Day 52- Las Aventuras del Sábado

                A typical Saturday...There is no such thing. Every Saturday is different and every Saturday has its own adventures. Since I have much to tell each week and can’t give a play by play of every day of my life, I’ll give a detailed picture of one of the fifty or so Saturdays that I will spend in Peru.

                My alarm rang obnoxiously at 8:00am. Normally in the states, I am incapable of sleeping later than that anyway…but I’m constantly tired here and felt like I needed a good three more hours of slumber. I got up and ready for a miniature work day at the church building with Pastor Jim and Miss Becky. Our main purpose for going to the church on a Saturday was to cover the open air window with a piece of plastic. We hope that this plastic will keep the dirt and cold out of the Sunday School classrooms on the second floor. We arrived around 9:30. Miss Becky put me and Dani in charge of cleaning the floor to ceiling sliding glass doors on the first floor. We got started and Dani found out she was a little too short to reach the top of the glass, so she left me with that job to help “PJ” and “Momma B” upstairs. An hour or so later, after I was finally content with the spotlessness of the glass doors, I went upstairs to see if the others needed more help. They pretty much had everything under control. All I did to help was hammer a few nails here and there. We finished up around 11:30. Miss Becky offered to take us to the laundry mat before dropping us off at home. As soon as we merged into the “Parking Lot” of the Lavendaria, we had a little t-bone accident with another car. Thankfully neither car was going very fast and a few hammers from the mechanic took the dents out of the cars. Since Miss Becky was busy dealing with the man from the car accident, Dani and I took the bus home.

                Early in the week, we had made plans to go shopping for boots with our host father, Renato,  and sister, Paola. We had approximately three hours between cleaning the church and our next obligation, Kid’s Club. Plenty of time to go shoe shopping, right?...Wrong. Dani and I wanted to take a shower after cleaning and hammering all morning. That’s acceptable. We didn’t want to make Renato and Paola smell our nasty scent all day. So we quickly showered, ate lunch, and left to meet up with Renato who was working. We had to take a bus and a Comvi (Large minivan that stuffs 10-15 people inside) in order to meet Renato. While trying to run from the bus stop to the boarding place of the comvis, a small car almost backed into me. Normally I’m pretty easy to see! How many other fluorescent white skinned, blonde haired girls are there in Lima? I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt and say that I was in his blind spot. -__- Anyway…we met Renato around 2:00pm. Lunch, showers, and travel time took a little longer than we had anticipated, but we still had about an hour and a half to shop for boots. Plenty of time, right?...Wrong.

                Renato has two jobs. On the even days of the month, he changes money from dollars and euros into soles. On the odd days of the month, he is a police officer. The family doesn’t have a car, so he rides a motorcycle to and from work each day. Between his police officer duties and his knowledge of riding a motorcycle, you’d think he’d be an excellent driver. ;) We borrowed his brother’s car to go shopping. Renato drove. I felt like I was learning how to drive all over again. Granted, there was a bit of traffic, but going down the hill, we jerked every few feet. The transition between accelerating and breaking could use a little work…but…esta bien. “It’s ok. It’s all good.” Dani and I were laughing quietly to ourselves in the back seat. We probably drove for an hour or so. We got lost a few time and had to ask for directions. Streets in Peru are never directly north, south, east, and west. They run diagonal, they swerve, they twist and turn. We’d get directions and start heading in that direction when the road would suddenly turn to the left and we’d be heading the wrong way again. We finally got to the shopping area in Villa Salvador. It reminded me of an outlet mall. They had dozens of shoe stores, huge stores with all different kinds of clothes, and streets lined with stores selling really nice furniture! I felt like a true tourist gaping out the window at all the stores. 3:30pm…half an hour till we were supposed to be at church helping with Kid’s club. We’re not even thinking there’s plenty of time anymore. We’d given up on that notion for the afternoon. Once we finally found a place to park, Paola and I started our quest for boots. Normally I’m not much of a boots fan. However, the buildings here don’t have heaters. Plus, its winter (In July). Also, we wear skirts a lot. The combination of the three makes me cold even now as I’m in sweat pants, a sweatshirt, and a blanket.  So I decided I needed some high boots to keep my legs warm.  We looked through the dozens of shoe shops walking down a number of streets. Of course we find boots in the very last store we go into. It would have been easier if Paola and I weren’t such giants! Paola is about as tall as I am. In translation, we’re both pretty tall in relation to other Peruvians. We finally found some boots and started heading back to our little “subdivision” called Musa. We got home in time to sit down for a minute before we had to go back up to the church for youth group.

                For Kid’s Club and youth group on Saturday’s Dani and I take the bus up to the church. We can either take the green and yellow “C” bus which drops us off at the park down the street, or we can take a blue and orange “E0-69” bus which drops us off right in front of the church. The “C” buses are much more frequent than the others, so Dani and I have only taken these buses. However, yesterday, we saw the “E0-69” bus and decided to give it a try. Here’s the thing. There are a lot of other blue and orange buses that don’t take us to the church. Since there are so many others, we weren’t 100% sure that the “E0-69” was the one we wanted. We climbed aboard anyway because we were tired of waiting for a “C” bus. Sure enough, we picked the right bus. The bus turned the corner toward our church. We told the cobrador that we wanted to get off. Normally, he’d yell up to the driver to stop. Just our luck…he did nothing of the sort. He just looked at us and asked, “Where do you want to get off?” “Here! At the church!” “you’ll have to wait till we get to the corner.” The funny part was that we picked people up right in front of the church, Dani and I just couldn’t squeeze through the sea of people fast enough to get off before the bus started moving again. Sooo…we picked the right bus, the one that should have dropped us off feet from the entrance of our destination. However, we had to walk a few blocks anyway because the cobrador didn’t let us off where we wanted to get off. It turned out alright though, because we saw our friend Emily at one of the stores while we were walking from the bus to the church. We ended the day playing some fun games and learning about Romans 12 with the youth group.

                Let’s review: We got in a minor car accident. A car almost backed up into me. We got lost going to Villa Salvador. We missed Kid’s Club altogether. We couldn’t get off our bus where we wanted to. A typical Saturday in that we never know what to expect from the day. An untypical Saturday because there is no typical routine for any certain day for an ARRIBA student.