Bus Stopped

First of all, you must know that the university I work at is not in the center of my humble little town of Ixtepec. It's actually located about 15 minutes outside of town...in a very rural area (hence the presence of snakes, lizards, tarantulas and scorpions-though the scorpion count is still 0). This means however, that transportation is not as accessible and usually there is only one bus an hour and very few taxis to shuttle you back if you miss it.So, every night I race out of my office at 7pm to quickly punch out and cross two lanes of oncoming traffic, a meridian, then two more lanes to get to the shoulder where my bus is waiting for me. This has been a common occurence since my co-worker left back in November and I had to rely on the good graces of my bus driver to wait for me so I could get home.

Monday night, however, a change appeared to be brewing as there were two buses waiting across the street on the shoulder of the road, apparently the two regular night drivers had finally decided that buses were not supposed to double as sardine cans. But to our surprise, there was a third bus, and this one was not across the road but right at our front gate. I had always thought that this bus had headed into a town away from Ixtepec and was about to head toward my bus when my friend stopped me and suggested I get on.

Well, I was not the only person who shunned our regular bus driver and this did not go unnoticed. As the new bus crossed the street and did the U-turn to head back into Ixtepec, it was forced to stop by the other bus drivers, as they stood in the road, shouting at the young entrepreneurial drivers who were cunningly stealing their business.my friend then decided to get off the bus, and as I was not about to be left alone on a strange bus, I did the same...and crossed over to my regular bus. I was not alone but as I am whiter than your average Ixtepec resident, it was definitely noted. More professors climbed on the regular bus and our bus driver climbed on, ready to take the wheel while the other regular driver fought with the new bus.

The new drivers were not going to take this sitting down...so they continued to argue with the bus driver while manoevering themselves to block both lanes of the road, therefore preventing, the bus I was on, to pass. I was in a Mexican chicken fight, where apparently, the lives of the bus passengers would have to wait until this was settled.

My driver, obviously being experienced in these sorts of things, reversed us all the way til the break in the meridian and drove us down the wrong side of the road until the next break where he drove us onto the right side of the road. He then gunned it to get to the next big money stop, which is the hospital. We gathered the people from that stop, but while they were getting on the bus, the new bus driver realized what was going on and overtook us, making sure to drive extra slowly to block our way.

The rest of our ride proceeded like this with one bus getting in front of the other, then driving slower before being taken over. Finally, we made it back into town where the passengers were reminded to stay loyal to their bus driver, because he always comes to get them, and isn't a fickle young guy looking to make a quick buck.

All I can say is that it beat any dvd I was planning to watch that night, and made living in the stix, all that more exciting!

Sick! :(

So as of Monday night, I was not doing so hot, suffering from stomach pains which later transpired in my body ridding itself of all the food inside itself in two ways...both involved me rushing to the bathroom. I woke up on Tuesday feeling feverish and not much better in the stomach department but after taking some pills I was just left fatigued and feverish.

Luckily, I am not teaching class anymore so, when the sitting at the computer got too much for me, I would lie down on my office chairs (which are suprisingly as comfortable as my cot in the apartment...if not more so). When the work day finally came to an end I happily returned home, cautiously ate some cereal and was in bed by 8:30 and asleep by 9! Talk about an early night!

Minus the 5 o'clock wake up call thanks to my neighbors downstairs (...seriously, who leaves their cell phone outside in the laundry area and then ignores the alarm that everyone can hear) I slept through the night. Today I am still feverish and lightheaded, and I tried to eat some breakfast but didn't really have much of an appetite, obviously I was too anxious.

Anyway, that is the news for today, that and this weekend Jason and I are meeting up midway between the two of us and going to Puebla. This of course has made my week a lot more bearable! YAY!!! I will make sure to post tons of pics :)

Mini Break

Well, last week I was very lucky to have been granted permission to have Thursday and Fridayoff, as well as Wednesday afternoon. With my spare time, I trecked out to Colima to visit Jason and see what the job possibilities were out there.

Now when I say treck, it's not just an exageration on my part. I left my town at 2:30 so that I would make my 4:00 bus from Juchitan (pronounced Hoo-chy-tan...yeah, I thought it was funny too). Juchitan is a much larger city than my Ixtepec so more buses go from there.

Instead of waiting til 7:55pm and going straight to Mexico, I caught a 4pm bus to Oaxaca City and then a 9:15pm bus to Mexico City's Northern terminal at 3am. I then took another bus to Guadalajara and got in at 12:30pm. Here I became very disoriented by the sheer size of the bus station, so, Oscar, my new friend with the ETN bus company walked me across the parking lot to where I would catch the bus. We chatted a bit and he established that Jason should be the one visiting me, not the other way around. A good man that Oscar was, if only he knew Ixtepec, he might have changed his tune. Eventually I got to Colima, riding in on a bus that had headphones, music, pillows, sandwiches and two bathrooms.

I got to spend two nights and two full days with Jason which were wonderful (yay!) and while he was at work Friday, I went around Colima trying to find some work. I have already been hired to teach French at a language academy and they are trying to get me some English classes as well. I am also in the running for a coordinator's position at a high school, but they would want me to stay later so I am thinking about that. Then there are at least two positions that I have been offered in Guadalajara (3 hours away), but I am not so sure about those because they are far and Guad (as we call it here :p) is one of the three largest cities in Mexico, and I don't know if this small town girl can handle it.

I had to leave Saturday night and it was so hard because I really didn't want to go back to Ixtepec, but I did want to get my work done, which will be mainly the end of this week and then it will jst be tutoring my students who have exra exams and then the 15th is my last day here...WOO-HOO!