"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…..