Wednesday, November 14, 2007 The sorrows and beauties of public transportation

Wednesday, November 14, 2007 The sorrows and beauties of public transportation

Today started out like any other normal Wednesday: Class (found out that when our professor told us a 10 page group paper, which is nothing, he meant single space, which is something. But oh well, it’s a group paper and it replaces the fina1), mass, Education class, and then lunch with Christian, his brother Emilio, Sam and Niki. Christian took pictures because he keeps talking about how little time we have left and gets all sappy on us. After lunch we all headed to the metro to go our respective ways but while we were inside the shut it down and kicked everyone out. I had no idea why (it’s really hard to understand what’s going on in big crowds) but we eventually found out that they shut down the entire Line 5 for at least one hour. This is still not confirmed, but I heard rumors that someone committed suicide by jumping in front of a train about 3 stations in front of us.

We waited around at the bus stop (which was really just a crowd of well over a hundred people) for a while and when we realized that 1. a bus still had not passed and 2. that even when one does pass, there are so many people we are never going to get on, we decided to skip whatever we each were supposed to do and go hang out a at bar/restaurant across from campus. So the 5 of us headed over and shared a couple pitchers of beer until about 6 pm when we knew the metro would finally be open. Look at me: skipping class to drinking beer with my friends on a Wednesday afternoon!! It sounds horrible when you put it that way. But hey, relying on public transportation, what are you going to do?

When I got home I told Olga what had happened with the metro being shut down and she said that unfortunately it’s actually quite common. But when I told her what we did instead, she laughed and said “Me parece bien!” “Sounds good to me!”. I know it sounds a little harsh that i spend the afternoon taking advantage of a tragedy and in all honestly I felt bad all afternoon. I hate to think about all the people suffering while i am relaxing and having fun. Please know that I prayed for the famliy and friends of the victim and that I would have much rather have gone to class and been boring if the tragedy could have been avoided.

I spent the evening working and talking with Trevor. I found out that I was offered an RA job in the honors dorm back at Tulane for the spring semester, which is good news. And I also decided that I would apply for a senior staff position called Housing and Services Coordinator, which is basically like the Desk and Building Manager. If I get the job, I will be taking my good friend Ben’s place in Wall, the building I lived in my freshman year.

I have a lot of homework for the coming week and wanted to get a jump start on it, so I decided to skip my volunteer job in the morning. I emailed the principle letting her know and joyfully turned off my alarm. Olga seemed pleased as well when I told her I wouldn’t be waking up at 6:15!