Cultura: del bus

To know your bus and sidewalk etiquette is next to godliness in the book of kara. Allow me to school you. First thing, when you are choosing your seat and you have the option of aisle or window, aisle is the proper choice. Why? Because it speeds up the ride and its generally courteous (do you really want someone falling over you while the drive accelerates?). When the person sitting next you leaves and you are in an aisle seat, please stand up to let them pass or move your legs to the aisle (then scoot to the window seat to abide by rule number 1). If an elderly woman or a woman with a baby is lacking a seat offer yours, yes typically it is the responsibility of a male passenger but we fought for equality (and chivalry is dead). Do not stand or put your stuff in front of the exit. Most importantly, always exit from the back!
Bus etiquette does not exist here, and not one, but all of my “common senses” regarding bus courtesy are foreign. I have never had some move their legs for me pass nor seen someone move to the window to allow another to sit. Rarely are seats offered and I have concluded that do to fear of being run over most prefer to exit from the front. By far this has been one of the hardest things to adjust to. If it wasn’t already such a pique of mine I wonder if I would be this vexed. This vexation is compounded by the fact that the drivers drive as if it is a timed race, hardly even stopping to let people off while the fare collector or other passengers scream ”suave, suave”. And to this consider the fact that these buses are known as “chicken buses”. I am going to attempt to illustrate this phenomenon but you cannot and will never understand until you have experienced the chicken bus en vivo. It is when the bus is so loaded that while standing there is no need to hold on because due to sheer squish factor you will stay in place and there are people standing on the entrance and exit steps and its 99 degrees with 99% humidity so it feels like you are melting and you’ve got 6 strangers sweating on you and you are suffocating because someone’s bag is squeezing the life out of you and as you are fading into delirium you think to yourself “I cant possibly fathom another person fitting on this bus” the driver pulls over to pick up 10 more people, who will all get on without a single passenger deboarding. This is the chicken bus. I understand now more than I have ever wanted to.