Today, I rode the bus to Tegucigalpa. This is absolutely no big deal to every Honduran, but I always go in the car; therefore, it was a new experience with me. First I must tell you how I arrived at the point where I was needing to ride the city bus...
I was going to Teleton ALL THE TIME. Currently we have 6 children that need special attention. This organization provides classes and therapy for various types of special needs. We have several in speach therapy, special education, and physical therapy. Some weeks there were up to eight appointments. I was spending so much time at Teleton that everyone knew Emma, and they asked why I hadn't gotten an office yet. Poor Emma could not get on a real routine because every day was so different.
A combination of looking to the future of opening the new campus of CdE and knowing that my baby needed more of a routine to her life, we hired a lady to be responsible for the Teleton responsibilities. I interviewed Deborah; immediately, I liked her. In fact, she may be over-qualified for the job, but she is going to be great with the kids. I spent one week driving to Teleton with her and the children for their prespective appointments, so that the kids could have a transition time and get to know her before they started going solo with her. Also, I wanted to get to know her better as to not send our kids with someone we didn't know at all. During the observation week, I was more than pleased with her interactions with the children. She is both loving and firm with them. She was creative when there was waiting time in coming up with games to play. Also, when we thought Maryuri was sick, she was caring, but not overprotective.
The only problem with Debby is that she just moved back after living in Spain for 12 years and is unfamiliar with the bus route. We decided to learn the route to Teleton together. We planned on allowing 3 hours for our first trip. As usual, she got to CdE on time, and I ran late. We left Casa at 8:30, only permitting 2.5 hours for our trip. We loaded the bus and had an easy ride into the city, only getting off for the next bus one block early. A taxi driver offered to show us where we should have gotten of and then on to Teleton for a low rate of L50. He was really trying to rip us off, so we walked the one block to the place where we needed to get on the next bus.
We arrived to Teleton one hour early. We bought some delicious fruit bowls (which EK loved sharing with me by the way) and asked a few people about the best route home. After several varrying opinions, we thought we had it figured out. When Fernando's class ended, we set out for home trying to follow the bad directions we had received. We took one bus extra because someone told is it was "very far" (2 blocks away but we didn't know) only to find that we were in the wrong spot. We walked to where we knew we could get on a bus to take us in the direction we wanted to go. We ended up across the street from Teleton one block away. This is when I knew that Hondurans don't just tell Gringos bad directions to screw with them, they just tell bad directions because they really don't know. Debby and I got a good laugh out of this.
We caught the bus and walked down the hill where we knew a bus to Santa Ana would pass. We waited for a few minutes, and when the Santa Ana bus neared, we waived for him to stopp as he was passing, but he passed. We realized we needed to go down the road another block (notice the theme of always being short a block). We started walking fast because the Santa Ana bus stopped. We were sure he wouldn't wait, but we wanted to be there when another one passed. Then the miracle occured: THE BUS SAW US AND WAITED!!!
The guy that collects the money yelled at someone to give me a seat since I had EK, and no one budged, so he yelled again. Two people got up and Fernando and I sat down. Fernando was sitting next to someone he learned to be a grandmother of a classmate, and told her all the bad things he knew about the kid. That kid will probably beat Fernando up tomorrow if he gets in a lot of trouble tonight.
At one point the bus was so crowded that the people were 2 or 3 wide in the isle of the bus. I was almost in the lap of the poor, old guy next to me because the lady standing next to me was on top of me and Emma. I started lauging at the ridiculousness of my situation; until I realized it was not ridiculous to anyone but me. Emma Kate was asleep through all of the craziness.
When we got to Santa Ana, I saw my neighbor who couldn't believe that I was on the bus. When I got down, he just laughed at me.
At least on my first Honduran bus ride, my baby did not rob an old lady's money and passport out of her bra as Haley did the first time we rode a bus in Costa Rica. Now tomorrow, Debby will make the trip with Maryuri.
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