image003.jpg@01D3A9CE.144268D0“>
(Here is a picture of my students and I to get us started. You guessed it! I am a teacher. This is completely irrelevant to my blog tho. I just think they are cute. So am I, of course.)
If I got a dollar for every time I take the wrong bus, I will have 3 dollars.
Alright. So. I live in Paute, it is a small town but capital of Canton Paute. It is about an hour or sometimes 45 minutes away from Cuenca, the main hub city. Paute has some issues with the road to Cuenca, it gets shut and rerouted up a hill when it rains. Then, it takes 2 hours or more to get to Cuenca by bus.
About a month ago on a Monday, I got up at like at 10:00. It’s Monday, I get to sleep. I was on my way to Cuenca at about 11:15 by a bus service called Rio Paute which travels between Paute and Cuenca. I got to Cuenca and waited for Hamid and Alex (other fellows). They showed up from Azogues, Canar. Our Spanish class starts at about 12:30. We went to class and it was amazing as always. We learned songs in Spanish and some were hella cringe (Hamid and Alex suck at singing). We get done with class. Alex and Phuong leave to get food. Hamid and I talk for a few minutes then walk to the terminal. We take different buses obviously. I make him walk to and actually enter a Rio Paute bus to show him how my bus is cooler than his. He gets off and we leave. All Rio Paute buses go to Paute, so, I stopped checking a while ago. I would just get into a red bus which said Rio Paute.
We get to Descanso, about midway and the bus climbs the hill. It wasn’t even raining and the road is rerouted. There wasn’t much I could do about it, so. I just stay put. However, it was amazing how most of the people who got into the bus from Cuenca were getting off on the way up the hill like as if they know the bus was going there. Weird. Soon. The bus comes to a halt because it is empty.
I am left stranded somewhere and the driver laughs at me when I ask if he is going to Paute. I don’t know if he felt bad but he only charged me 50 cents instead of a dollar. I had taken a bus to San Cristóbal, I town up a f***ing hill instead of the bus to Paute. Apparently, there is a Rio Paute bus that goes up there even when it is not raining. I didn’t know there was a thing like that. I mean, why would people who live up a hill have their own bus service, they chose to live up there.
However, I had to walk down the hill and get a bus to Paute. Which were all full and didn’t stop. I finally got a bus after walking for about 15-20 minutes. It took me 3 hours to get home that day. That was hella dumb of me but hey, GCY is all about learning new things, learning about your surroundings, experiencing new things, doing dumb shit and I don’t even know what I am talking about at this point.
