First Days in Venezuela

Well my first full day in Venezuela proved to be very exciting and interesting. I started the day with an arepa(a pancake kind of dish filled with eggs and ham) and some very sweet coffee. I can already tell the language thing is getting better and can understand alot of what my host mom is saying. My roommate Adam, my host mom and I traveled from our apartment to the trolly( regulated city busses that run for only a few hours a day) to venusa my school for the semester. A side note, time is not a factor in venezuela. Our orientation was supposed to start at 9 and ended up starting at 10 and a tour at 3 that ended up at 4. Anyways, we have the orientation deal and meet some other cool american kids and hang and play pool and cards. After that, we had a lunch break. I was luck enough to meet Zack, a guy that had already been in Merida for a semester. He took me and a few others on a buseta(privately owned buses that cost around 25 cents) closer to the center of the city for some food. We ended up finding a small restaurant that served empenadas. I had a chorrizo and a fish empenada along with some of the best fruit juice ever! After that we came back to venusa and hung out a bit until our walking tour of the city. We took busses to the center of the city and walked around. Another side note. The traffic in Merida is absolutely crazy. Prett much no traffic laws. Everyone drives how they want to and is not afraid to cut people off. Its crazy crossing the street because there are no walk signals, you just have to time it right to cross the street. So anyways we took a walking tour with around 40 white people around the town. Needless to say, we received some pretty strange looks from venezuelans because they are not used to seeing so many white people in one place. Our last stop was a heladoria, an ice cream shop that is in the guiness book of world records for having the most flavors in the world. I had a cone with polar, which is the local beer, and a ham and cheese scoop with actual bits of ham and cheese in them. The beer one was actually very good but the ham and cheese was a little gross. We headed back to Venusa to go back home but was difficult because of riots on the main street. Motorcyclists were protesting a law that makes them wear reflective vests. Anyways, we got back home and had a steak and rice dinner with vegetable soup. Luckily for my roommate adam and i, there is two other venusa students across the hall, steven and zack. We ended up going downtown and going to a bar downtown and having some great rum and cokes and some beer. It was really fun especially the power outage in the middle of our time there.
Today was a long day but very amazing. We took about a three hour bus ride up to el parque de los sierra nevados, a national park in the andes. We made a couple of stops on the way up to the top. Got some more arepas(tuna, onions and pork) and some fresh pear juice. We then bussed to the top which was really high up(like 8,000 feet!) The altitude took a toll on me and took some getting used to especially when hiking uphill. We finally made it to the park after a long bus ride and trekked around the park. Beautiful lakes and streams and wildlife. We saw free grazing cows and also wild horses! The coolest part of my day by far was being able to ride a horse in the andes. Me along with four others rode horses on trails for around 4 dollars. It was such a blast trotting and cantering around the mountains. My horses name was loco, which means crazy, and was the leader of the horses so it was always in the front and aggressive. We walked around the park and I drank from a natural spring which was some of the best water ever. As we were walking the clouds surrounded the mountains and we were engulfed in the clouds. It was such a cool effect to literally be in the clouds. After we got on the bus and headed back to Merida. Pretty tired tonight and not going out. Need to catch up on some sleep. Pictures soon!