shiny silver pistol

Well, again much has pasted since my last post. I´ve gone home and seen my family and some friends, I´ve been robbed twice, and been visited by two good friends from the States. Almost all of which were great experiences (the second robbery wasn´t fun).

The first wasn´t that bad. I was on a bus early morning when three sleepy looking men entered the bus and sat in different places on the bus. After about five minutes the middle man who I was closest to pulled out and cocked a shiny silver pistol. My first thought, ¨Oh, hey, we´re getting robbed,¨ then, ¨Sweet, I have my iPod, but shoot I also have my camera which is not a scheduled item on my personal items insurance (that means there´s a 100 dollar deductible on it)¨

They immediately searched a few men they thought might have a weapon or might put up a fight, strangely I, the gringo, was not one of them. I think then the guy with the gun went and kept it on the driver and the ayudante (guy who takes the money) telling him to keep driving but not too fast. While the other two men methodically went through everyone´s things including all pockets.

This is where it gets really strange. When one of the men came to search me with his cellphone flashlight. He took everything out of my pockets wallet, cellphone, change and threw it on the seat. Then looked in my wallet which had around Q200, not a huge sum but something, about 26 dollars, and some credit cards, then he shut the wallet with out taking anything and threw it on the seat. After this, he continued to go through my backpack felt where my iPod and camera were but didn´t bother to find the opening. I had mixed feeling about this failure on his part, because I wasn´t exactly sure how this deductible thing worked. After that he told me to stand up so he could see if I hid anything in the seat cushions. I this point I found out that my Spanish isn´t so good when I´m being robbed.

¡Párate! ¡Párate! He kept shouting, however I´d never heard this command in the tú form, because it´s kinda rude even in the best of circumstances, even parents use the usted form when telling their son to do something, but really, I think it was an appropriate use in this case. After the fact, I wished I had hide the iPod in the seat and left the camera in the bag (it´s a really old iPod). But how could I have known? And if I had known that would be insurance fraud or something terribly close, collaboration or coordination or something.

In the end, they peacefully left the bus with all of our bus fares and maybe a few nice cellphones and watches and things of real value. I wouldn´t have lost a thing except for that the ayudante owed Q50 in change.

Guess, I´ll get to other recent events later. I can´t write a short blog.