When things go bump in the night...

To remind those of you who forgot, or those who don't know, this is "Semana Santa" here in Latin America, or Holy Week. Try to imagine Spring Break in Florida, except the whole country is on spring break, not just the crazy college kids. Therefore, this time of the year doesn't have a very "holy" reputation. We have heard from our friends that the roads aren't safe, there are always crazy people out, ect. Try to imagine Labor Day weekend in the States for about 10 straight days. That is probably a good comparison. OK now where am I going with all of this...? At about 2:30 this morning I was startled awake to the sound of a loud crash, and what sounded like our front gate clanging on its hinges. I quickly ran to the window to see what was happening and there was a car turning around in front of our house. Our gate seemed to be intact, and no one was breaking in, so I went back to bed, and fell asleep about 45 minutes later after the adrinaline wore off. When I woke up this morning sure enough that car had run into our gate and smashed it into a concrete supporting structure. Ultimately, it made more noise than damage, and after a little bending and pulling, our gate works and even looks fine. Later this morning I was telling our street guard Jose about the whole story, about how someone basically ran into our house, and he didn't even crack a smile. He said "oh yeah, the last time this happened was a lot worse. I had to got get a big metal bar to pry the gate back into place, and then I spent a while trying to straighten everything out." In other words, this is a common occurance, yet not frequent. You never know what a day will bring.