Pictures

Finally some pictures..

Wild horse in Parque de los Sierra Nevados

The view from the kitchen window in my home stay

Me ontop of my horse Loco. This was in Parque de los Sierra Nevados. By the way, i only paid around 5 dollars to ride. It was so fun!

A pork and tuna arepa. Arepas are seriously the national food of Venezuela.

Myself, Zach (lives across the hall), and Adam (roomate) with the Andes in the background.

Its going down/ living the good life

So it turns out i have been here for over two weeks. Its kind of a crazy feeling, like the honeymoon is over or something like that. It finally hit me that I will be here for a very long time, and that this trip is a little more than a vacation to hang out with friends. It has been hard to get acquainted here due to the fact that the whole school thing has not been happening as it should. Some background: Here in venezuela, they are in a heavy dry season. This lack of water makes for rolling blackouts throughout the country. For the past couple weeks, power goes out for around 3-4 hours a day. This doesnt exactly make people happy here and many blame it on the government and that these blackouts are punishment in this city because it is a huge student city, which means most here are liberal and against the government. So, with these blackouts, many people protest the outages and the government by blocking off big intersections and burning trash and garbage in the street. One night it hit a high and two students from merida died. This caused an uproar in the city and made things just worse. Because of all these events, we didnt have class for three straight days this week, which is nice but makes it hard to get used to how things are going to work here. Also, all of the classes that were missed have to be made up on friday's, which we usually have off every week.

But hey, it was kind of cool not to have school. I spent lots of time at pools here. These pools are usually in really nice hotels and you pay around 5 u.s. dollars to enter and stay as long as you want. Needless to say though, i am quite sunburnt as the sun is much stronger here because of the altitude. Other things i have found myself doing is working out, which i am so happy to have found a place here. The gym i go to is oddly enough in a garage of someone and i only pay around 8 dollars for. Its not the nicest thing in the world, but i have always found working out to be a giant stress reliever. Its critical to find stuff to do here because the school nights can be really boring. Because the home is more of a private place here, you cant exactly have people over or go to someones house and hang out, so i have fond myself on the internet(thank god for wireless) and reading a ton.

So for the weekend, Friday was nothing spectacular. Went to a bar but was really crazy because it was the final game of the venezuelan world series. It was neat though to see, they adore baseball and was cool to see the whole city alive and watching the game. As for Saturday, we ended up going to a place in the mountains called Aguas Termales, which is a hot spring in the mountains. A group was organized through our school through a tour company, but being alternative some friends and I decided that we were going to do this on our own without a tour company to save money. So we packed up some bread, chips, and some rum and headed for the springs. It worked out well because we actually got a ride from the tour company for a small price and went with the rest of the group. The hike was strenuous to get there and took about an hour straight uphill. We arrived at camp and set up our tents and such and then headed for the springs. We spent all day in the springs and when it got colder, started a fire and hung out there. Add some food and some rum and you have yourself a pretty good night. Except for one thing, it was freezing! And yes i did mention about being alternative, we figured we would only need two sleeping bags for 6 people in the mountains. Yah, that didnt work out so well. Lets just say i got really close with the people in my tent. But what a fun trip, and i was overjoyed that i got to use all of the camping gear i had purchased for this trip! Good times good friends, and gorgeous country. Its never a bad thing to go to bed, as cold as it might be, surrounded by moonlit mountains and the sounds of wild horses.
Well thats all for now, until next time.

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.

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!

En Merida!!!

Well I guess this is my first blog post and unfortunately it will be filled with lots of complaining about the length of my travel. Oh well. I left the Milwaukee airport safe and sound at around 5:30. Tiny little continental plane that actually really smelled. Arrived at the Houston airport around 8:30 and had lots of time to kill until the midnight flight. I ended up walking around the airport aimlessly in search of a McDonalds and finally found one. Pretty awesome that a lady gave me a free meal voucher and ended being the last one to be served before mc ds closed. I went back to the gate and ended up meeting up with Steve, a fellow american studying in Venezuela and we played cribbage(great packing idea) and talked. From there we met up with others flying from Houston and boarded the overnight flight.
The flight itself was only 5 hours but was longer because of the time change. Needless to say I did not get any sleep. The group finally entered Venezuela to extreme confusion on what to do about bags, customs(which were seriously a bit too easy), etc but eventually found our way into the airport. Thus began our 10 hour layover in the Caracas airport. There was five of us in the airport and one (Adam) turned out to be my roommate in Merida. The layover was really long and consisted of telling plans for the trip, cards, and trying to get some sleep( still on about 30 minutes of sleep the past day!) We had our first sketchy experience with exchanging money illegally to get a better rate under a staircase while one of our friends who was good at spanish translated and helped us change money.
After the exchange, it gave us local Bolivares for money and now we could buy a celebratory beer. (little bottles like half a regular one!) We ended up leaving caracas at 4:30 PM that day and took the hour flight to El Vigia, a city close to Merida. I slept a little on the flight and am learning that my spanish is terrible! it is so hard to communicate and understand because everyone speaks soo fast!
After the plane landed, it is another 2 hour bus ride to Merida in the dark. We can see the shadows of the mountains in the background and the lighted up houses on top of them. It is soo beautiful already. I arrived at VENUSA, the school we will be studying at in Merida, to host parents awaiting their students. Adam and I are fortunate to have a wonderful host mother who is so energetic and full of life. Even though it is hard to communicate sometimes, i already find myself becoming better and better at it, even after one night!
Now off to bed for much much needed sleep and an eventful orientation tomorrow morning at 9!