Gringos

Well another blog for a couple of more days in Venezuela. Im starting to get more used to life here and all that it throws at people. Had my first class on Thursday. It was a Spanish class for intermediates in the language. Its kinda tough and oh yah its all in spanish. Everything in that class is spanish. All speaking writing..all of it. It is a cool class because there are only 5 of us in there. Lots of one on one from the teacher and great times to practice spanish. As for the spanish, its going better for me and I can communicate pretty well with my host mom. Its a really good feeling. She slows down her spanish for us and once and in a while i have to break out my dictionary on the spot haha.
The past few days have been pretty relaxed but pretty fun. we dont have any classes onfridays and a three day weekend really hits the spot. Yesterday I finally got my phone to work. It was pretty slick, because they just put a venezuelan sim card in my phone. Others had to buy a whole new phone and i saved lots of time and money because my phone was compatible. Last night we had a fiesta at my school and also a program called nuevos encuentros (new encounters). Its a program designed so that we americans can talk and practice our spanish with venezuelan students at my school that are studying english. Its a really cool program for us to practice the language. After that we had a barbeque with chorrizo and steak on the grill along with a cabbage salad and potatoes. I met a venezuelan student named edgar and i talked to him for like 2 hours. It was awesome because he had the same level of english that i have spanish. We talked all about our lives and a decent amount about government and President Chavez.
As I have been here for only a few days, I have noticed that people either love or hate chavez. Those that are for chavez are called chavistas and those that are against chaves are anti chavistas. Merida is a college town, so therefore it is a little more liberal of a city and contains more anti chavistas. Edgar was so passionate about how much he hated chavez and even went to the extent that he wanted to kill him. It hit me hard and was shocking. There is no middle politics in this country, only one side or the other. It seems like chavez will stay though, because he has control of the whole government and the police and military, so no one wants to mess with him. Today in Caracas there were huge anti chavista marches due to the frequent power outages in the country. In response chavez organized his own chavista marches to counteract the others. I will come back to this subject at another time.
Well off for the night and going to hit up a club with some buddies.