Chicken Bus Etiquette

My new class schedule has me getting to campus around 9am. This is well after all the parking close to the buildings has been taken. Rather than circle the parking lot for 30 minutes I choose to go to the remote parking and take a shuttle. In my experiences on these school buses that have been painted in UTSA colors, I have come to the conclusion that your average UTSA student has never traveled in Latin America. This is obvious by the fact that they still need personal space around them.

For those of you who have never been on what is commonly referred to as a chicken bus, let me describe it. They're old school buses from the U.S. painted in bright colors. In a bench where you would usually expect 2 people to sit, 3 or 4 will sit down. Then the center aisle is crowded with as many people as possible. There's no real need to hold onto anything because you're too tightly packed in to fall over. The rule about standing behind the white line does not exist. Once you can no longer squeeze any more people or their livestock on the bus, people will begin to hang out the doors and windows.

So back to my shuttle at UTSA. Only 2 people per bench. 1 person standing in the aisle between each bench . Nobody stands in front of the white line. Everybody tries really hard not to touch each other. It makes me want to stand up like the bus drivers in Guatemala and say,"corrense para atras. hay lugares. donde caben 2 caben 4. donde caben 4 caben 6."

**For those of you who don't speak spanish "Scoot to the back. There are places. Where 2 fit, 4 fit. Where 4 fit, 6 fit."