Answers to some questions....

Let me use this blog post to answer some of the more common questions people have been asking me…

 

Question: How many hours different is the time in Venezuela?

HA! Trick question.  Not how many hours, but how many minutes?! Perhaps it’s Hugo Chavez’s way of poking fun at our obsession with time, or perhaps not, but Venezuelan time is one half hour between Eastern and Central time.  For example, if it is 10 AM in New York, it is 9:30 AM here, and 9:00 AM in MN.

 

Question: What do you eat in Venezuela?

If you asked me the question, “Anna, how many ants do you supposed you eat on a daily basis in Venezuela?,” it would be a lie if I said any fewer than 10-20.  In reality, it’s probably more like 30, but some days it may be as few as 10.  It’s just that they’re everywhere.  Eating them is somewhat unavoidable.

Besides the ants, though, we have been eating a lot of soups, rice, beans, cheese, meats, vegetables, some familiar and some not, potatoes, plantains, some fruits, salads.  Yesterday I bought the biggest avocado I have ever seen, I swear it was the size of a football.  It had to have its own plastic bag.  Two of us ate huge cantaloupe-sized slices of it today, and we ate less than a quarter of it.  People put mayonnaise on many things, and my host mom is obsessed with soy sauce and honey mustard.  Today we made an oil, soy sauce, lime, honey mustard and salt vinaigrette to put on steamed vegetables and tuna.  I was skeptical, but it was actually pretty good.  The food here is tasty, salty but not at all spicy like I imagined.

 

What’s the university like?

I would first like to say that the university is a land of extreme temperatures.  Walking to and from the university makes me feel like I am melting, but the second I walk into the English office, my lips immediately turn blue.  The air conditioners in classrooms usually read about 15-16 C, which is roughly 58-62 degrees.  The office is much colder.  The director told me that she often leaves an extra sweater in the office, in addition to wearing one.  I bit my tongue and kept myself from exclaiming, “Why don’t you just turn off the freaking AC instead?!!? It’s like a meat fridge in here!?!??!”

It’s okay, though, because when it is freezing in the office, I go sit in the little fenced in, outdoor snack store area at the entrance of the building.  You can sit at tables there, drink apple sodas, or eat empanadas.  I like to sit out there while grading papers and appreciating the breeze and the sunshine. 

It’s not a campus like you would think of in the US.  It’s about 5-6 buildings scattered around the neighborhood, and some additional property that is pretty far away.  Different departments are in different buildings, and there really isn’t much interaction between them.  There are three time slots for English classes Mon-Thurs 7-9, 2-4, 6-8, and Saturday classes as well.  Students are younger than I would imagine for university students in the US.  Basically all the students live at home, and some travel great distances to get there.

 

Question:  What do you wish you had brought with you?

I would definitely say that I packed well— I only brought one bag.  After backpacking all around East Africa, I learned very quickly that you don’t need very many things to be happy.  But backpacking in East Africa was very different than living here, it turns out, and there are a few things on my wish list:

#1) Several pairs of prom-style sequined high heels, some shiny clothes, and a brightly colored handbag, because without them I stick out like a sore thumb.  This is not an exaggeration.  People here wear the fanciest, shiniest shoes that you could imagine, and they seem to plan their entire outfits around their fancy shoes.  My chacos aren’t exactly high fashion here.

#2) A can opener and vegetable peeler.  I don’t peel a lot of vegetables—I actually haven’t even had a vegetable peeler for the last year-- but here, I feel that it is necessary to peel a lot of things.  The can opener I really want— it is quite difficult to open cans with a knife, which is how we have been doing it.

#3) Some nasty old shorts, because despite the fact that people get really dressed up to go to places like the grocery store, the bank, the pharmacy, in their houses they wear grungy old shorts.  Short shorts.

#4) Several short dresses, the shinier the better.  It is obvious that when I make friends, if they ever want to go out with me, I will be inappropriately dressed for just about any occasion.  Short, colorful, strapless dresses appear to be all the rage.

#5) Hair binders.  When all my jewels were stolen in the airport, so were my hair-binders.  I have one, and I fear the day that it fails me.

#6) Several handkerchiefs.  To wipe my sweaty face every three seconds.

 

How do you get to work?

We usually take the bus.  This is only marginally faster than walking, though apparently we avoid strenuous activity during the hottest part of the day.  The buses are either conversion vans or small mini-buses.  They cost about 20 cents, and will take you basically anywhere. 

Yesterday, however, the buses went on strike.  Apparently last Friday, three men tried to get on a bus to rob a little old lady who had just taken out 20 million bolivares (roughly $4,000) from the bank.  The driver saw that they were really sketch, and drove away before the third thief could get on the bus, so the thieves killed the driver and ran off.  The strike was to raise awareness about insecurity issues on buses here.  It was a horrible thing, but at least people are talking about the problem, and trying to do something to solve it.

 

If you have more questions, I would happily address them publicly or privately.  Just send ‘em my way! 

Apparently they just call them "dogs" here...

It struck me recently that I still have not once been outside by myself in Venezuela.  In Caracas this made sense, I was not exactly anxious to venture out all by my lonesome.  But now I have been living in Valera for a week and a half, an awfully long time to never go anywhere on your own.  So as my host mom left for a doctor’s appointment yesterday, I mentioned to her that I thought maybe I’d go for a walk by myself.  “No!! Quedase aqui, no vaya.”  No, stay here.  Don’t go anywhere… If anyone comes to the door, don’t open it, and keep everything locked. Even when I mentioned the other day at the University that I was going to walk around the block to go to the American Corner (a cultural center affiliated with the US embassy), a nice young man was sent to accompany me, and he insisted on walking me back.  I guess I did go into a bank by myself once, but my host mom was nearby, chatting with some friends.  So my goals this week: establish some level of independence, possibly go somewhere by myself.  The question is, where?

 

Despite not having gone anywhere by myself, I have been going lots of places.  The other night we visited an enormous grocery store in Carvahal, a suburb (?) at the top of one of the nearby mountains.  We bought many things I have never seen before, as well as some familiar things, hot dogs, corn flakes, nestea, yogurt.  Among the stranger things were, baby food-- my host mom likes to eat it (?), some sort of red fruity candy-jelly, and these pastries called something “tongues” that I literally thought might break my jaw when I first bit into them.  I also went to mass in the beautiful chapel downtown the other day with Susana.  During mass, Susana whispered something to me about a “dog.”  In response, I made a motion indicating a dog on the ground, which made her burst out into raucous laughter during the blessing of Jesus’ body and blood for communion.  It turned out that she had whispered that she was hungry, and wanted to eat a hot dog, which apparently they just refer to as “dogs.”  My B. 

 

But today was the greatest adventure yet.  We took a bus to La Puerta, a city about 45 minutes up the mountains from here.  The bus ride there was full of things to see, flashes of colorful houses, beautiful gardens, fields of lettuce, mountains so green they look black, dry sand, stray dogs, broken down cars, rose bushes, long strings of moss hanging from trees, houses made of bricks and clay shingles, brilliantly colored flowers, houses made of cement, power lines everywhere, houses made of stones, pink fences, green fences, orange fences, beer ads, dirty pedestrians, fashionable women, houses made of metal, men in oversized suits, tall fences, barbed wire, food stands, fruit trees, evergreen trees, cows, donkeys, sprinklers, and stunning, wide, green mountains in every direction.  It was so hot on the bus, that one woman actually fainted.  And what did the driver do?  Pulled over so that several people could help her off the bus.  And then we LEFT HER THERE!  On the side of the road… I couldn’t believe it. I hope to god I never faint on a bus…

 

La Puerta was very quaint and sweet.  It was much cooler than Valera, and in all the little shops there, vendors sold hats and scarves.  In the mall, men and women in winter coats sat playing bingo, and in the plaza, everyone was enjoying ice cream or strawberries and cream in little plastic cups.  We walked around the mall once, ate corn on the cob (which is not very sweet and they slather with margarine and roll in parmesan cheese), took some pictures, walked around the plaza, ate strawberries and cream in the plaza, walked back to and around the mall once again, and then came back down.  It was a nice little venture into the world, though somewhat uneventful.

 

It was nice to come home tonight to the familiar sounds of the upstairs neighbor belting Nelly Furtado songs at the top of her lungs, gorgeous gardens, colorful figurines, spastic dogs attempting to lick your skin off, delicious dinner, a freshly made bed, and, of course, my connection to the outside world, the internet.

A Moral Dilemma

The first full day that I was in Valera, I looked out the bus window on our way to work (6:45 AM) and saw a line that wrapped all the way around the block.  “What’s that line for?”  I asked. “Oh, that’s for the bank.  You have to go early.  We have lots of lines here…”

Almost the entirety of the last three days has been spent working on a single, simple, seemingly attainable, goal.  Opening a Venezuelan bank account. 

 

Before I came here, I was told that I should expect opening an account to take around 2-3 hours.  I believed this, but also thought that it sounded ridiculous.  What could you do in the bank that would take 2-3 hours?  So Yervio and I set aside an afternoon to accomplish this goal.  However, on Wednesday afternoon, we went to not one, not two, but five banks… and after all that, no bank account.  Three days of serious effort later, I still don’t have a bank account, nor am I sure that I am anywhere close to opening one. 

 

When you enter a Venezuelan bank, you must first take a number.  In larger banks, there are no fewer than 100, but probably closer to 200 or 300 people waiting.  In smaller banks, more like 50.  Thank god we weren’t waiting in the general line, we went straight to the security guard and asked where the desk is to open an account.  The wait to speak with them was anywhere between 10-30 minutes. 

 

The first bank hardly even spoke to us.  “Nope, she has to have utility bills in her name.  She’s a foreigner and cannot open an account.”  The second bank, “Nope, you have to bring 10,206 documents back to the bank before we will open an account…” and so on, and so on….  At our fifth bank, we waited to speak with the manager. Waiting at all these banks was somewhat torturous for me.  It was really hot, my stomach was on the verge of explosion, and it felt totally futile.  Looking around the bank, it appeared that the vast majority of people in the bank felt the same.  For a few, however, it was social hour.  “Oh my god, I haven’t seen you in three years!” “Oh, and how is your mother…how are your kids?” People hugging and kissing, people slouching and frowning.  A good mix.

 

When we finally spoke with the manager of Banco Provincial, he told us that to open an account, we would have to come back with: 1) A letter from the embassy, 2) My original passport and copies, 3) My driver’s license and copies, 4) 2 personal references, 5) 2 business references, 6) A utility bill, 7) A letter of residency, and 8) A reference letter from the bank (which he would provide).  I thought, “Dear lord, how in the world am I going to find all of these things... I don’t even know anyone here?!”  So Yervio and Susana got to work helping me. 

 

Yesterday morning, Susana and I ran around and around town, looking for people to sign reference letters and trying to get a letter of residency. These tasks may sound simple, though I assure you that they are not.  And because women do basically everything here, we had to make it home in time to make a lunch of beans, rice, guacamole, chicken, meatballs, and juice so that everyone could eat when the men came home from work.  "So the women don't work, then?" you might ask... but this is not true either.  Susana leaves for work at 5:30 AM, and is home in time to cook lunch for everyone.  

 

We walked well over a mile each way to get to the Prefectura, the office that issues important documents.  When we arrived, it turned out that we actually had to purchase a 5 BsF stamp on the 4^th floor of a building on the other side of town and had to make two extra copies of the document before  they could issue the letter.  So we walked and walked and walked to the other side of town, and made copies in a house along the way (on someone’s personal copy machine—I have no idea how Susana knew it was there). 

 

When we arrived at the elusive building, we climbed several flights of stairs, only to find out that we needed to leave the building, and go around to another entrance.  At the second entrance there was a gate with a keypad.  We pushed all the numbers we could think of that might make sense.  Nothing.  So we went back in the building, to the governor’s office, and got directions.  “Empuja 0404.”  I remember numbers very easily, but Susana must have forgotten.  She went to town with the keypad, 0044, 0004, 4004, 0440, all combinations of 0’s and 4’s. I reached past her, pushed the numbers, and we waited.  A woman answered, and told us she would be right down.  We waited, and waited some more.  Someone came down, but not the right person. Finally a woman arrived with a little toddler in one hand and a little stamp in the other.  The whole transaction was done through a locked gate, and in an instant we were back on our way to the Prefectura.  Letter of residency obtained: step one complete.

 

That letter was among the easiest and straightforward of the documents to obtain.  Susana and I ran around all day again today, to several stores, to the internet café, to the copy shop, to here and to there, with only some luck.  “She doesn’t want to sign this letter, it doesn’t have an address.” “He doesn’t want to sign this letter, it’s not specific enough….” So we couldn’t get all the documents before the bank closed at 3:00.  With the documents that we had, we ran to the bank at 3:45.  Upon arrival, we saw that the doors had been locked, with at least 100 people inside and 10 people outside trying to get in.  “Ya esta cerrada.  Tiene que esperar hasta el lunes.”  Wait until Monday.  Ok.  Awesome.  So there will be yet another day of banking chaos, if not more…  This is the first step in obtaining the Fulbright grant money, which is currently sitting in an American bank account, undisturbed.  Before I can get that money, I must open an additional account in Texas, and have money wired from MN to Texas to Caracas to Valera.  I cannot imagine that this is actually possible, though I must make it happen.

 

My host family has been nothing but wonderful to me.  As you can see, they help me with everything.  Yervio has shown me around the university and accompanied me wherever I need to go.  Susana has taken to calling me “hija” (daughter), welcomed me into her home, shown me around town, and she even brought me a bucket to pee in just in case I don’t want to leave my room in the middle of the night (?).  I want to please them, do as they do, ask their advice, and heed their warnings.  This is usually easy -- I follow their advice, ask questions when necessary, and try to be polite. Occasionally, however, I cannot compromise with food.

 

Today I was eating lunch, a delicious soup with beans and vegetables and a hunk of meat.  I took a closer look at the meat.  MY GOD, it was a hunk of HAIRY HAM!  That was the first thing that I did not eat, despite being told otherwise.  I was presented with another moral dilemma tonight when Yervio bought me a hot dog, bought off the street, with ketchup, mayonnaise, avocado, tomato, onion, parmesan cheese (?), several other unidentifiable crunchy things, and a glass of juice from a cooler.  “Que rico, no?”  “How delicious?” they asked me. And I must say, they did look very delicious.  “My stomach is finally back to normal,” I thought. “Why would I jeopardize that?”  “But no, that is very rude, and how much damage could it do to my body, anyway…?“ So I decided to compromise with myself.  Eat the hot dog.  Eat the toppings.  Leave the toxic-water-and-sugar-juice. So I did just that.  I ate slowly, and just smiled when they told me to drink the juice… until one of them drank it.  About two and a half hours later, I feel my stomach churning a little.  We will see how this goes…

"Look at that man... he is the jefe"

Right now I’m in bed, awake while the rest of the world around me sleeps, trying my hardest to keep all of my insides where they belong— that is, inside of me.  I don’t know what I ate, drank, or exposed myself to, but wow was it painful. I’ve got a steady dose of stomach antibiotics going right now, though, and it’s starting to get better.  Thank you, travel doctor.  I also just drank some sort of lime-anise tea concoction that my host mother brewed for me, and it really helped.

 

I started teaching at the university this week.  My class has 21 students, all around 16-25 years old.  Some are in high school, others have already graduated from the university, or will very soon.  In the other level one class, there is one boy who is only 12 years old!  Each individual has a different level of English from high school, but they are all very much beginners.  So we start at square one: the alphabet, telling time, days of the week, the verb “to be,” contractions. 

 

The classroom is chaotic— punctuality and quiet attention are two things that every American student must master at a very young age— but here they are irrelevant.  The students are really interested in class, so much so that at least half the class shouts out answers when I ask a question to a specific student.  It’s actually pretty fun.  The students come from everywhere.  Many have hour-long or more bus rides to and from the university.  Someone told me yesterday that she comes all the way from Maracaibo (at least 3 hours) every day just for my English class.  That puts a little pressure on you, huh?  Every day after class, several students want to stay after and chat, to hear about my home and tell me about theirs. 

 

There is only one problem so far with teaching.  Apparently, someone decided that there will be power outages between 2-6 PM every day for the next several weeks.  My class just happens to be from 2-4, in a room with no windows.  This means when the power goes out, we have about 5-10 minutes of teaching in the dark before it becomes so unbearably hot that we have to do one of two things 1) have class in the hallway, or 2) end class early.  So far, it’s about 50-50 whether the electricity will go out during class, so we’ll see how this goes.

 

In Africa, I got at least 10 marriage proposals daily.  This became somewhat normalized, almost to the point of expecting every man to propose to you.  Here, I am happy to say that no one has proposed.  I did get an “I love you” yesterday, quite a few inquiries about the status of my love life, whether or not I have children/want them, etc.  So you can imagine what I thought when the janitor at the university slipped a note into my hand when we shook hands to say goodbye the other day.  “Oh no, not again… I’ve only been here a week.”  So I stuck the carefully folded note in my bag and continued on my way home with Yervio.

 

The note was not what I expected… Not a love letter, but a page-long note about living life to its fullest, reaching your full potential as a person, having new experiences and how to grow as a person, and about god.  As I read it, I became both pleasantly surprised (“Thank god the janitor did not just profess his love for me—that would be really awkward for the next 10 months”) and puzzled (“Is this actually still a strangely manifested love-and-god-combo note?”).  I haven’t seen him since, but I will keep you posted.

 

Usually Yervio and I take the bus to and from the University.  It’s only about a 15-minute walk, but I get the feeling that people here don’t walk much.  We take the bus to school at 6:45 in the morning, back to the house at noon, back to school at 1:45, and home at 6:00.  I’m a walker, though, so I decided to ask if we could walk sometime.  We only successfully walked between school and home twice this week.  On our walks, it became apparent why people prefer the buses… “You see those men?” he whispered.  “Those are thieves.  Did you see how that one pointed at us and then said something to his friend?  We have to go a different way.”  So we wound around the neighborhood, trying to make sure no one could follow our path.  “Look that man,” Yervio muttered under his breath, “He is the jefe (boss) of all the thieves in this neighborhood.”  We walked quickly past.  And then it started to thunder, drizzle, and then pour rain.  I guess it would be better to just follow the lead of those who live here and know best from now on…..

All the pepto bismol in the world...

...could not cure my aching belly. :(

...short for "Crispeta"

I love going abroad because I always learn new skills: People skills, language skills, navigational skills, skills to keep your intestines functional, and other practical things. The first skill I always try to learn when I go abroad, though, is how to cook like the people who live there.  This is usually somewhat embarrassing, given that you stumble through motions that every native person mastered by the age of 5 or 6.  It is also really important, because you see how people use the seemingly unusual things you find in the grocery store or on the streets.  Most importantly, though, I like cooking with people because it is great way to get to know the women of a household.

I have been cooking a lot with the mother of the family I am staying with. In just three days she has taught me how prepare all kinds of things— arepas, the staple of the Venezuelan diet (a think, corn, tortilla-like food that they slice open and fill with different things), chicken, beef, beans, potato salad, juices, plantains, different sauces, and other foods. The food here is delicious, lots of rich, fried foods, fresh fruits, whole grains, and interesting meats. 

In the US, we cook with knives, spoons, tongs, whisks, slotted spoons, spatulas, and all sorts of other tools.   Here, people cook with their hands.  You knead doughs, scrub meat, chop vegetables cradled in your hands, and you taste everything with your finger-- including sauces that you rubbed all over raw meat (I don’t participate in this part, just observe).

This morning we started cooking lunch at around 9 AM.  But there are lots of chores that also need to be done in the morning, like watering the plants, sweeping, mopping, dusting, laundry, etc.  So, Susana told me in fast Spanish that while she went to mop up the water that sprayed everywhere when watering the plants, I should prepare the chicken.  At first I didn’t understand, so she tried to explain, which consisted of motions indicating peeling and stabbing the chicken.  Most of you know that I have been a vegetarian for the last 4 years or so, so I’m a little out of practice with preparing meat.  But I have been eating it for the last couple of months in anticipation of this trip.  So I went to town, tearing off skin, gathering organs as they slipped out of the split chicken, peeling off layers of fat and tissue, and stabbing holes in the chicken, as I had interpreted from Susana’s motions.  I rubbed several sauces into the chicken, and she looked on approvingly, saying that the chicken would have a good “sabor,” or flavor.  Needless to say, if anyone finds him-or-herself presented with a situation where they have an entire animal to prepare, or at least a large hunk of one, I am now prepared to deal with lots of types of meat hunks.  You can call me and I will give you a demonstration.

I am still not clear on how many people live in this house, and who they are.  Quite a few people have come in and out, so they must have keys, but they usually only stay for a few minutes, and I’m never really sure whether they live here.  Today a man came in, said good afternoon, put a bunch of clothes in a plastic bag, and left with them.  I keep discovering new bedrooms as well, so it is all very unclear.  Two of my favorite new roommates, though, are two tiny white dogs, named “Crispy” (short for Crispeta, I am told) and “Stacy.”  Stacy is old, very calm, and they keep her fur short because apparently she is balding (? --That’s what I got from the explanation in Spanish).  Crispy, however, is borderline psychotic, with thick white curls all over her body.  She can jump at least 2-3 feet in the air, despite her tiny size, and will leap up at you or a piece of food in your hand at any moment, and is not afraid to bite or gnaw on you (but never hard).  Today she came in my room, soaking wet, sliding all over the tile floors as she spastically attempted to run in and out.  Both dogs are also avid lickers—they lick your legs until you lock them out of the room.  It’s really nice, though, to have little friends with no language expectations… the friendship feels very natural, and yet, occasionally painful.

We also got the internet working on my computer, so anyone who wants to Skype, I would love to chat and show you the new digs.  My Skype name is annarsanto.

I start teaching tomorrow.  I’m not really sure what to expect, but I have decided that I want to be the teacher they remember as being really difficult.  This will be the second week of class for them, but the first day with me teaching (another teacher taught class last week).  Class is Monday through Thursday from 2-4 PM for 6 weeks.  There is a book for the class, but I have free reign to teach however I want.  The challenge: they want me to teach conversation without grammar… This sounds difficult to me, seeing as grammar is somewhat essential to conversation, but I will do my best.  I guess “conversation without grammar” means I should teach them all the best slang.   Instead, I will start with telling time…

Leche y queso de chivo...

I am in Valera! It was definitely an interesting trip— I guess I am somewhat of a spectacle here, and Venezuelan people are so warm and friendly that people take care of you wherever you go. It’s funny, in the US it feels like it will take forever to make new friends. Here, it’s nearly impossible to avoid becoming friends with someone. In line to board the plane, the woman behind me said, “Minn-ee-so-tah. You are from Minn-ee-so-tah?!?” Surprised, I turned around and responded in Spanish, “How did you know that?!” “Yo lo vi en el equipaje…” She had read in tiny writing on my luggage tag that I was from Minnesota, and it just so happened that her daughter is living in Minnesota right now. Needless to say, I met lots of wonderful people in a few short hours, and left the airport with at least five new phone numbers that I was told I should call any time I ever needed anything.

There is an airport in Valera, but for some unidentifiable reason, there are no planes that fly in and out of it. It appears that this is a temporary situation, but it is unclear. This means that the nearest airport to Valera is about 4 hours away by car. The embassy organized a driver to pick me up at the airport, so I left the airport and waited no more than 3 minutes before seeing the, “Anna Santos” sign (always Santos, always). John (the driver) was really sweet, explaining to me that the white bottles sold along the side of the road were filled with leche y queso de chivo, goat’s milk and cheese, somewhat self-explanatory given the goat carcasses hanging right next to them. Another thing he told me is that Venezuela has the cheapest gas in the entire world. I also knew this, but it continues to amaze me. For example, our supervisor at the embassy told us that he has a big, gas-guzzling, American SUV, and that it costs him about 85 cents to fill his tank completely. My taxi driver told me that he spends about $10 a month on gas, ridiculous when you consider that his job is to DRIVE! I really enjoyed the ride between the two cities. In those four hours we traveled from a very hot, arid land covered in cacti, to a not-as-hot-but-still-scorching, fertile, mountainous area, where fields of sugar cane and fruit trees stretch endlessly through mountain valleys.

For days, people have been telling me that Valera is a small city, very tranquil with not much going on. I believed them, especially since the city doesn’t even have a Wikipedia page (haha). So you can imagine my surprise when we arrived in a bustling metropolis. It’s definitely no Chicago or Caracas (thank god), but definitely more of a Duluth. It’s really nice, with beautiful mountains (the Andes) in every direction. And everything is colorful here— the buildings, the cars and buses, the food, the people, the sunsets, and every woman carries a brightly colored pleather handbag with matching heels, belt, nails, and hairpieces.

Once we arrived in the city, we went straight to the University where I am working. I met one person after another, and honestly I didn’t really know who anyone was. Names came after copious expressions of love and welcoming, lots of kisses, and a good deal of very fast Spanish and English. I met Yervio, who teaches at the university, and who I will be living with for the next 10 months. He lives with his mother and uncle, whom I already love. He also speaks excellent English, so it is nice to have someone to mitigate my failed attempts at communication with his mother and uncle. Yervio’s family is Columbian, and I have a hard time understanding their accents.

Their house is lovely. The inside is like a greenhouse, there are so many enormous, tropical plants. Susana, Yervio’s mother grows them. I still haven’t decided whether I think they are inside or out, because there is no ceiling in center of the house where they grow. All of the bedrooms, the kitchen and the dining room (which isn’t really used) have ceilings, but the center of the house is open. It hasn’t rained yet, but I am excited to sit in my room and watch and smell the rain from my bedroom window. There is wireless internet in the house, but my computer cannot log in-- anyone have any ideas why? I have a mac and the network is set up through Network Magic. If you are computer savvy and have a guess, let me know! I want to Skype everyone! Help me!

On a worse note, I guess it should come as no surprise to anyone that I have already been robbed… Nothing expensive, nothing important, but it is still somewhat disheartening. At the airport, someone took a pouch of jewelry, some little hair things, and some clothes from my luggage. It was stupid to have the jewelry in there, but I didn’t really think about it… The sad part is that while nothing that disappeared was expensive, it was all gifts from friends and family, my Grandma’s jewelry, jewelry that I made, and mementos from traveling. Oh well, live and learn. But if you ever wonder why it is that I never wore those earrings or that necklace that you gave me, just know that someone in South America is probably wearing it… and that they probably look really good because of it.

"Brocheta," a rough translation of...

After raucous demands for more blog posts, I will try to satisfy your insatiable appetites. :) Just kidding. But seriously, I love all of your comments.

I am proud to say that everyone made it through the US embassy orientation, which was certainly no small feat. I’ll start with the bad news from orientation (but please keep reading if you choose to read this part): The embassy brought in probably about 12 speakers to “debrief” us on the situation with Venezuela— most of who said things like, “this is one of the most dangerous countries in the world…” “Don’t do this, don’t do that, don’t go outside, don’t eat anything, don’t drink anything, don’t speak, for they will identify you as a foreigner, don’t walk anywhere, don’t drive anywhere, don’t take out money, all of your phone and internet may be monitored, etc., etc., etc…” The advice even got pretty specific at some points, when we were told things like, “stay out of all caves,” for there may be rabid bats lurking inside… I guess all of this was to be expected given that US Department of State employees were the ones briefing us on safety and security, but 3 days of people scaring us were not really what I was hoping for when I embarked on this adventure.

Now I know what you are all thinking, and honestly, I have to say that I have had similar thoughts… but DO NOT think that I would share all this information with you without the good news. The good news (for me) came when we were each briefed on the particular cities where we will be living. To the girl staying in Caracas—“Caracas is the murder capital of the world, with 19,000 murders a year…”, Maracaibo— “It’s a wild, wild west out there, watch for bulges in peoples’ shirts, they could be guns.” Merida—pretty safe, but watch out for FARC sympathizers (aka Columbian guerillas), Cumana—your student center was recently set on fire, and our program is really disorganized there… and then they got to me, “Valera. Who is going to Valera?” I raised my hand. “Good for you, Valera is safe. No problems there.” AWESOME. The other great thing, was that at some point during each speech, the speaker said something to the effect of, “Oh no, I’m scaring you. I don’t mean to do that. I’m sure you will have no problems at all. I love living in Venezuela, it’s the most beautiful country in the world. I have never had any problems, and I’m sure you will be totally fine…”

After each speaker left, we debriefed with our supervisors what we should take away from the talks. Be careful, be smart, don’t be flashy, don’t go out in the dark, go out with other people, etc. They were all basic travel guidelines, things you should do in both the US and abroad. So for those of you who expressed concern about my safety before I left, please know that I am now an expert on how to stay safe in Venezuela, and I plan to be very careful and conservative here. I love you all and plan to come home in 10 months speaking perfect Spanish and with some serious street smarts.

Enough safety talk. Let me tell you about some of the amazing things we have seen already! First of all, Caracas is surrounded by beautiful mountains, and some of the residential areas on the sides of the mountains appear to only be accessible by cable car. The neighborhoods that are located on the sides of these mountains are very diverse. At the top of one mountain, apparently there is a booming tourist town with ice-skating rinks and cold-climate berries for people to pick. On the majority of the mountainslopes, however, are “rachos,” or what we might call slums. I will never enter one of these neighborhoods, as we have been told by native Caraceños that they would never even drive through them. They are just too dangerous, even for the people who are forced to live there. It is no surprise that these neighborhoods stretch endlessly through this mountain valley—we heard yesterday that an average rent in a decent neighborhood in Caracas would be about $2,000 a month. In a safe neighborhood, with a nice apartment, it would be at least $5,000 a month. In addition, we were told that food here is among the most expensive in the world. With 6 million people crowded into one mountain valley, it is easy to see how food, real estate, and crime could spiral out of control.

We went downtown today, where we attended first day of beginners’ English class at a Binational Center (essentially a school affiliated with the US). Afterwards, we got a driving tour of the downtown area. We drove past the Presidential Palace (Miraflores), several landmarks that were important during the various coups in the last half-century, we saw majestic old churches, and beautiful roman sculptures and architecture. The most interesting part of the tour for me, though, was hearing about all of the different buildings that have been usurped by the Chavez administration in the past several years—the main theater, the Caracas Hilton, many of the golf courses, some residential areas, and many other places. Apparently these buildings have been taken over by the socialist revolution, and become sort of communal property for squatters in the city. We also traveled to the wealthiest neighborhoods in Caracas, where 8-foot tall walls, electric fences and beautifully landscaped gardens, golf courses, and yards obscure views of houses where the country’s wealthiest and most powerful citizens live.

When we are not traveling with the embassy, none of us have ventured more than about 6 blocks from our hotel. This feels somewhat strange—but I know that we will have time to explore this country in safer locations. Besides, we have seen some interesting things without ever going far. For example, our hotel is attached to a very hip mall, with a movie theater, a theater, art galleries, boutiques and fancy restaurants inside of it. Last night, we ate dinner at one of the restaurants in the mall. While we were sitting there, peacefully eating dinner, three women walked by, wearing nothing but string bikinis made out of beads, and two-to-three foot tall feathered headdresses. I still don’t really know who they were, but I got their card. I encourage you all to check their website. We have also been learning about the food here… I don’t really ever know what I am ordering, but last night, when I ordered “Brocheta,” I was pretty sure that it meant “Bruschetta…” I learned the hard way that “Brocheta” is a very rough translation of “Shishkabob.” I enjoyed my eggplant, banana, and vegetable shishkabob and will always remember what “Brocheta” means.

Well, tonight we are going to the home of one of our supervisors from the embassy. He is actually Greek, and said he brought us some feta cheese from Greece to make a celebratory Greek salad. I leave at 8 AM for my new (temporary) home! Love you.

Too serendipitous to waste time being worried.

As you may or may not know, I spent today and yesterday in cars, planes, trains, and taxis on the way to Caracas, Venezuela. I will be spending the next 10 months on a Fulbright English Teaching Assistantship in Valera, Venezuela, a city in the Andes about 10 hours outside of the capital.

Some of you were faithful readers of my blog while I was in Tanzania (http://annagoestotanzania.blogspot.com- you can still read it!), and it was so fun to be able to share tales of visits from elephants, wonderful host families, terrifying bus rides, swimming with dolphins, and mass releases of prisoners from nearby prisons. While this experience will be very different from my African adventures, teaching English classes at the university level in South America will surely be interesting, given that I have never really taught English, have never been to South America, and regularly confuse Spanish, Swahili and occasionally English vocabulary.

I have to be honest, the weeks leading up to this trip were pretty frustrating and stressful, to the point where it was hard to be excited about the good parts of the trip. Some examples:
1) About 30 hours before my flight was scheduled to leave, my passport (with my visa) was in a Fedex truck somewhere between DC and St. Paul
2) I nearly missed our entire orientation weekend in DC simply because I was never informed about it
3) I took it as a bad sign that my flight into Caracas was Continental flight 666, and that
4) there was a 6.4 magnitude earthquake in Caracas about 12 hours before my arrival
The advice that I got from others regarding my concerns: “Don’t even worry about it… Just go—you’ll figure it out,” “Seriously, you probably don’t even need a visa…It’ll be fine….” I may have a tendency to be a little high strung sometimes, but seriously?! Go without a passport to a country that has less-than-good diplomatic relations with the US?! This was surely NOT good advice. I must admit that this trip didn’t seem like the best adventure I had ever planned… but as you know, I am pretty stubborn and have unrestrained wanderlust, so these things would never actually stop me.

A couple days ago, though, suddenly everything started working out so serendipitously that I couldn’t be more pleased. I got my passport with about 24 hours to spare, and had time to visit and call friends to say goodbye. I had two lovely goodbye dinners with my two families. At the airport, my bag weighed exactly 50.0 pounds, the maximum before you have to pay extra, so I wasn’t charged at all for checking baggage. The woman at the ticketing booth offered my Mom, Ron, Luke and Megan passes to come into the gate with me. We said sure, and I commented that, “I didn’t know you did that?!” and she responded, “We don’t—I’m just feeling generous.”

Once past customs, we glimpsed Air Force One through a window. As we watched, we saw people (including Obama, who had given a speech about 30 minutes before at the Target Center in Minneapolis!) get on the plane, and take off. On the plane, I spent hours perusing SkyMall, trying to imagine the people who spent hundreds of dollars on things like voice-activated R2D2 robots, the “keep your distance” bug vacuum, stainless steel wallets, yard statues of sumo wrestlers, yetis, and zombies, or “million germ eliminating travel toothbrush sanitizers.” I also spent time wondering if I too, might consider purchasing the “indoor dog restroom,” doggie doorbells, inflatable dog pools, or drinking fountains for my dog if I were to ever get one… As soon as I knew it, we had arrived in Texas.

Another Fulbright student met me in Houston, and we had time to hang out until our plane left at midnight for Caracas—and it turned out that it was flight 1666, not 666. Haha. In Caracas, there was a driver waiting for us at the airport and a bellboy at our hotel hoping to exchange money with us—at a decent “unofficial” rate. For how nervous and anxious I had been feeling over the last several weeks, everything worked out perfectly. We begin our in-country orientation, meet the ambassador, and get a tour of the embassy tomorrow. I am so excited!!!!!