Sunday, July 3, 2016

I Only Talk To Strangers When I Need Something

After about 2 hours of trying to sleep among seemingly constant potholes, I made it to the bus station in Querétaro. Wasn't that big of a place, but it still felt pretty different to anything I'd been to before. I went inside to try and find the lady in charge of my trip, but since I hadn't been able to get the WiFi to work that the bus supposedly had, I wasn't able to give her any heads up of when I'd be there. There wasn't any WiFi in the station, but my phone was about to die anyways so that wasn't going to be much of a help. I wrote down her number so I could have it to maybe use someone else's phone if need be, but I thought I'd try one of the pay phones first. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to get any of them to work. Some wouldn't take my money at all, and some would tell me the number didn't even exist. All the while trying not to panic, I tried to think of how else I could get in contact with her. I saw a guy my age tag was on my bus and asked him if I could maybe borrow his phone. He said he didn't have a phone here cause he just got back from his study abroad in Canada, but his mom was coming to get him soon and she would have one I could use. She probably wasn't gonna be there for another 30 minutes though, but I said that was okay cause it'd be possible that the person coming to pick me up would be there by then. 

She didn't, but the mom my new friend Eric showed up about 40 minutes later. When she got there he asked her if she had her phone, but she didn't, she'd left it at home. She said her husband probably did though, so I walked out to their car with them. When I got there I found out that the dad's phone was dead, and now I was kinda stuck. I was worried maybe I misunderstood something and was supposed to meet up somewhere else, but now I didn't have a phone or a way to call anybody. Things like this always seem to happen to me. Eric told me I could come to his house and use their house phone or Internet or whatever I needed, but that idea was pretty scary to me. It woulda been scary to me even in the U.S.  with someone I just met. I'd already waited an hour longer than I thought I should've had to though, and I didn't want to end up being stuck somewhere, so I decided to go with them. Eric said their house was only 15 minutes away, so hopefully I'd be able to figure out what was going on soon.
Their car was kinda small, and between Eric, his mom, his dad, and Eric's girlfriend from Guatemala it was a pretty tight squeeze, especially with all of our bags. I was in the middle of the Xterra of course. We drove around for awhile, and the city was super huge and had a ton of traffic, but eventually we made it to their house that was in a somewhat out of place gated community. Got inside and and tried their phone with the number I had written down, but it still didn't work. Plan A, B, and C were now all out the window. I had 4% battery left on my phone and I remembered I was friends on Facebook with a couple of the people on my trip already. I messaged one of them and got a number for the person in charge of our trip that had the area code I was missing and called her. Finally it worked. She said she was about to get to the bus station just now. Apparently, all the other people on my trip who had taken the same bus ride took 4 hours to get to the bus station. I only took a little over 2.  Since I was only able to send a message of when I left, she had thought I'd be there around 1130. Traffic has made her a little late, so in the end I probably could've waited at the a station and it all would've worked out, but I would've been sitting in a bus station for over 3 hours. Instead, I was now 30 minutes away in Eric's house meeting all of his extended family, eating some gorditas his grandma had made me. 

Eric's mom was able to call me a taxi to take me to where the rest of my group was, and I was finally able to relax a little bit after all the crazy stuff that had happened. I finished off the gorditas and horchata and started packing up all my stuff. 

The taxi arrived and I hugged everybody goodbye, thanking them a ton for helping me out and making me food and just generally being so nice. The cab driver has a purple vest on, normally that woulda been a little weird but I hadn't gotten good sleep in 2 days so I wasn't gonna get too caught up on odd clothing choices. I saw the hostel everybody had stayed in the night before and knew I was finally almost there. I hadn't even met up with my group yet and I'd already had way more adventure than I had signed up for. It was 1 pm though, and the day was still young! I got all my stuff out of the cab and walked through the door of the hostel to find my group waiting there. Study abroad in Querétaro, México could now begin.

6 comments:

  1. Not your bad luck--Bienvenido a Mejico! It is the charm of the place that no one seems to have a sense of time, and things somehow get done with little organization. The people and the culture are amazing

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    1. It's definitely been quite the ride! Getting more and more used to it as time goes on

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    2. It's definitely been quite the ride! Getting more and more used to it as time goes on

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  3. Welcome to life without a phone- plans, back up plans, and backups to the backup plans. Makes ya think a bit more for sure!!
    Loving the blog, D.

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    1. Absolutely! Been a lot of stressful times like that so far... Making the best of it though! Learning to be a little more flexible for sure

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