My Actions

One of my professors told us of the time he visited the United States to teach a class at a university.  In Venezuela, women are very much objects.  They always are wearing skinny jeans, that are practically painted on, with 6 inch heels and dressy shirts.  They always have their hair and make-up done up just so if they ever go out in public.  So my professor walked into the classroom in the United States, and he saw: girls in sweat pants, hoodies, hair messily pulled back, no make-up, and kicking off their slippers or flip flops. Gulp. Wow.  So yeah, the taking off of shoes thing I'm guilty of a couple times, I don't do that here.

When I grow up and have a house, all the sitting furniture will be hammocks.  No chairs or couches, just a bunch of hammocks hanging from the ceiling.  Not those net-type ones.  The ones made out of durable blanket like material and have cushions in them so they're comfortable.  And they have a million strands of twine connecting the cushion to a wooden beam that holds the hammock steady, and are hung from the ceiling by a large rope.  These are the hammocks that Venusa has.  This is where I napped today.

Weeeee!!!!!! Swinging back and forth.

More lists!

I would like to think that since we are such a small group, we would all be the best of friends, but I get annoyed with people too quickly for that.

My list of Spanish-Speaking-American Pet Peeves:

- faking accents
- believing that your fake accent is genuine
- believing that you are good at Spanish because you think your fake accent is genuine
- believing that you are good at Spanish because you are able to fill your conversations with meaningless filler
words while you search for something to actually say.  This is also annoying in English.
- talking about all the experience you got when you studied in Mexico for two weeks
- changing the topic in a class just so you can continue talking about yourself and your experiences for a half hour to try to make everyone else believe you are good at Spanish
- sucking up to the professor after class, to show off your Spanish abilities and experiences again
- Talking and going "ah" obnoxiously loud when a professor corrects you because you got something wrong, and trying to explain the reason why you thought you were right. You were wrong.  Get over it.

Guess what lovely people! I am here to learn! I am not here to show off or talk about how awesome it was in Spain or how much I learned there because it is uniquely spectacular program guaranteed to make you learn Spanish by the end.  Nor am I here to take a second summer vacation and go out partying every night and skim my way through the classes.  I am here to glean the knowledge from the professors, do well in all of the classes, and discover a new system of music education.  And this is really hard to do when immature displays of ridiculousness occur left and right.  The sad part is that most of them are seniors here, and will be entering the real world shortly.

Parasites

I enjoy the food here in Venezuela very much.  It's delicious, authentic, and real. One hundred percent food.  No artificial flavors, no food coloring, no high fructose corn syrup.  I love it.  My stomach, however, does not like it. This entire past week has been filled with uncomfortable stomach complaining.  Every time I would eat something, a few hours later I would be squirming in my seat with an upset stomach. I didn't have diarrhea, vomiting, or any type of fever or flu symptoms though, so I wanted to wait and see if it got better before I freaked out and ran to the pharmacy for parasite medication.  Nobody else seemed to be having those problems though, or at least not that they were letting on.  So the week passed, and I did get better.  I'm still not completely fine though, it just isn't as bad and happens far less often. So yay! I don't think I'm infected.

My fellow students don't seem to be having as much luck.  In this weekend alone, I've heard of two confirmed cases of parasites and other rumors of more.  I talked with my host family this morning about it, and they told me not to worry, that is was normal, and was not serious. By serious, I think they mean when you need to go to the emergency room.  They don't seem to understand that parasites are not as common in the U.S. among healthy, sanitary 20-somethings, and therefore the thought of them occurring is outrageous.  You'd have to be doing something as dumb as drinking out of a sewer to really come close to contracting anything.  But apparently everyone gets them here. It's a part of the experience.  I guess I'll keep updating, but as of now I can say I'm parasite-free.

Chill Time

We have three day weekends here in Venezuela. HAHA. So today we didn't have classes.  I decided to go downtown with a friend to buy some clothes, because I only brought enough for like four days. I've been rewearing a lot, and I've also been to the laundromat, because we aren't allowed to use the family washer and dryer.  Too expensive.  I noticed I needed clothes when I went out last night and felt under dressed cause all I had was a t-shirt and everyone else was wearing more dressy shirts.  So I bought four shirts, and I am satisfied with them.

We also went to get some ice cream.  There is a famous ice cream place in Merida called Heladeria Coromoto. Tourists come to Merida for this ice cream place, and it is always packed. It is famous because it has 100 flavors. Literally. They have normal flavors like chocolate and strawberry, but they also have salmon, beer, rice, beef, avocado, rum, tomato, vodka, hot dog, and cheese.  I got chocolate and vanilla chocolate chip, because when I pay money for ice cream, I like to enjoy it.  But here are some pictures of the ridiculousness.

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