I Be Hood, Yo

So my roommate's boyfriend came on this program as well, and over the weekend she went to visit him and his host family at their apartment in the neighborhood La Parroquia.  When she came back she described an apartment of epic proportions compared to ours, how he got his own bedroom and how it was bigger than the one we shared.  She also talked about how there was relatively no noise. No car horns, no traffic, no motorcycles with or without mufflers, no buses blaring their loud music, you know, sounds she and I had become used to after a week.  His family was a little older and a little more well to do. When his host mother asked my roommate where she lived, she replied "Avenida Las Americas".  And the lady gave a strange look and was like "OH." And her boyfriend joked with her later in English that we essentially live in "the hood" of Merida. There is always traffic, lots of people, and lesser quality housing.  Don't get me wrong, my apartment is lovely, and it's not dangerous except for this one strip after dark which is easy to avoid.  It's just not where the proper folk live.  I be so ghetto.

In Venezuela, the word of the day is "chevere".  Every day.  Everyone says this word all the time.  It originally meant "That which has been well done" but now it is more or less the equivalent of our words "cool or awesome".  Except, which a bit of a different connotation.  Because it has less enthusiasm.  We would say something like "Wow, that's awesome! How cool. Neato." Chevere is more reminiscent of the hippie culture. The inflection that they use with this word is more along the lines of  "Whoaaa. Righteous. Rock on, man. Peace and Blessings." Real mellow.  And this is the life everyone strives to live.  La vida chevere.  No problemas. Chill out. This group of students speaks Spanish better than the last one, so we're more chevere. You want to go out with friends your parents have never met? Chevere. You want to leave the house randomly and text your parents that you're at fiestas and you'll be back sometime before tomorrow? Chevere.  Not advisable at home, but I didn't actually believe I could have more freedom than I did at Butler.  My host parents told my roommate and I about a pair of students they had from Texas, and that these were the worst kids they ever had and they requested to have no more kids from Texas.  I honestly don't know what these girls must have done because these parents are fine with just about anything as long as they know the gist of what we're doing and that it is in our plans to come back eventually. They've been doing this for 15 years.

Dancing and Dinero

Today we had a dance class after dinner.  We all came to the school and learned the basic steps of the Salsa, Merengue, and Tambor.  It was a dance class of Americans, so of course everyone was awkward except the teacher.  I think I got it a little though. Especially the Salsa.  I think I'm going to go to some dance clubs that have dancing there so I can practice more.

Money in Venezuela is weird.  They have 500 cent pieces, that are worth half a bolivar. This makes the total on your bill seem a whole lot larger when they use such huge numbers as 500.  Nobody likes to make change, but they always look exasperated when all you have are large bills.  Large to them anyway. Their 100 bills are roughly equivalent to 25-30 American dollars.  Also, I have to take a taxi to my apartment after 8pm.  This is maybe a little over a 5 minute drive, and since speed limits and red lights are for squares, it could take precisely 5 minutes.  Therefore, it seems like a lot when they ask for 20 bolivares for the fare, and we automatically think of the number's worth in American dollars.  They're actually asking for $5, which is a little more fair.  Also, gas prices here are unbelieveable. They pay maybe 50 cents per gallon. 50 cents. When was the last time our gas was 50 cents? 

Such Great Heights

Yesterday we took a field trip to the mountains. We had to get up early (for not having any school) and meet at the school where the travel guide and bus would meet us. I realized I had not included the view from my specific apartment, so here it is.

It was a longer bus ride to the mountains than I first anticipated, but then I remembered that you can't go up to high altitudes very quickly or else you'll get sick. So we went the round about healthy way. We stopped at a good photography area on the side of the road. The road amused me and scared me because it was so winding and there was hardly, if at all, a guard rail. And the bus still zooms along at whatever pace it feels like. It was sunny this morning, and so we anticipated a good day. Here is me at one of the rest stop areas.

And prettier pictures of the general mountain area.

We continued to drive, and then came to a little restaurant and gift shop that the travel guide said was superb. I call him the travel guide because he is personally hired by Venusa to aid us with any travelling we might like to do. This is not only for excursions scheduled by the program, but also if we want to do any other activity or visit any other place, we can go to him and he can find the best rates and places for us to go, and how we can get there, if we aren't going in a large group. This is so we are not tempted to accept travel offers from random people who might not follow through on the deal and rip us off our money and leave us stranded in the middle of nowhere. Anyway, we arrived at the restaurant, and it was very well-to-do for a Venezuelan restaurant. It was a pretty place, with gardens and art, and of course, areas open to the sky. However, the temperamental weather kicked in and it was starting to rain by the time we got there. It was getting colder, and almost everyone wanted hot chocolate. This turned out to be the right choice for this restaurant, because their hot chocolate was exquisite. I'm thinking I'll make it like this from now on.  What they do is serve cocoa and milk mixed in a cup with sugar packets on the side, and you can add the sugar yourself depending on how much you want. Americans are not accustomed or preferential to bitter hot chocolate, so naturally we all added all three packets, but not before sampling it without them first. Here is what it looked like.

The food was also ver good.  What I had was roast chicken, stuffed with cheese and tomatoes and covered in a mushroom sauce, with boiled potatoes in an herb sauce and beet rice on the side.  The beet rice was kind of weird.

After the restaurant, it was still raining and kind of cold, so we had to kind of edit our plans for the mountains.  Instead ofwalking everywhere, we would drive to their historic Condor Park.  We came to cages with condors inside of them, and we went in a building to watch a movie about the Condor, in English.  Our travel guide then asked if we wanted to go see the snow at the top of the mountains, and we said yes.  The drive to the top of the mountain was treacherous.  There was only enough room on the road for one car, and there was definitely no guard rail by this point.  Many times we passed cars with centimeters of space between us and them.  As we got higher and higher, the engine struggled even more and more.  Eventually we found a place at the top for them to let us off to take pictures.  There was a little snow, and it was freezing, and we couldn't catch our breath.  Snow ball fights occurred. Some people dared to climb all the way to the top of the mountain, but I got dizzy about one tenth of the way there, and decided that I didn't want to be sick and cold for the two hour drive back.  So I took the typical photo of happiness in the freezing mountains, and waited for the bus to find some place to turn around.

We were up almost 15,000 feet that day.  Eventually the bus came back, people started to climb down the mountain, and we started to leave.  It seemed a little less frightening than the way up.  It was also getting dark.  We stopped at the same restaurant to get another hot chocolate and sit by the fire awhile, and then headed the last stretch home.  One of the girls who had climbed to the top got sick, so she sat in the front of the bus for the rest of the trip, because apparently it helps.  We got home eventually and we were exhausted. Absolutely spent. I don't know how people managed to find the energy to go out that night.  I think they keep us busy on purpose, to discourage it.

They will see us wavin from such great heights
Come down now, they'll say
But everything looks perfect from far away
Come down now
But we'll stay

Adjustment

I'm getting more used to things here. I actually know where some places are that I need to go.  I know how to walk to school and I also know how to use the bus.  It's really quite quaint when the bus drivers try to rip you off a fare and make you pay more.  It's interesting to be the minority.  I began classes on Wednesday, and they're really interesting.  I'm taking Latin American Culture and Civilization, Spanish Phonetics, Education in Venezuela, Latin American Politics, and Tropical Ecology.  The last one is in English.  I think the Education class is going to be my favorite.  It's all about getting into the psyche and politics of the goverment that controls education, because if you control education, you control how people turn out when they get older.

Venusa has another school for Venezuelans, where they come to learn English.  This program is called Nuevos Encuentros, "New Encounters".  Venusa hosts several events, like Conversation Dinners, Karaoke Nights, Sangria Nights, Dance Lessons, Cooking Lessons, and other fun things so that the Venezuelan students and the American students can come together and practice speaking in the opposite language and also to get to know people from other cultures.  We had a welcome barbeque last night, where we were each partnered up with a Venezuelan to get to know and practice with.  I was soon joined by my roommate and her partner, who happen to be partners in their English class also.  We had steak, sausage, salad and bread.  The steak was particularly good. Juicy, with a little red inside.  I didn't even need ketchup.

Today I had more classes, and afterwards, I met up with one of the students of the flute teacher who will be giving me lessons here.  Her name is Rossmary, and she is really nice.  She introduced me to another flute friend of hers, Fabiola, and together we went to eat strawberries and cream.  It was the best cream I ever had.  I even forced a few strawberries down.  I might be able to tolerate them from now on. TOLERATE. Not eat everyday. But, it's an improvement. Kudos to me.  But I talked to them all in Spanish and I was able to keep up really well! I also am in the process of finding a cell phone.  My mother gave me and my roommate the phones that the students from the summer had left behind, and asked us to keep them safe so she could have them.  However, I needed to buy a prepaid card.  It was an adventure.

I was pretty sure I knew what my roommate's number was, and I assumed, as any American would, that you can find your own number somewhere in your phone's memory. This is not actually the case. So I asked my roommate what my number was, sure that she had it in her phone.  After sifting through the most recent call list, she deduced which of the several Katie's in her phone must be me.  She told me the number, and I continued the transaction to add money to the phone.  It didn't work. Also, every time I tried to call the service, they said they were unable to help me now and to try again later.  So I looked up my roommate'snumber on my phone to try her phone.  It happened to be the same number as the one she told me was my number.  We weren't sure how to get the right numbers. We knew our mom had the list on the fridge at home, but we weren't going there anytime soon.  So we waited. And nothing happened. And she went to El Vigia to pick up her lost luggage, which thankfully came in yesterday, and I went out with my friends.  After I was done with my friends, I get a text message saying I am not quite as in debt with my service as I was 4 hours ago.  After I got home tonight, I looked at the list, and saw that the number that my roommate gave me was in fact my number, and that my roommate's number was not anywhere in my phone.  And the card did in fact work, but it wasn't enough money yet, so I need to go buy some more.  Also, it takes a long time for the money to actually register in your service.  Welcome to Venezuela.  So I still don't technically have service, but I'm getting closer.

I didn't realize I had this much to write about.  Here are some pictures.  One is of our entire group, and the rest is what you see in Merida everywhere on a daily basis.  You just walk through your daily life and see this wherever you are. La de dah de dah MOUNTAINS lah de dah.

The Rainy Season Begins

So tonight was interesting.  It was a bright beautiful sunny day. It gets dark aroud 6-7 PM here.  We were on a tour of the city in a bus.  It started to get dark. Thenit started to get cloudy.  It hovered over us a few minutes and then began a torrential downpour.  It is nothing like you've seen in the US. What resembled the Amazon River flowed down each street, and if you stepped outside for a second you were immediately drenched.  The tour guide understood that this was our first entire day here, so he was nice and took everyone to their homes.  It took forever though, cause they barely knew where they were going.  It doesn't really help that nothing is marked and street signs are few, far between, and probably broken or graffitied. It came down to me, my roommate, and this one other girl who lived somewhere else.  One of the tour guides told me and my roommate to get off the bus and he would take us home, while the bus would go on to take the other girl home.  We ran through the rain, which by that point was slowing down a little, and got into his car.  He drove us back, dropped us off at the door, and advised us to bring a poncho and rain boots from now on, because every night would most likely be just like this. Bring on the rain.

Fotos de la escuela

Here are some pictures of the school I got in my free time. This is just the main floor.

Living the Life

Okay. Here it goes.

I woke up at 3 AM on Monday morning after only about 5 hours of restless sleep, got dressed and brought my things downstairs.  I checked out with my roommate for the evening, and the shuttle driver got everyone's things into the shuttle.  We arrived at the airport around 3:45, and soon found that American Airlines doesn't open their checkins until 4 AM, so we sat around and waited. Since we were all tired, it seemed like a long time. Ha.  I checked in my one ultra-heavy bag, delighted to find that since I was in business class, ultra-heavy bags fly for free. Finally something goes my way!  I went through the x-ray machines and walked with everyone to our terminal, where we waited for two hours.  I got myself a hot chocolate at a cafe and waited. And talked to people. And waited. It was still dark by the time we were boarding. I made last minute phone calls to say goodbye and turned my phone off.

There was breakfast served on the plane, but I fell asleep within minutes after takeoff so I missed it.  I would later regret that.  I woke up while we were somewhere over the ocean.  It was light out, but the random guy next to me was sleeping, so I only opened the window a crack to look out. Land came out of nowhere.  I was on the side of the plane that couldn't see it coming.  Green mountains and palm trees and beaches and little houses dotted all over the mountains appeared.  The landing was fine.  I saw the building bearing the words "Simon Bolivar Aeropuerto Internacional".  I don't think there's anything in Venezuela that is not named after Simon Bolivar.  Their country's official name is even Republica Bolivariana de Venezuela. Once inside the airport, it was strange. They actually have advertisements for socialism. My mind was immediately drawn to a certain work by George Orwell.  However, it was overly cheerful, with its colorful posters stating roughly "In Socialism, you do the greatest things."  And several others with similar phrases.

Getting through immigration was nerve-wracking.  One of the students travelling with me said that the Venezuelan woman sitting next to her said that if you bring more than $1000 into the country, it is frowned upon, even though on the card, you are officially allowed to bring up to $10,000 without being questioned.  This is because Venezuelans, under the Chavez regime, are only allowed to have a certain amount of American dollars.  But, since the government does a very poor job at regulating this, there is a thriving black market of sorts for American dollars.  The official exchange rate is 4.30 bolivares for 1 American dollar, but, if you exchange privately with random people, you find they are willing to offer a bit more for them, such as 7 or 8 bolivares for 1 American dollar.  But since I had a little over a thousand dollars in cash with me, I was nervous to avoid being questioned about it.  I took money out of my pouch, and distributed a little to my friends, being careful not to flaunt the fact that I had so much in American dollars to any Venezuelans who might be watching.  The x-ray machines in Venezuela are laughably simple to get through.  You're allowed to wear your shoes, money pouches, belt and jacket through the metal detectors, there are no body x-ray machines, and there's very little you have to remove from your bags.  In baggage claim, they x-ray your bags, and I was asked about the suspicious shape of my shampoo bottles, but they didn't press the matter.

Oh and by the way, everyone speaks Spanish now.  All the airport workers and people coming in.  You can't count on anyone to know a word of English, so good luck to my parents if they ever need to come down. It's really confusing, because there's a little strip of outside we have to walk on to get to the connecting flights.  The covered protection that we were assured of happened to be a chain link fence, but nothing happened. And people were either nice to us, or left us alone.  We met up with the program coordinator, Marinela, and he took us to exchange a little of our money and helped us check in to our connecting flight.  We then had a 6 hour layover in the Caracas airport.  I really don'tremember feeling anything except tired and annoyed that I didn't know what time it was anymore.  There were no clocks anywhere. Luckily, I was sneaky and caught the time off of people's watches. Cause I'm creepy like that. When they finally got the plane ready, it was a half hour later than we were supposed to leave. Nobody who was Venezuelan was surprised or the least bit bothered.

I tried to sleep on the plane, but I couldn't.  Flying business class in American Airlines is still noisy because they put the turbine engines in a diffferent place, close to business class. I don't like the noise.  But this flight out of Caracas was quite pleasant. The seats had tropical upholstery on them, and the engines were far away so I was not needing to put in my headphones to drown them out.  When we reached El Vigia, the airport closest to Merida, we exited via the stairs going straight outside. We walked over to the one baggage claim area and got our luggage. People from VENUSA greeted us as we went into the open, and guided us to our bus, where our luggage was loaded and we embarked on thee last 2 hour stretch of our journey to Merida.  I listened to music. Lots of people tried to sleep, but I couldn't.  Even though it was dark, I wanted to look at everything.  I had such a feeling of contentment.  All of it, the heat, the Spanish, the run-down (to our standards) houses and buildings, the curvy not well kept roads, the small living spaces, the warmth of the people; I loved it.  Already. I love love loved everything about Venezuela.  Like I was supposed to be here all my life.  Spain was a dream within a dream, and I want to go back, but this is my life now.  I'm very good at adapting to places once I get there.

I met my host mother and father and they took us home in a taxi.  They live in an apartment, on the third floor.  Just a small living area, kitchen, bathroom, and two bedrooms: one for my parents and one for me and my roommate. You can hardly fit the two beds in there. The closet door barely opens all the way because the bed is in the way.  But I like it.  I unpacked and my father showed me that we have a TVin our room with cable and WiFi in the house.  They showed us where the water we were to use was, in two tin pitchers in the fridge.  They also keep our cups in the fridge. I don't know if this is a further precautionary measure or not.  I had some water last night and it had a weird aftertaste. Like some irony chemical or something.  If it doesn't make me sick, I'm fine.  Both me and my roommate forgot alarm clocks, so I had no idea if we would wake up on time tomorrow, so we hoped our parents would wake us up.  My roommate got one of her suitcases lost in Bogota, Colombia, so we're hoping she gets it soon.  I have enough of the essentials that we can share.

This morning I woke up just when I would have if I were to set my alarm. 8 AM.  We had to be at the program orientation at 9 AM.  Me and my roommate got dressed, and haqd breakfast.  When they told us we would get a "lite breakfast" they weren't kidding.  We had bread and cheese.  And hot chocolate, because we mentioned to the host mom the night before that we liked it.  She escorted us via bus to the school and we made it on time. The orientation was more reminders of the safety precautions and proceedures and things you should and should not do.  We got a tour, and now we have lunch.

I like it here.

Miami: A Place of Transition

Today was spent in Miami.  The hotel conveniently placed me in the room that I was already booked for, so I didn't need to check out or anything.  I said goodbye to my Dad this morning and went back to sleep for a little while.  After I decided I could not stay asleep anymore, I decided to go out in search of sustenance.  The hotel dining room was packed full of huge hispanic families.  There was a long wait, so I decided to try my luck somewhere else.  I walked into the humid sunshine and palm tree studded sidewalks of Miami.  There were lots of hotels and places to go for lunch, but nothing with the breakfast food that I wanted.  I finally found a little place called "Latin Cafe 2000".  It claimed to be the taste of Cuba.  I was suspicious, but the sign said it served breakfast, so I gave it a try.  Like every other place I've been to in Miami, it was a very Latino place.

I enjoy the amount of Spanish culture and language in Miami, because it gives me a smaller taste of what I might be doing when I'm in Venezuela.  Everything here is half Latino it seems like.  It makes me excited for what's to come.  It's a good place for transition.  Half English, half Spanish; still in the USA, but far from home. Even the weather is weird.  Today it started raining while blatantly sunny.

I was going to post some pictures on my blog of my entire trip, but I realized that I packed the wrong USB cord to hook my camera up! I started to feel the first signs of distress, when lo and behold, I discovered that my netbook has an SD card reader slot thing! Joy! I can still share my pictures!  These are some of the view from my hotel room. Enjoy.

Unexpected and Slightly Stressful

So, remember how I told everyone I was leaving Sunday?

I lied.

This morning I got up, went to breakfast with my family and Sean, went to the airport and got on a flight to Atlanta.  An hour later I was on another plane to Miami.  All going according to schedule.  We flag down the shuttle to take us to the hotel, and we arrive at the stylish marble front desk.  I find out that my reservation is not actually until Sunday night. How did I miss this?  I go to look at my ticket to Caracas, and sure enough, Departure: Monday, 22 August.  Freeze. Shock. What? However, this would not have been as horrible if not for the other lovely setbacks that happened today,

Stressful Things That Happened Today:
- Woke up at 5:45 AM
- Said painful goodbyes
- Check in luggage was too heavy, making the cost for that bag a whopping $115
- Listened to music that made me remember aforementioned painful goodbyes
- No lunch
- Constant reminder of when the airline we were on once lost my Mom's luggage
- Check in suitcase broken when claimed in Miami
- Missed the first hotel shuttle
- Spent the next half hour walking around to different money exchangers (all seemed to be on break)only to find that nowhere in the continental US exchanges Venezuelan currency.

And THEN I find out that I wasn't supposed to be here until tomorrow.

At least the flights themselves were peaceful.  Right now I'm chilling in the hotel with my Dad.  He's still leaving tomorrow like he planned and because of that will not be seeing them off, but hopefully I'll be meeting up with more people from the program tomorrow and so I won't be alone.  I really wish I hadn't messed up those dates on the ticket.  I would've really enjoyed more time with everyone in Indy. So I'm kind of upset about that.  But I'm also kind of excited about this whole trip actually happening.

I didn't mean to make my first post such a depressing one. I'll try again next time, and hopefully I'll be able to get something right eventually.