He terminada!

AY AY AY! Yo acabo de terminar mi segunda clase y yo totalmente estoy terminada. I apologize for not posting to this baby for awhile, I have missed it. My life had been a little bit taken over by spanish compositions & early morning class time. Por supuesto no quiero salir esta ciudad. This is my last weekend left in Merida and I absolutely can NOT believe how fast the time has gone by. A group of people are traveling to Los llanos this weekend but I decided it be best to stay in sweet Merida and dance in las discotecas por la ultima vez. I feel a little bit bad for not going to Los Llanos but the group of people who I've gotten to know best are staying here and I also need to save my money for my EXCITING NEWS::: Instead of going straight back to Chicago after 6 weeks, I will be making a pit stop with 5 other people in Margarita Island for 4 nights. If you google Margarita Island you will understand just how excited I am. My plane tickets: set. My money: exchanged. My classes: done. I have a feeling that this last weekend will be the best one yet and things will just get sweeter once I'm laying on a beach and learning how to surf. I love and miss you all! It's not too long until I return to the windy city ;) Less than 2 weeks!

Mercado Principal

El mercado principal. Definitely not like your average mall. I'm not lieing when I say that the culture here in every way is rich because even their mercados have so much life to them.

It has been raining a lot in Merida and on Friday night it rained so hard Krista and I got charged extra for our taxi ride because one street literally resembled a scene from Day after Tomorrow. Yikes. So much rain. Today when we walked and got our late lunch of pizza it was raining yet again but this time it was nice and almost comfortable. We had an amazing meal of pizza and cheesecake and then on our walk back Krista took a photo of a incredibly interesting mariposa that was resting on the ground. The photo now serves as the only remaining physical proof of the butterfly because one second after we took its picture a crow swooped down and devoured it. :-(

Right now it's pretty late in terms of Venezuelan time... but I don't have class until 2pm tomorrow which is a nice relief. As much as I love to learn spanish I always feel apprehensive before jumping into my intensive schedule that totals up to 22 hours total of classroom time. Dios mio. Good night, Buenas noches & I shall continue on my Venezuelan journey for my remaning 2 weeks, :-(

Wherever did the time go...

Spirit

Bueno,

The beautiful picture that I added at the top was taken at Choroni Beach. The beach was a beautiful rather remote location that I would love to go back to. We went to the beach last weekend and this weekend was action packed with dancing. Salsa, tambores, and reggaeton. Honestly the more that I stay here the less I want to leave. This trip has confirmed my passion of exploring and seeing new places immensely. Walking in the Mercado Principal this past weekend was delightful. I walked through the aisles of guitars, dolls, fruits, jewelry, clothes, scarfs, and wine. All of the vendors greeted us by saying "a la orden" aka at your service and most stalls had some Shakira song playing very loudly. All of the products are piled up to the ceiling and I was quite overwhelmed as I tried to look at everything the Venezuelans were trying to sell. Today is the perfect lazy Sunday and a period of rest after a lot of dancing. I will go get pizza with Krista, write my composition for class that is due tomorrow, and then pasar un rato con Derek and Adam with their host mom. Tonight we plan to casually drink some wine with cheese and watch UP.

Querida Venezuela

Querida Venezuela,

Tengo una confesion
Pienso que estoy enamorandome contigo
Yo quiero estar mas de amigos
Me encantan tus montanas hermosas y gigantescas
Me fascina la rica cultura
Es una lastima que yo necesite salir en menos de 3 semanas
Yo me extranare mis nuevos amigos americanos y venezolanos que les conoci aqui
Yo necesito comentar, que tus playas especialmente Choroni que yo he visitado son las mejores del mundo
Las arepas, las empanadas, la pan de azucar, el chocolate, las panaderias, LAS DISCOTECAS y BARES, LOS TAMBORES!!
Me encanta todo que me ofreces muchisimo muchisimo
Yo acabo de darme cuenta que no quiero salir
No voy a salirte mi amante fantastico, nunca voy a salir

Sinceramente,
Amelia

Demasiada Tarea

Hola mis amores,

I have SO much homework today. Today is my last day of class and Monday I will begin my second class which will be 6 hours a day of intensive spanish communication and continued written composition. Thankfully my teacher is giving us 3.5 hours today in class to finish our "trabajo final", which includes a summary in response to an article we read about reading comprehension and the constructive process of writing, a short composition, and a detailed list of vocabulary definitions. All in Spanish of course. I'm going to be very happy to be done and I will celebrate the conclusion of my 3015 Spanish class with a beautiful group trip to Choroni Beach. YAY. It's going to be quite the trip, we leave tonight around 8:30 on a 10 hour bus ride to Maracay, then another two hours from Maracay to Choroni Beach. Our group is staying there for 2 nights in a hostal and we won't return until very early Monday morning.

I'm most excited for the chocolate because I have heard numerous times that the Cocoa there is beyond believable. And I read that to get there we travel through the cloud forest mountains of the Henri Pittier National Park before descending to the sea. I can't wait to see what this weekend has in store, I just need to get through my rigorously intense academic day and then I'm home free. Plus, and this is a big plus, there are many African-Venezuelans at Choroni and it is custom for them to play tambores on the beach and dance in the sand. Viva Venezuela, Viva, Viva.

I'm going to get back to frying my brain with Spanish but I hope that everybody has a wonderful weekend. I'm only bringing my disposable camera this weekend but I'll be sure to share pictures that other people take of the beautiful scenery.

One last note:

Top 5 things that I miss back home
1. Family and friends
2. My bed
3. Being able to flush toliet paper
4. Thai food
5. The gym

Algunas fotografias

Chevere.

Buenos tardes,

He tenido la mejor fin de semana, fue muy divertido. This past weekend has been super in many many ways. Thursday started the epicness with a group trip to a cocktail bar called Bananas and then finished with poco loco. I really like a lot of people who are in the program, and I'm referring to Americans. They really make it so much fun and it's convenient because we all just help each other out and stay together. I have been loving all the food that my host mom has been giving me: arepas, pasta, pan de dulce, everything. I was surprised that they eat pasta a lot here I don't know why.

Anywho there have been a lot of Alvaro's friends in and out of our apartment the past couple of days. All week Krista and I have been hearing them practice their cello or violins because they have a big concert today (Sunday evening) that we all are attending. It's kind of nice to wake up to classical music that's actually really good, I mean they really practice a lot and truly love their instruments. Sometimes their music even enters my dream and I won't realize it until I wake up haha, crazy. I have been genuinely loving Merida more and more the longer that I am here. I can't believe that I've been here for 2 weeks. I don't think I've ever gone on a family vacation that has lasted as long as two weeks. Seriously though, my time here makes me want to travel to other places in the world so badly. I need to see Europe and Asia and definitely do some volunteer work in Africa. It's so cliche but the world really is incredibly vibrant. You don't realize how differently people live until you actually immerse yourself in it. Again I'm glad I took this oppurtunity and I would love to come back in the future.

Back to my weekend... Friday was a typical tourist day. A group of the girls in the program with a hand full of guys went to a really nice pool at a hotel in Central Merida to sunbathe and tomar el sol o broncear. Right as we put our towels down on the chairs and begin to lay out, it rains. I often forget that right now is Merida's rainy season but unlike the midwest it rains, stops, and goes back to beautiful weather. We finally got a good hour of sun and all of us girls were relaxed and happy when the strangest thing happened. Let me just add that at this point us gringas are used to being stared at. You walk down the street, people stare. You go to the grocery store or any public place, people stare. This day at the pool was no different than any other day that we've had in Merida, and of course people were staring. We receive attention because there are no blondes in South America and for some strange reason there are a lot of blondes in the program and EVERYBODY loves to notice us. Ok, so the staring at this point is not a problem, completely normal. The strange part was that a group of younger Venezuelans asked each one of us girls individually if they could take a picture with us. I'm not kidding all of us girls took at least 5 pictures with different youth members who were also at the pool that day. The group of boys would stand at the end of our chairs, while we were laying out, and ask to take one picture with us. Most girls, including myself, agreed but we soon realized that after one picture was taken, all of the other boys would need a picture with us as well. It was so weird. It was as if they had never seen girls with different hair before, let alone girls in general. My friend Zoe was laying upside down just sleeping and sunbathing, and she opens her eyes to find Venezuelans leaning over her asking over and over "Puedes tomar una fota conmigo!?!". I finally asked one of the boys why they all wanted pictures with us, and he said that it was because we were just so beautiful. He then continued to ask me how and why we all were so beautiful and I just said "No se, no hay una respuesta."

My friday concluded with Venezuelan pizza and a lot of lotion on all of the sunburn that I ended up having, even though it was for the most part cloudy that day. Saturday was very relaxing and included a trip to the mall for some good old shopping and then off to the Venezuela v. Canada Soccer game. The biggest difference that I saw between Venezuelan and American sports arenas is that the Venezuelan stadium didn't have half as many advertisements, and it also sold hardly any food. The soccer game was very fun and energetic and although I've never been to an official soccer game it was easy to follow what was happening on the field. The futbol game took up most of my Saturday night and I didn't have the urge to go out since the next day I would be paragliding. Speaking of which it was EPIC. Once some pictures are uploaded I will for sure post them on here. You literally fly, you are strapped to the front of a pilot and run off of a moutain until your parachute catches the wind, then you coast up in the sky and see a view that you'll probably never experience again. OMG. LOVED LOVED IT. It was very epic, but once you are floating in the sky it's more relaxing. I'll def upload those pictures once I can and post them but as for now necesito ducharme. In a little bit I'll be off at Alvaro and Diego's orchestra concert, then I'm looking forward to some nice peace and quiet while I write my spanish composition that is due tomorrow. Hasta pronto mis lectores.


Most of these pictures are from the first weekend: Camping and the Moutains.







p.s. feel free to leave comments :)

Parasite.

Two words that sum up how my day was yesterday...stomach parasite. It was horrible. Parasites are increcibly common whenever people travel abroad but just because they're common does not mean they are enjoyable AT ALL. All of yesterday I fought intense stomach pains and a raging fever and couldn't eat anything at all. I took parasite pills yesterday and something to calm down my fever and literally was in my bed either laying down or asleep all day. The worst part of the parasite was yesterday morning when I was not able to leave the bathroom for at least an hour and a half, and I don't mean throwing up, haha. It was gross. Nevertheless right now I am at Venusa and have some time before my class starts. I feel much MUCH better, no longer have stomach pains and I'm pretty sure my fever is gone as well. I feel weak from not being able to stomach anything yesterday but I'll be totally fine. When I was sick and sleeping, the weirdest thing that happened was that I had the most vivid nightmares. I don't remember all of them but half were in english and the other half in spanish. The one that I do remember is that one of my friends and my mom and I went shopping at target, and somehow my friend and I got mixed up with a gang that lived in the back alleys of target, hahaha. So strange.

Today is a rather rainy day in Merida. I walked here very very very slowly (because I still have no strength) in a very light Venezuelan shower. I'm looking forward to this weekend because we are going to see the Venezuela v. Canada soccer game on Saturday and then most likely Paragliding on Sunday :-). Also on Sunday my roomate and I are planning on going to our host brothers' concert. Alvaro plays the violin and Diego plays the cello. We have been hearing them practice all week long and they both are excellent musicians. I know I will be fully recovered by tomorrow or Saturday, I just can't consume any alcohol for 3 days because of the parasite pills that I took. Oh well. Party on Sunday! Haha. I'm hoping my class goes by rather quickly today because I don't have any tolerance for 6 hours of nonsense. I hope everybody is good and well back home, I miss good old Elmhurst but I'm still falling in love with Merida, parasite or no parasite. I wanted to post a couple more pictures from last weekend. I really really need to take more pictures it's just that during the week there's not much to take pictures of because I'm just in class all day. For sure this weekend I'll bring my camera and capture some memories I can share with everybody on here. Besos!

Sitting at Venusa

Hola todo el mundo,

Currently I am sitting at the Venezuelan University waiting for "game night" to begin. I had my 6 hour class today 1:30-7:30pm y estoy cansada. This morning I woke up to an eclectic blend of noises. I heard a bunch of construction noises going on because they are working on the building next to my apartment building, and Alvaro was either loudly playing classical music or playing his violin hooked up to a speaker. Buenos dias, haha. Tomorrow I have class at 8:00am-2:00pm y no estoy emocionada por que no soy una persona de la manana. Pues ustedes ya sabian!

I really hope that I can make it through this week with my energy intact & parasite free. The good news is that I only have my 3015 class for one more week after this week! The last three weeks I will have to pretend that I am a happy camper early in the morning because I have class a las 8:00 cada dia. Dios mio. This weekend many people are talking about going to the soccer game on Saturday, I think that would be pretty sweet. However I'm the most excited to go to some Venezuelan beaches!!! :)


I think that in the future when I join the Peace corps I am going to ask to be stationed somewhere in South or Central America. I really really love the culture here muchisimo, it is so vibrant and alive. Literally there is so much color here with houses and buildings and signs painted on the walls. I feel at times like I am on display because of my blonde hair though haha. When I put on shorts and walk outside it is as if a switch is turned on and oi piropos de cada lugar! I hope that all is well with everybody who's reading this, I'm going to game night now aka juegos de cerveza and then getting some dinner in a bit. If my host mom makes empanadas de frijoles that would COMPLETELY MAKE MY DAY, I would go crazy. I love Venezuela, and now that I feel a little more settled there are a couple things I am starting to miss but I really want to have the most fulfilling experience possible.
If we don't go to the beach este fin de semana, voy a ir de compras y el partido de futbol. Either way I'm going to explore and immerse myself in this beautiful land.

Besos!
Amelia

Mountains & Views

first week of Venezuela

Hola mis amigos!

I have almost officially been in Venezuela for one week & I could not feel better here. I feel that part of me really belongs in South America. It will be considered for one of my potential future living places for sure, it makes the list. I have a lot to update you about so just strap in and imagine Venezuela just like how I feel it. You can never fully feel the energy of a location unless you go there & I really highly recommend visiting Merida. My pictures won't do justice but just believe me when I say that Merida is really something special and MUCH MUCH different that my quaint hometown of Elmhurst. I currently am sitting on my bed in my host family's house listening to letra de solito by los cadillacs and recovering after my weekend camping trip to a hot spring that is in the mountains.

I'm going to start at the beginning. We arrived here late monday night and let me tell you monday was a very very long day of traveling and probably the worst day of the week for me. All my lack of sleep before my departure to Venezuela and all the energy that went into preparing what to bring gave me the worst sore throat on Monday. When I arrived in Miami on Sunday night it was already 7:30pm and I ended up just talking to nice girls named Amy and Kayla and then going to sleep for my 7:00am flight. We all got up 3:45am and shuttled over to the airport at 4:30am only to wait for 2 hours and buy some breakfast. Venusa, the coordinating organization for the study abroad trip to Venezuela, told us that with international flights we need to get there at least 3 hours earlier. South America has no set time schedule and even its airports tend to change its flight times spontaneously, True. A group of American students primarily from the midwest waiting for 2 hours and not even being able to exchange dollars to bolivares, unecessary! That was just the beginning to a day that consisted of 2 flights, one from Miami and Caracas and then from Caracas to El Vigia, and then a 2 hour bus ride from El Vigia to Merida. The entire time I began to dip my toe in the pool of spanish language saying things such as "Gracias, no lo necesito" and "con permiso" to the spanish-speaking flight attendants.


My host mother and her friend picked up my roomate and I from the school in Venezuela called Venusa late Monday night once we arrived. My roomate's name is Krista Johnson and she has blonde hair and blue eyes. She grew up in rural Minnesota and attends the U of M studying Spanish Portugese and French. My host family consists of Maen, my Venezuelan mother who is a lawyer and teacher at ULA, Alvaro, my adopted father, Carolina, their 28 year old daughter who is married and no longer lives here, Jose, their 22 year old son who is studying physical education, and Alvaro jr. who plays the violin, their 18 year old youngest son. The family is extremely welcoming and my Venezuelan mother feeds Krista and I very traditional Venezuelan food. A lot of arepas, empanadas, fried eggs, and juice. I really have been loving the Venezuelan food but it is an extremely meat heavy culture and most of it is fried. I would have hoped that fruit is more popular here to eat at meals because I miss eating a ton of fruit all the time. When I told my host brothers that I am a vegetarian they replied "En Serio!?!". It is hard for many people here to understand my motives for NOT eating animals haha, just a very different culture. Krista and I stay in an apartment that is conveniently only 15 minutes away from Venusa, our school. We have our own bathroom and each have a twin size bed. I noticed that there are no clocks or mirrors anywhere in the apartment besides the bathroom. Small insects are all over the house because in Venezuela they don't put screens in their windows. I really don't mind the bugs at all it is just when a bigger bug leaks in I get a little uneasy and make Krista kill it. She usually does kill it as long as it isn't a spider because she has an intense phobia of spiders. One quick side note to the doors in Venezuela, they are a mind game! Since we live in an apartment we have to enter two outer gates and then the gate outside of our door and then finally our door. The first time we had to open all four doors by ourselves we had gone to a Venezuelan Bar called poco loco and not even exaggerating it took us 45 minutes to open on of the doors. And it isn't just us, at least 4 other people who are in different houses have commented on the Venezuelan doors. I really love my adopted 6 week family but I hope to be able to spend more time with them during my last 5 weeks. Maen and Alvaro and their 2 sons all sleep and live in one apartment and we are in a completely separate space across the hall and Diego, one of Alvaro jr.'s friends also lives in our apartment. So needless to say I see my host mom but there has been little collective family activity, which is fine because Krista and I both had a super packed first week and each member of the family seems very busy with different activities.

Upon our awakening on tuesday we went to Venusa and underwent several orientations which ended in a beautiful tour of the city of Merida. The highlight of the tour was when we went to a heladeria close to the plaza that is in the Guiness World Record for having the biggest selection of ice cream flavors. A girl named Zoe got bean and rice ice cream. I kept it safe with vanilla chip y galletas. We also saw an incredibly immaculate and ginormous Cathedral that had extensively meticulous designs. Let it be known that the group of kids that are on this program from the United States is about 40 45 kids so we heard the word Gringos A LOT especially when our huge American group travels anywhere together with our back packs, and shorts, and flip flips. One of the program coordinators Hector said something that I found to be funny, he said that to a Venezuelan flip flops = an American with money who can't run away. Also they are not lieing about piropos, or cat calls, when American girls walk outside we DO hear whistles, honks, phrases in spanish, and miscellaneous spanish words. Krista and I made the mistake of both wearing shorts and tank tops one night to walk to a nearby plaza and of course 2 blondies with a lot of skin showing will attract more attention than normal. We at the time were running low on clean jeans and were fed up with sweating through pants but Oh My Gosh 5 seconds after we walked away from the outer gate we heard whistles and cat calls, and they didn't stop until we were safely back inside after we got ice cream. We were even told an I LOVE YOU from a very fast passing car on the street.

After all of the introductions we all went to a local bar called poco loco on tuesday night where we drank Solera, danced salsa and got really sweaty! I met a nice man named Jesus who lives in North Carolina but is from Venezuela. At all of the bars and clubs here they play their music ridiculously loud so any conversation ends up being a shouting contest in spanish. Much of this past week I lost my voice from the combination of beer and speaking ridiculously loud in attempts to compete with the music. I was told on several occasions that I both spoke spanish very well and danced well. No surprise there. It was very interesting because there is a lot of American music in Venezuelan night life and depending on if you go to a bar or a club you will hear reaggetone, rap, tambores, rock, or traditional salsa/merengue music.

My wednesday and thursday I attended my 3015 spanish class from 1:30pm-7:30pm and in that class my teacher does not speak one word of english. I feel very confident in my speaking skills and even though I can't pick up everything when she starts to speak fast I love the full immersion and the distance away from the english language. I get frustrated and mentally tired sometimes of listening to entirely spanish but I really am learning a lot and it is very effective. I have a very long class schedule but it's nice not having to rush early in the morning. Wednesday night we had some salsa lessons at the school after our classes then we took those lessons to a club called cucaracha. The clubs in Venezuela are surreal. Everybody is dancing and the drinks are usually cheap. I love dancing at all of the clubs and bars because for me I feel like there is more energy in the culture.

I think the most epic part of this entire week for me was the weekend. We only have classes four days a week and so on friday we went on a hike up the mountains. We took a bus for about 2 hours and stopped twice at little Venezuelan shops and restaurants and to take pictures and proceeded to a lake. I don't remember the name of the lake but we went to a lake that was near lago negra and from lago negra we hiked about 3 hours to another lake. Let me just say that walking through the natural surrondings is amazing. You see wild horses and the clouds are reflected in all of the lakes while in general it's as if you can breate easier. I really can't go very far to try and explain what hiking in the mountains felt like, hopefully the pictures that I will post will do a little bit of justice.

After an entire week of fighting a sore throat and stuffy nose and after all the hiking in the mountains I was pooped Friday. I stayed in and readied myself for my departure saturday morning to a camping trip at a hot spring in the mountains. Just a side note Venezuelans NEVER tell you the whole story, ever, and they have no time schedule. We all met at a grocery store at 10:00am Saturday morning to buy food for the weekend and we did not end up leaving Merida for the hot springs until 1:00pm. It seems ridiculous but it just is that way in Venezuela, punctuality is not valued nearly as much as in the United States. I am still getting used to the slower way of life yet I can't help getting annoyed when somebody walks extremely slow in front of me, it's just the Chicago in me. Anyways we took jeeps up the mountain with all of our backpacks and a ton of sleeping bags and tents and then we stop at a point and have to hike the last 30 minutes to get to our camp site. I was wearing sandals, SANDALS. And everybody had to carry firewood, tents, their mat and sleeping bag, our own backpacks so basically we were pack mules and about to hike 30 minutes to our camp site. This is the part when what I mentioned before about Venezuelans not telling you the whole story comes in. Our large American group starts the trek to the campsite only to learn that we literally have to walk on the edge of cliffs carrying a ton of crap and with some people in SANDALS, like me! I'm not kidding there were many moments during that hike that I was definitely scared and I got even more scared when I looked to my left and saw the long fall down the mountain that I would have taken had I lost my balance. In retrospect that hike was incredibly epic and the most dangerous I have ever taken in my entire life and I loved that I did it but I would have liked some freakin' mental preparation. The actual camping was incredibly amazing and it was actually my very first time formally camping somewhere. The view of the Andes and the clouds from the camp site and the hot springs was beyond breathtaking. With a group of 23 young people and limited supervision there was a bit of craziness but details need not be disclosed. I felt bad for a couple people because they got food poisoning and altitude sickness and were not happy campers because they ended up being sick all night.

Today, Sunday, Krista and I just stayed around our host house upon our return and went to get some ice cream. My first week was amazing and I feel that I filled my quota of exploration of Merida. I can't wait to find out what this next week will bring me....