First Bus Adventure

The kids at the hogar. Camera = excitement.

          As stated in the title, I rode the public bus for the first time this weekend. Destination: Santa Barbara. Sarah and I went to visit the hogar del ninos and the other SMs posted there. Last week, we missed the bus by about 4 minutes and were very sad. This week, as we were headed out the door one of the parents from the school pulled up to turn in a project and then offered us a ride. It was like a little sign from God saying "hey, I know you missed the bus last week so I'm giving you some extra help to catch it today". We arrived in darkness and were greeted by our friend Logan straight off the bus.
               At the hogar, we spent our first evening swinging kids around, being pulled around the compound, and attempting to demonstrate duck duck goose. This was only moderately successful as the kids definitely grasped the entire run when you get goosed concept but they never figured out that they were supposed to come back to the circle after a single turn. Then we had about 3 kids trying to tag people at a time. It was pretty cute.

I took a whole walk in this scenery. 

              On Saturday we went to church ...... and it had a piano. It was drastically out of tune and I got to play it for 3 minutes but I didn't even care. It was wonderful. I haven't gone so long without a keyboard since the age of four. I felt complete. In the afternoon we went on a walk. It's also been a long time since I took a walk out in nature. There were galloping cowboys, nature sounds, herds of cows, and rivers to cross. It was a blessing. We walked out to a river which was brown but hey nature is nature.

Photo Credit: Logan. Notice this picture is the best.

              On the way back the bus broke down. No big deal. Everybody just hopped off on the side of the road and waited for the next one. I was impressed. It only took about 20 minutes to get another bus out there. Score. I lost that bet. I expected an hour. There were not enough seats so I ended up standing for about 3/4 of the trip. Then, this guy's luggage fell on my head so he gave me his seat. Not a bad deal. All in all, it was nice to have a trip right after the stress of preparing for finals. We most definitely will be going back.