Bad Luck Buses

11-11-10
Almost halfway done with PST2. This week has been a lot of sitting in plastic chairs and learning about everything technical... from teaching english, to starting youth groups, to grant writing, to learning how to make flowers out of two liter coke bottles. It’s been a lot. I’m enjoying most of it and it feels good to get stuff I can really use in my site. A little over whelming at the same time. At the end of every session I feel like- I want to do that! And obviously I can’t do everything. Baby steps.
It has been an interesting week. Monday morning the bus broke down on our morning to commute to San Vi, so my friend and I footed it into the pueblo. It really wasn’t that bad. Not too far. A beautiful morning. I just hope that the bus never breaks down at a more inconvenient time or location. We had another bad luck moment with the bus yesterday evening when we were returning to our community. We were at the training center taking self-defense classes for the last hour of the day and caught the last bus home to our training communities. The traffic was backed up before we could cross the San Vi bridge... so by the time we got closer to home it was dark already. We were on the bus and the cobrador shouted out the name for our stop. As we got off we noticed that we were getting off in a spot that was different than usual because there was a curb and grass we were stepping on. But we just figured that the bus didnt pull up far enough to the open area... and we were too busy trying not to fall as we got off... So by the time we were grounded and looked around to realize we were not at the right place the bus had already taken off. Uh oh. But man, the guy on the bus said it was our stop! Lesson learned: look around carefully before you step off the bus. So it was a little after 6:30 and we had to walk about 3/4 of a mile on the side of the road in the dark to get home. We were a little scared yea. I said Good thing we just had those self defense classes. All we got were some cat calls from men in the cars passing by. Thank goodness I was not alone... that would have really been scary. We got home fine and safe. Relieved. And tonight we made sure to not make the same mistake again. Sorry if reading this freaks any of you out or makes you worry about my safety. You don't have to worry! I take good care of myself down here, k.
I learned something interesting today about how the private Universities here decide what tuition rates should be for each individual student. They do an estudio socioeconomico and come to your house to see how many TVs you have, how many cars you have and how nice your house is. If you have a lot of expensive stuff and it looks like you are rich, they give you a higher tuition rate. If you appear to live poor, you get a lower tuition. And they never notify you to let you know when they are coming. They just show up at your house, so that it’s harder for you to lie about it. If they find out that you lied about how much money you have to try to get a better rate, they will automatically give you the highest. Does that sound as messed up to you as it does to me?
Just a few other things- When writing a resume in El Salvador you have to put your age, marital status and PICTURE! That’s wrong... With as little opportunity as there is in this country, it’s not even equal opportunity. You have to know someone.