Gatorade and Snickers make it all better - by Heather

Today has been a long day! This is our retreat weekend in Huancane, but before the retreat part could start, we had to make it to Huancane. Sara, Alison, and Kelsey went back to Huancane with John yesterday, so Emily, Jeremy and I had to ride a bus this morning. We were not able to buy tickets for the bus from Conima to Huancane yesterday or this morning, so we sat in the plaza from 8am until 9:30am when the bus finally arrived. When we got on there were no open seats so Emily and I stood in the aisle and Jeremy sat in the front with the driver. When we got to Moho lots of people got off of the bus, so we thought we were then able to sit down in whatever empty seats there were. Wrong. Emily and I sat in these two empty seats at the front but this woman climbed back on the bus and told us we had to get up because that was her seat. In the meantime all these people started climbing back on the bus and climbing past us so that is was hard for us to go anywhere ele. Then we ended up getting shuffled all the way to the back where Emily hit he head really hard on the side ceiling, which made it more stressful. And finally these nice ladies saw our distress and asked to see our ticket/receipt from paying. Turns out your ticket has seat numbers on it. So, we then found out we were supposed to be in the very back row, which was about where we were. But, there was a man and his wife with a baby in our seats. The women told them to move but they refused. We finally just put our stuff (2 backpacks and a sleeping bag) in the one empty seat that wasn't ours and decided to stand. But finally the man got up and moved our stuff into the aisle and sat on the far side and he and his wife sat on top of stuff, which game Emily and I one seat to share. So, she sat on top of a bunch of stuff and I sat lower than all of them in a very small seat squished between the nursing mother and Emily. It was a long hour and forty-five minutes. But finally we arrived in Huancane.

When we got here we met up with the rest of the group and went and had lunch. Not long after we finished we had to leave to go to Juliaca to do souvenir and grocery shopping. Which meant getting on more public transportation. At least this time it was a combi, which is a van. In these there are only 15 or so seats and once the seats are full, the van leaves, instead of just piling as many people in as possible.

In Juliaca we were able to do some shopping at one place that had different vendors set up selling gloves, scarves, bags and sweaters. Then we went to the grocery store where we picked up all our groceries for the next 3 weeks, including the week when the youth team is here. John met us and took all our groceries back to Huancane so we didn't have to try to fit them all on the combi on the way back. After that we went to the hotel restaurant and ordered pizzas. They weren't as good as American pizzas but they were good. Then we had to head back to Huancane as soon as we could to avoid riding in a combi in the dark. To get to the combi stop you have to ride little motorcycle driven tricycles. In the confusion of trying to get all 5 of us in the 3-person cycle, Emily and I were separated from Alison, Kelsey and Jeremy. Luckily both groups had a cell phone, so when we ended up at different combi stops, we were able to tell the other we were heading back in different buses. Then we arrived safely in Huancane! Now we are heading over to the Huancane girls' house to watch a movie and I am going to thoroughly enjoy my Snickers bar and Fruit Punch Gatorade I bought!