3rd times a charm…
Bought my bus tickets for Chile today and because I’m not a fan of Chile, I’m shooting for a round trip visit on Sunday. 12 hours in a bus, 2 hours in a taxi, and a little extra, because after all, it’s South America. This will be my 3rd and final border run and I couldn’t be happier.
Oh look, a gringo!
Got invited to a birthday party last night and I accepted, thinking it would be at most 20 people. Nope. There was a dj, lights, fog machine, full free bar, couch areas in the backyard and more food than was necessary. Of course, I was the only ‘gringo’ which means that everyone and their mom wanted to speak their broken English with me. So I politely put up with 5 minute stories that could have been explained in a sentence, then courteously asked if we could continue the conversation in Spanish.
This happens quite frequently and the worst offenders are the taxi drivers. This is how most of my taxi rides go.
“Where you from gringo?”
“States dude”
“Oh you speak Inglish?”
“Ah, once in awhile”
“Oh me too, mira: One, too, tree, foooor, five!!” Then they start laughing
“Wow, impressive” And then I just start babbling in English until they look confused enough to stop talking. Never fails.
On the road again..
At first I didn’t think anything of it, but yesterday I realized that there are a LOT of atv’s zipping around Arequipa. I also haven’t seen 1 speed limit sign. I suppose due to the amount of taxis and combis a.k.a. traffic congestion, that there really doesn’t reach a point of going faster than 30mph anyway.
MOVING today and couldn’t be more excited. Minus the “Ya it’ll be between 7-10 to install your internet” delay. What’s the deal? Internet on backorder or something?
Some old nun was handing out flyers outside of my school yesterday proclaiming that Halloween was a sin and if we participated, we were all going to hell. I suppose that’s what you get when 90% of the population are rigorous Catholics.
Traffic’s just a bit backed up due to construction. Taxi’s were charging outrageous rates due to the time spent idling in the pile up. The optimistic me thinks that it will all be over soon, but the experienced and pragmatic me knows better.
