No Bus

Wednesday morning I limped the two blocks to where the bus picks us up every morning.  The bus normally comes about 10 minutes earlier than its scheduled time, but it was 6:50am (scheduled for pick-up at 6:55am) and the bus wasn’t there.  Shortly after, Maia received a call from Luke (who gets picked up before us) stating that the bus wasn’t coming and we’d have to take a taxi.  Apparently one of the staff members who rides the bus is very good friends with the driver who called to tell him he couldn’t drive the bus that morning.  That guy in turn asked Luke if he needed a ride, and then Luke fed that information to a few other teachers.  Embracing the “TIM” philosophy (This Is Mexico), I just laughed and started looking for a taxi to flag down.  The group I was with was too big to take just one, so we found two taxis after a bit of walking and made it to school 10 minutes earlier than normal.  The school was kind enough to reimburse us for the fare, so all turned out well in the end.

This morning I awoke with a slight sore throat and stuffy nose—first cold of the school year!  I was hoping I was immune since I’ve been working in the school system for five years, but apparently not…  I hope to make it to the store tomorrow to purchase some cold meds, but until then I’m pretty snotty.  Some good news is that my foot is doing better.  It’s scabbed over and doesn’t appear to be infected—YAY!  Also, today was the start of Optativas (electives) and I got another teacher to join me in overseeing Ultimate Frisbee (no one signed up for her class L).  Unfortunately the frisbees have not arrived, so all we could do was tell them the rules and where we will be playing every Thursday—not very exciting for the kids.  Our area for frisbee is the sand volleyball court…sounds like a great playing area, huh?  There are four polls that run the length of the field in the middle, and there is only enough room for one game to be played at a time.  I have 30 kids for this activity, enough for four teams, so Sarah and I are going to have to be creative in what we do with the two teams that can’t play a match.  We’ll figure out something, but kind of frustrating.  At least I do not have to wrangle 30 kids on my own!

After school today a bunch of us went to Costco.  Differences between Mexican Costco and US Costco:  Here, they don’t really care if you have a card to get in the store or not; when checking out, they don’t care if the card belongs to you or not—you can just pass it down the line and it doesn’t matter how you pay for your purchases; when buying a hot dog and drink (which is outside the store), you have to show them your card; when leaving the store, they look at your receipt and purchases very closely, examining your cart to make sure you aren’t trying to sneak out other items.  Anyways, I purchased a 2-pack of pillows, and I’m stoked to use them tonight!  The pillows the school provided were ok for a little while, but they are virtually flat now and do not stay in the pillow cases.  Costco is also the only store I’ve found so far that has a different kind of bread other than Bimbo brand (very similar to Wonder Bread), so I treated myself to two loaves.  Cheese, salt and pepper pistachios, and precooked/sliced chicken completed my purchase.

My motto remains TIM, and somehow that makes all of the inexplicable occurrences more humorous!