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.