Some Helpful People
I am always saying that the people here have accepted us and been helpful to us in many little ways; but I don't usually mention too many actual instances of it.
Well, yesterday within a couple of minutes there were two such incidents.
We had gone uptown to the Casa de la Cultura and then to VH grocery store for groceries. Roys boots were looking pretty scruffy, so he stopped and got them polished while I was shopping. We both finished about the same time and walked across the street to wait for our bus home. While we were waiting an older man came up to us and began telling us that we were waiting at the wrong bus stop. We were kind of puzzled and told him, "no, we were in the right place". He kept pointing up the street and then mentioned the bus to San Carlos. We realised that he thought we were trying to catch the San Carlos bus, and yes, we were at the wrong bus stop if we would have wanted that bus. We thanked him and told him which colonia we live in here in town. He seemed surprised that we lived here; but smiled and went on his way with our thanks for his attempted assistance. Wasn't that nice of him!
There are several different buses that we can catch to go home from uptown. One route we take we have to walk up the hill 3 blocks and one route we take we get to walk down the hill 3 blocks. I am usually lazy so prefer to take the one where we get to walk downhill. Normally the bus drivers take absolutely no notice of us; but today perhaps it was a new driver who has never seen us before. Anyway I got on the bus and sat down and Roy was trying to pay the driver. I looked up when I heard the driver asking Roy where he wanted to go. Roy was telling him our stop, and the driver was telling him, no we were on the wrong bus, that we needed another bus. I got up and asked the driver if this was the route I thought it was and he said that yes it was, I told him that was fine then and he was happy. No more concerns about us being/getting lost on the wrong bus. Nice man.
Yes, there are also people who like to push ahead in line and sometimes it is frustrating; but usually we have the opposite experience. When the buses are full and there are no seats, I have almost never had to stand. 99.99% of the time a gentleman will get up and give me his seat. If you are in line in the grocery store with only 1 or 2 items usually someone will tell you to go ahead of them if they have a cartful.
On Friday there were 5 of us ladies shopping and we headed into a tiny shoe shop in the old mercado. I was speaking with the lady in charge of the shop and she was grinning from ear to ear at me. Maybe it was my bad spanish LOL!! Anyway, when a couple of the other ladies began talking to her in english, she looked at me grinning, patted me on the back and said, you can help me.
We both had a good laugh when she said something funny to one of the ladies in spanish. She said it with a straight face and then looked at me and winked. I said to her in spanish you are only joking and she began to laugh. Yes, yes, she said. It was a fun experience shopping in her store and she sold 2 pair of sandals to us also, so we were all happy.
It seems that everytime we leave the house we have an experience that brings a smile to our faces and re-news our faith in the human race.
How could you not like living here.
