So I’ve been living in Guatemala for almost 3 months now, and some things are very normal to me that would not have been 3 months ago. Every few days we take public transportation “Camioneta” which is a school bus outfitted to cram as many people in them as possible. Now normally, I’m okay with riding the bus. I’m used to being squished sitting 3 to a seat on both sides and at least 15 people squished together down the aisle, but one day, I was shocked.


I was on my way to the training center, and I had to swap buses. When I arrived on the second bus, there were a few empty seats so I was happy. There were other trainees on the bus as well. We were talking, and we knew that it was time to hold on to the rails on top of the seats because the road to the center is very curvy. We take our respective places and began our climb to our location at 1800 meters.


We have ridden this type of bus before: red, white, blue and yellow with a large sign that says Anitgua & Guate in bright lights on the front. It normally takes us like 20-25 minutes to get there. What we were not expecting was to magically arrive there in about 15 minutes. Our bus driver seemed to be in a race with himself. He took every turn as hard as he could, and he even rode in 2 lanes. 2 LANES PEOPLE! I don’t know if any of you have every driven up the side of a mountain, but driving at excess speeds is extremely difficult especially on a curvy road. I thought one of my friends was going to be sick. He looked a little red, and his eyes were starting to water. Most of tried to act like we didn’t notice what was going on.


For a brief minute there I felt like I was riding a fair ride. It had all the signs: fast speed, jerking motion, a lot of people, and a scary looking operator. Come to think of it, I was on a fair ride . . . .known as the Magic School Bus.