The Micro Fiasco

Well, folks, it’s been a while….I’ll start with dedicating a whole blog to the tiring and crazy adventure that was our trip back from the beach. Here’s how it begins: we’re traveling back by ourselves in the micro (a bus that travels in between cities) and it’s the first time we 've taken that particular form of transportation. As a result, we don’t know that there is more than one micro station in Buenos Aires for this particular bus (and no one from the church told us…thank you high context culture), so, we get off a stop early. In our defense, it was absolutely pouring rain so we easily mistook the place we stopped for another street we knew. When we give the driver our tickets and ask for our bags, he gives us a weird look (now we know why) but doesn’t say a word warning us, “Hey, you’re at the wrong place.” He just asks us where we were from and smiled when we said we were from the U.S. Thanks Mr. Bus Driver Man.


After the micro leaves, we look around a bit more and realize we don’t recognize anything. We ask a kind old woman how to get to Maipu (the street where we were supposed to get off), and she says, “Well, you’re about 30-40 minutes from there.” “Oh, walking?” “No, driving.” Awesome. We call one of the host dads and he simply recommends a colectivo. That’s great…except it’s ten o’clock at night, pouring rain, and we are in a neighborhood we’ve never been to. As we begin walking, we realize…we’re not on the best side of town. Victoria looks at all of -five gringas with suitcases and white faces - and says, “I feel like I have a sign on my back saying, ‘I’m a gringa, please kill me.’“ Fortunately, no one took us up on that unspoken offer (as you probably gathered from the fact that I’m writing this blog). Anyway, we get to the street that’s supposed to have the colectivo and at first we can’t find the stop. Once we find it, we see one coming and jump on, only for the bus driver to tell us, “No, this bus doesn’t go as far as you want to go.” Wonderful.

We hop back off, feeling the pound of the pouring rain and the weight of the looks from the men standing on the sidewalk. Finally, we get on the bus we need and breathe a partial sigh of relief….until we hear Krystal say, “Shoot…where’s my cell phone? I just had it.” I try calling it and right about then two guys behind us start chuckling and hop of the colectivo sharing secret smirks. Yup, Krystal’s phone had been stolen. Well, we make it to our stop and have to get off and walk to another colectivo. Once we get off the second colectivo, Elisabeth was going to use my cell phone to call her host dad and tell him when to meet her at her bus stop. That’s when I discover, my phone doesn’t have credit. Splendid. Fortunately, we’re standing right next to a locutorio, a place where you can use the internet or make phone calls. She makes the call and gets on the colectivo. And (finally) we know where we are. All that’s left is for Vic and me to walk another fifteen minutes under the pouring rain. (Oh, did I mention that my rolling suitcase had a broken handle, so I had to awkwardly drag/lug the thing everywhere we went?)

We finally make it to Vic’s house and crash for the night, but I have to get up early the next morning to take a bus back to my house, shower, and walk to the university in time to start our first day of our second set of classes. I actually surprise myself and am heading out the door on time – when I get a call from Vic saying she had been so out of it the night before she had set her alarm for U.S. time instead of Argentina time. Needless to say, she was going to be a bit late. I walk to the bus stop to meet her, slipping and almost falling several times because the rain on the ridiculously smooth tiled sidewalks makes for a great skating rink. Finally, after waiting several minutes, Vic comes walking up apologizing. Apparently she had been told the wrong stop for the bus plus had fallen down on the treacherously slick sidewalk. We speed walk to the university only to realize – we don’t know where our class is. We search one floor, go to an office to ask, and finally slide into class about 10 minutes late. All in all, not bad for the crazy day last few days we had experienced.

During those crazy couple of days, all I could think about was how much I wished the day would just end and I could be home in my warm dry bed. Looking back, though, I know God had a lesson in it for me (a lesson I’m still definitely learning). Right before we had gotten off our micro and had started our crazy, tiring escapade, I had passed the hours of the bus ride spending some awesome time with God, feeling close to Him, and praying about being able to trust Him. But as soon as I got off and saw that things were going wrong, I stopped praying and just got angry, frustrated, and irritable. I know now that God had given me a clear opportunity to put into action what I had prayed about, but I refused. I’m realizing that oftentimes when I pray for more faith, what I am actually hoping for is an easier set of circumstances. But that’s not what we’ve been promised as Christians. We haven’t been promised a God who grants endless sunny days, but we have been promised One who is ever faithful through the storm. And that’s the truth in which I find rest.