Surviving Black Friday

     As regular readers of this blog know, I am a simple guy, or in the words of one individual, a caveman so going anywhere near a store on the infamous "Black Friday" is not something I would do. However, I am a disciple of Jesus Christ and being discipled by a Brazilian brother named Vinci. His wife owns a travel agency, and once a year she gathers twenty-five or so Brazilians to come to shop in the US. Their incentive is the far greater variety and, amazingly, the far lower cost of items here. They save their money all year and then purchase a year's worth of gifts. The agency rents fifteen passenger vans to take them to various malls and i was asked to drive one of these. My usual vehicle is a very small car.
   I slept about two hours Thursday night after a nice Thanksgiving celebration, woke up at 12:30 to get ready and be at the hotel for a 2AM departure. We actually left later, picked up two younger ladies who were shopping at a toy store and headed for New Hampshire. Arrived there around 4AM, found a parking place for the two huge vans and headed inside. Some stores had long lines just to enter. Most of the Brazilians know a little English but are certainly not fluent. I ended up translating a little. Because i am not used to this i found it difficult to switch back and forth. I would end up repeating Portuguese to the English speaking employee and then remember to say it in English.
   Around 9AM we headed down to a mall south of Boston. I accidentally cut one guy off because i was following the other van and did not know the route he would take. By the time we got to the second mall it was packed. After dropping the people off it took over an hour to find a parking space. People had parked on the grass and every other imaginable location.
    Once this was accomplished i had to find my friends. They were in a particular store but so many people had jammed in that i could not find them. There were long lines of people waiting in bitter cold to enter other stores.  When we went for lunch in the Food Court every restaurant had half hour lines. Then we had to find a table. I went off in the van and read a little. When the sun went down the cold increeased. Was able to park my van next to the other van. Mine was open and warm as the people gradually returned but the other was locked because of all the gifts inside. People kept crowding into my van like sardines until finally the other was unlocked.
     Then we drove to a Brazilian restaurant for dinner, and after a stop at a pharmacy back to the hotel. Virtually all parking places were taken, and we had to search more. Finally i drove an hour to the house where i am staying. All in all, a 21 hour shift with 2 hours of sleep. such is the life of a servant.