Driving

So I’m a bus driver now.  Last week, our director Alex said that I should try and learn how to drive the bus, seeing as we only have a couple people here who can drive it.  Three days ago, I took my first try at it when Bryson (the other guy volunteer here) let me drive the last couple miles of the road that the orphanage is on.  Yesterday morning, I drove the bus three miles to the gas station and back, with Bryson copiloting.  When Alex saw me pulling in after going to the gas station, he asked if I would feel comfortable driving the kids the next day.  I said I should probably practice some more, which ended up with the volunteers going out for burgers last night and me driving the bus (from here on “Bob”).  That went well, so tonight I drove the kids to do a parade/practice for their parade—still not clear on what exactly it was.  The worker here who knows how to drive Bob copiloted and showed me where to go, and then left me to bring the kids home two hours later.  However, it turns out that where I parked Bob wasn’t actually where the parade ended, and they didn’t seem to know where the parade was going to end, so they told me to just follow them with Bob.  This completed my steep learning curve of bus-driving.  Yesterday morning, I drove Bob out of the orphanage for the first time.  Tonight, I wove it through tiny streets, in the dark, surrounded by about 80 hyperactive and very difficult to see children.  Oh, and it is of course a manual transmission—before coming to Peru, I drove manual a grand total of 5 days in a my life, 2 of them confined in a parking lot.  Good thing the orphanage doesn’t have a semi...  

Oh, and I don't remember if I've said anything about driving here in Peru, but there are no rules.  Well ok, there are some rules, but nobody really cares that they exist.  Except for one: keep your lights on, all the time.  If you don't, the cops will pull you over and be grouchy at you.  They'll probably pull you over just because you're a gringo, but if you don't have you lights on, even at 2 in the afternoon on a bright and sunny day, they'll do it for sure.  Turns out, they'll also do it if you turn left where you're not allowed to, or if you can't figure out where you're actually supposed to turn left so you just do a U-turn, or if they just can't figure out why you're driving around a bunch of kids.  Luckily, the "I work at a Christian orphanage helping kids" card has never failed.  But anyway, it is totally appropriate to cut people off, and honking doesn't me "I'm grouchy at you" or "hurry up", it just means "I'm here, hi there."  However, if they casually hang their hand out their window, it means "I don't care how fast you're going or where you are, I'm about to move into this lane so you'd better SLAM ON THE BRAKES."  The litter hand wave thing is pretty easy to miss--just ask Bryson what happens...and how much it costs ;-)  So that's my driving post for now--more overdue posts to come -D