little miss sunshine

Yesterday we all piled into the jepeta (actually its a pathfinder, but everyone calls SUVs jeeps in this country!) and headed into the villages. Constance has been learning how to drive a standard, so I have been on the teaching side of things which has been fun. We dropped off Alexia and Carley off, along with 3 women visiting from Austin (I'll save that for another blog) in Chichigua for English camp. We had planned to return to Chichigua after dropping Drew off at the school land in Montellano to work construction with Miguel, but the car died prior to getting there.

I had thought the night before that we might be short on gas, but then remembered putting $30 worth in two days before so didn't bother with it. Constance had been driving and the car was doing weird things. It died on the main road and so there was nowhere to really pull over.

In an attempt to get the car out of the flow of traffic, Drew and I got out and pushed while Constance steered. A man on a moto pulled up behind us and lifted his foot to the back of the car as he drove to help us push. The car was really picking up speed, and Drew and I were really no longer helping in pushing the car but rather running with it.

Drew suggested us hopping in since the car was picking up pace and see if we could get it started. Not really thinking, I said ok and began to run up alongside the car to the passenger door. As I was doing this, I felt like the family in Little Miss Sunshine and their Volkswagon van. I opened the door to the car (still running with it mind you), and Constance shouted out the same remark about the movie.

Two thoughts on this: (1) trying to get into a moving vehicle is much more difficult than it appears and (2) that the little girl has got some mad skill to be able to do it.

I managed to hop in, but our efforts were in vain because we didn't gain that much more ground. I looked back and saw Drew jogging up back behind the car when we again came to a stop. We weren't sure what the problem was, but the man on the moto drove Drew up to the gas station to bring back some gas. We were all hoping that this was the only problem.

They came back and the guy rigged the tank using a stick and a broken water bottle to pour the gas in. We got pictures of this and also reenactments of our own little miss sunshine. We were able to make it to the gas station and filled up the car and everything ended up being just fine, after of course having a really good laugh!