Monday, January 10, 2011

Getting scammed, Arequipa, getting ready to volunteer

I made it to Arequipa last night after a long, not very good day. It was the kind of day where things kept going wrong. It started with missing clothes, a pair of pants I really like weren't returned to me with my laundry. Other minor things that went wrong: I dropped a cheese sandwhich on the ground at the bus terminal just after paying for it, I had an extraordinarily difficult time finding anything meatless other than bread to eat all day, and one of the buses I spent nearly five hours on had some kind of issue involving a gas leak or something causing a very strong smell and general haze inside the bus. It made me very sleepy and gave me a headache, occasionally while drifting uncontrolably to sleep I thought to myself, yeah I'm being poisoned, probably won't wake up. Thankfully I did, although when I blew my nose afterwards what came out was mostly black. The main thing that went wrong yesterday is that I fell for a bus ticket scam. I've read about things like this happening, but I had been lucky enough to avoid it, until yesterday. Here's what happened: a friend of mine decided to accompany me to Arequipa, he is meeting up with someone else here and he wanted to make sure where I was going was safe. So we went a day early to buy our bus tickets and essentially every company told us they only had night buses, but we wanted a day bus. While we were talking to one woman, a man came up and hear us ask for a day bus. She asked him if he had any, and he said yes, then offered to show us the bus. I thought it was strange he offered that, and it seemed strange that he showed up all of the sudden, but he seemed to be working with the woman behind the counter, she seemed to know him so I thought it was probably fine. Well he ended up selling us tickets for 85 soles each (around $35) which I now know is about three times the normal price, but I wasn't sure because that's about how much a comparable trip in Chile or Argentina would cost.

The next day we went to the bus station and ended up seeing the same man, he told us to go to lane number one, so we did. When we were loading our luggage on board, the man workinga sked for our ticket, then told us it wasn't valid. I began to argue a bit, telling him I didn't understand, and that we had paid for the ticket and this was where we were told to go. Two French girls behind us overheard and asked how much we paid. This is when I found out we had paid much more than we should have. They told us they thought we had been scammed and that we ought to go complain. Just as we were about to do this, the man who sold us the ticket suddenly appeared. He asked us what the problem was, produced two new tickets and told us everything was fine and to get on the bus. We were a bit confused, but we thought, alright, whatever, we just need to get where we are going. So we got on the bus, and right before it left the man appeared once more with an elderly man. He told us this man was the bus driver, not to worry that everything was safe and clarified with us where we were supposed to get off to change our tickets and change buses. We had done this once in Peru, the changing of buses. It was confusing and hadn't made much sense, but it had all worked out so I just assumed it was normal. So finally we got to Juliaca, the city where we were to change buses. I went to the counter of the company whose name was printed on the ticket we had. When I showed it the woman working she got very upset and told me that they did not even have buses to Arequipa. She told us to sit and wait while she called the Cusco office to try and clarify. We waited for about an hour, and each time I asked on the status update, she didn't give much information. She mostly seemed confused and irritated (not at me, but at whoever wrote out the ticket) and told me that this was the third time this had happened recently. Eventually we got tired of waiting and decided it was best to just suck it up and buy another ticket, we didn't want to risk the buses filling up and being stuck overnight in that tiny town. And since my complaining wasn't doing much, we just left and bought another ticket and some food. While we were waiting for the next bus, a woman I had never seen came up to us asking if we were the tourists with the ticket from Cusco. I explained to her that I thought we had been scammed and I realized it wasn't her fault, but we were not happy and had chosen another company to travel with. She apologized and offered me 20 soles, about $7. Even though that didn't compare to the money we had lost, I accepted it and decided there was some kind of lesson to learn from all of this. I was grateful that I was not alone in dealing with this, that would have been worse. Either way, we made it onto the second bus, although that was the bus that probably shortened my life a little bit from the toxic air. Eventually we made it to the hostel, about 5 hours later than we had planned.

Today I went to the office of organization that works with the orphanage I will be working at. The gave me the run down then gave me binder of information which I read right there. Because I speak pretty good spanish (at least compared to most volunteers, apparently) they decided I would be best used at the orphanage intsead of the school, which is what I wanted. However, they also asked if I wouldn't mind spending a few hours a week helping the school since I have some teaching experience. Of course I wouldn't mind, especially since I can use all the practice and experience I can get teaching English to children before I start my job in Chile. I think it's going to be a great learning experience at the orphange, but certainly a lot of work. Tomorrow morning I am going to meet with the head for a short interview and then I will be put to work. I'm still not entirely sure what to expect, although talking to the people at the office was helpful to begin to paint a picture in my mind. Tomorrow I will also meet the family that I will be staying with, so tonight is my last night in a hostel. I am looking forward to sleeping in the same place every night and having a place other than my backpack to keep my clothes. It will also be nice to be able to do laundry regularly. Also, I think I am going to enjoy Arequipa. It seems like a fun city, very lively and people are friendly. So hopfully tomorrow goes well. I have a feeling I will be working mostly with babies which makes me a little nervous because I have almost no experience with them. I will certainly be learning a lot.

Sidenote: Today is my parent's 30th wedding anniversary. Pretty amazing, huh? Both of them continously amaze me with their strength and unconditional love and support. I am a very lucky daughter to be blessed with such amazing parents. Happy Anniversary, Mom and Dad! I love you and miss you!

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