A Lesson on Patience

Okay, in my last blog I mentioned that my first day of my trip to Salta did not exactly go as planned, but I got a lot out of it. This is what happened:

I was alone for my first day but it was okay because I had a ticket to go on this sweet train ride called ¨Train to the clouds¨ that lasted 15 hours and I heard was beautiful. You go all the way to the Andes mountains and up over 4,000 meters. Being such a long trip, we had to be there at the crack of dawn. I took a taxi while it was still dark and drug myself into the train station. We had to be there 50 minutes before the train departed, so of course we ended up standing around for awhile. Well, by the time we actually were able to board, I wanted to shout at the top of my lungs, ¨Un poco paciencia nunca mató a nadie!!¨ I don´t know if that´s an expression that they even have, but to me it translates into ¨A little patience never killed anyone!!¨ I want that morning to be a personal reminder about the importance of patience.

I witnessed impatience turn beautiful and kind people into something ugly and rude. It was awful! I also now realize what patience does to me when I allow it to overtake me. There really is no use for it, because many times when you become impatient, there is nothing you can do about the situation anyways. So after we boarded the train, I thought that I had learned a great lesson. However, God decided that I hadn´t had enough of a lesson.

We began our journey on the train. I ended up sitting next to a Danish man named Thor. Haha, I got a laugh out of that. He was even tall and had long blonde hair, like a viking king. We went for about 30 minutes and then the train stopped to make a ¨routine stop¨ for mechanical reasons. Well, after about an hour they told us that we were getting ready to leave. Of course people were getting impatient once again and just imagine people´s anger when we were told that we unfortunately wouldn´t be able to make the trip! They told us that they would be refunding all of our money (because it was quite an expensive trip) when we got back to the station. People were in an uproar. When we got back to the station there were news cameras, which fueled the fire for people. That´s another thing I learned...impatience breeds impatience. Then, the best thing happened to me.

A older man walked up to me and, apparently spotting that I was a foreigner (maybe by my flipflops...I´m not sure how else he would´ve known) said to me, ¨Te pido disculpas como Argentino¨ This translates to ¨I beg your pardon as an Argentine.¨ It was the most refreshing thing I heard all day.

I´m sure God intended this day to teach me a lesson on patience. And I am very glad that I was there to learn it. I pray that i can take something away from that day and apply it to my life daily.