El Bus -- The Bus

God teaches us many things each day if we look and observe Him at work in our lives and the world around us. This is something I've been learning to identify more and more in my own life this year. Well I learned some great lessons last month when I had a lot of car trouble. Since I'm living about 10 minutes away from school a car certainly comes in handy, but only if it's working. My car broke down long enough that I had to make several trips to school and church in public transportation.

Since I live in the home of Ena Patricia, a Spanish teacher from the school, we traveled together. This is the normal way of travel for her and the other Nicaraguan teachers and workers at NCA (and the majority of the people in Nicaragua). We left the house at about 5:55am and walked two blocks where we than waiting until the right bus came. I was never too sure how we knew which one because many of the buses have big letters like Jesus Cristo on the front. The buses here are actually old school buses. If a bus was already too full it would pass by without stopping. Sometimes a bus would stop and it looked like it was too full, but we would get in anyway. Each bus costs about 2.5 or 3 cords about 15 cents. When you board the bus you pay the driver and then head toward the back of the bus. That sounds easier than it really is. All the seats are usually occupied and there are two rows of people already standing. You just sort of wiggle your way through the people to make room for more. The interesting thing for me was that the first morning we left at 5:55am we arrived at school at 6:20am. Another morning we left at the same time but didn't arrive at school until 6:55am. What a difference! No wonder Nicaraguans are sometimes 1 hour late.