Friday the 13th

I don't consider myself superstitious, but Friday, the 13th of October, definitely lived up to its reputation.  

It was our day to travel to Ibarra.  Sra. Cecilia had sent a message in the morning asking if we could have our study at 3:00 in the afternoon since she had an appointment at her grandson's school later on.  I said that should be no problem, and we left Ipiales, calculating that we should arrive in Ibarra by 1:30 at the latest, giving us time to eat lunch and then go on to Sra. Cecilia's for the early study.  That didn't end up being how it worked!  

Daniel Ayala, Sra. Jeidy's son, took us to the border to save us some time.  Actually, his plan was to take us all the way to the bus terminal in Tulcán.  However, when we got to the customs office on the Colombia side, the line spilled out of the building and down the sidewalk.  No way were we getting through there in a hurry!  We convinced Daniel to just leave us there and go back to work.  Kim finally made it through the Colombian customs line, and then we had another wait on the Ecuador side.  Had we only known, we could have come to the border last night and gotten her documents stamped, but alas, we didn't know.  Anyway, we managed to get on an Ibarra-bound bus at 12:10.  We had arrived at the terminal a little before noon, and usually they tell us to hurry downstairs because the bus is leaving right now!  This time, however, we had to wait 15 minutes for the next departing bus!  Oh well.  Maybe we could make up time on the road.  

We were stopped at the first police check just outside Tulcán for nigh unto an hour!  At this point, I was looking at my watch and not seeing any way that we could make it to Ibarra by 3:00.  However, we hadn't seen how this bus driver did on the open road, so maybe there was a chance.  We got to the town of Juncal, a little over an hour from Ibarra, around 2:30, and from there I sent a note to Sra. Cecilia asking her forgiveness and telling her that there was not way we could make it to her home on time.  Fortunately, she was very understanding.  

Then Etzer, our contact from Gateway Academy, called to let us know that there would be no study at the school that day, due to I know not what.  So now we had no study that day at all.  At least we knew that one study the following morning would work out, so the trip was not entirely in vain.  

The fruit shop next to Jorge and Ligia's

Kim shot this photo out the window as we were sitting at a stoplight ready to leave Ipiales, not even realizing that the man on the right is one of our friends!

We ate lunch at Pizza Hut again.  Kim enjoys her guanábana juice.