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.
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