Con Cuidado

So I love how anytime I go anywhere someone feels the need to say something like "be careful" or "dont walk down any dark alleyways", or "cuidate." and how everytime i talk to my parents on the phone they say "youre safe? not talking to strangers?" i appreciate the concern but i have only had two frightening experiences since i came here.

About two weeks ago Brittany and I were chilling in mi casa, my host family was off in Cholula partying. We were raiding the kitchen when we heard this "BANG BANG"... like gun shots. And after all, we were in Mexico so i went all gung ho and got on the ground because the shots were getting progressively closer to my house. When they noise stopped Brittany, the brave one, got up and looked out the window at our potential murderers. Then she looked at me hiding underneath the kitchen table and laughed because it turns out that the garbage trucks sound an awful lot like a gang fight... whoops.

So the other experience I had actually involved real-life danger. I was walking home from the guapacita marlenne´s house and it was pretty late... raining like crazy and of course i forgot my umbrella so me and good old itunes were booking it down flooded street and this vicious dog pounces out of the alleyway. dogs can smell fear right, so i turned up my music and kept on walking when fido started growling and barking and doing that weird pouncy thing and i swear i saw foamy stuff coming out of its fangs so i booked it across the river of the street. while i was running my ipod started doing that shake and shuffle thing so it was switching from akon to julieta venegas to church music to daddy yankee and the dog was swimming across the street to get to me and i saw a group of guys ahead. oh great they can help me. sike. they started yelling cat calls at me "mamaciiiita... mirame mami chula..." okay really, if you want to get a girls attention and a rabid dog is chasing after her... SAVE HER! my gosh did these guys never watch disney movies? so i ran past the creepers and this guy selling chalupas came out and said something that made the blood thirsty beast run up to him and.... lick his hand? because that vicious dog was his PUPPY. uuuuuuugh. i mean i still could have gotten rabies and died so i dont think my actions were rash at all but i do think that all of this talk about being super careful is going to my head in a somewhat extreme way.... just sayin.

A Word About Public Transportation...

Okay... so pretty much some of my most exciting experiences so far in Mexico have been related to public transportation. which sounds really sad right? oh poor girl, shes so bored that riding a bus is her only form of drama... um no. Public transportation here is super cray cray. Every morning wait outside in the cold wet streets of Puebla an hour early just to attempt to flag down a bus on a packed three lane highway. And not just any bus... 34. And not just any 34, the one that says Mega in itty bitty writing which no human being could possibly see unless the bus is three feet in front of them. And say you actually see this Mega bus and manage to raise your hand to flag it down before it passes you... it may just pass anyway because the driver doesnt want to stop. So say i miss my bus... I have to flag down a different bus that names about ten different locations and drives AWAY from the university only to pick up another bus in the middle of nowhere to go back to my school taking a grand total of 40 minutes to go to a location 2 miles away from my house. And if I dont have time to catch the alternated route, i take a taxi. which is definitely the last resort on my list because theres the whole possibly being kidnapped and sold thing and the fact that they charge me 5x as much just because i have an american accent when i speak spanish... and is there anythingi can do about it? no.
Luckily, this morning I was able to catch my bus... i think mostly because i was wearing a bright red shirt and skinny jeans and the bus driver was a peirced up 17 year old. Word to the wise... if you somehow magically manage to catch your bus and the driver is young... reconsider. Unless you want to go for a ride that makes Indiana Jones at Disneyland seem like a Dumbos Grand Adventure. As soon as i stepped on the bus and gave him my 5 pesos the driver zoomed forward and weaved into traffic and my non-traction flip-flops slid on the metal floor causing me to plop down, luckily in an empty seat, in the bakc of the bus next to some poor lady who probably thought i was drunk. ugh. this guy was more insane that usual though, we are talking butt coming off of the seat, everyone sliding and slamming into each other, and everyone else was stumbling around like they were tipsy so that made me feel better about my little surfer move i´d pulled earlier. we were getting all wet in the back from the open door and while the driver was stopping to let someone off we got hit by a tree through the open door. a tree. INSIDE of the bus we got hit by a tree. so we finally got to my stop for the university which is inbetween the Walmart and the Costco (ironic)... and the bus slowed down enough for me to jump off into the grassy median in the middle of the highway. so in the future if i ever find myself in need to jumping out of a moving vehicle, say a bus or train or something, ive got it down all thanks to the public transportation in Mexico. ¡Viva colectivos!