Then they began to sneak up on the doors and peak in and giggle as they ran away. We can hear them singing little songs like Raindrops
"If all of the raindrops were lemon drops, and gum drops,
Oh what a world that would be.
Standing outside, with our mouths open wide,
Ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah. ....."
http://w3.gorge.net/cannon/songs.html [If you want to know the rest of the song--- last one of first page]
The children run and play and sing like normal children but many of these children live in homes with dirt floors and wood burning stoves. Many are from broken homes and live hard lives but they seem to enjoy their time at school. They have few rules that are enforced in school and think nothing of coming in where we are working. They live by the 'open door' policy -- if a door is open in Guatemala you are welcome inside.
The luxury bus was due back through at 1pm and Kristin had arranged for them to pick us up at the school and drop us off down the road a piece where Child Aid has a warehouse/office. The pick up went fine till we hit a traffic jam. You should see the wild and crazy driving on this highway! It was so bad that the bus lost a lot of time so they dropped us of about 4km from Child Aid. At least they remembered we were on the bus and stopped to let us off. We had to back track to the intersecting for bus exchanges and try our luck at getting a bus. It was soon apparent that a bus was not turning that way (they had gotten the message that the road further down was closed for resurfacing- not all got the message). Don hailed a Tuk-tuk which is a 3 wheeled motorcycle type taxi. Down the road a piece a young man on a motor bike hit a dog and spilled all over the road. The dog I believe was badly hurt and took off hobbling through the field and the young man scooted on his butt to get out of the road. We stopped to render aide but the young man was lucky in that he had no cuts and was able to get up and gather is bike off of the street. He was wearing a helmet. I think the bike is pretty banged up.
At Child Aid Don was able to cobble together a pretty decent computer for them. He had to do more "robbing Peter to fix Paul" parts exchange but finally had a stable video card in the computer. We left at 3 for home on the one chicken bus that did not get the message about the road Or if he did he did not have a choice but had to travel to the city just above the road work to get people home. We picked up new riders as we turned around and drove all the way back to the exchange intersection to take the longer route to Antigua. Let me tell you that now at the end of this day I am just simply beat. I will flatten any alarm that goes off tomorrow morning.
