Economía, lluvía y una cama rota.

Ten weeks ago I arrived in Venezuela, and now only six remain. The time hasn’t gone by horribly fast, but it probably will from this point on. Spring break begins this weekend and after that only 3 weeks of school and after that I will go to Machu Piccu and after that I will be home.

Maybe my favorite thing about this past month has been the free time. I spend a lot of time at VEN-USA, but very, very little doing homework. That has made for a lot of time playing guitar and reading books and running a few times a week as well. I’ve also learned a bit more about the Venezuelan economy/political system. As it turns out, the gas in your car has a lot to do with it.

Since Chávez took over in 1998, the Venezuelan Government has taken about 70% of the country’s oil’s revenue, a good chunk of that coming straight from exports to the US. With that money, Venezuela offers free education through university, health care, and a number of other social goods like the trolleybus system in Mérida. But most people here will tell you that the health care system is garbage and insufficient, and that there are no jobs when students graduate, and that it’s all Chávez’s fault. Everyone in Mérdida despises him. There is a lot of hope that Capriles Radonski will win the election in October and turn everything around. I am skeptical what one guy can do to change a country that has been so reliant on one product for so long and whose people have generally very little respect for law and authority. At the same time, I’ve met a fair amount of level-headed and smart university students, so who knows.

It’s almost April, which means the season of rain has begun. Since my last post there have been a few downpours, and rain of some sort has come about 3-4 days a week. The first big downpour I experienced here came when I was on a mini-hiking trip with a couple of friends to pico Pan De Azucar, a mountain close to Mérida. The rain came hard for about 2 hours and those were easily the longest hours of the semester but it’s hard to complain too much when you’re on a beautiful path in the middle of the mountains.

Aside from the rain, that trip was a blast. Towards the top of the mountain, there was a fresh layer of snow, the kind that perfectly forms in your hand to make snowball. Even though the thick layer of fog spoiled the view from the peak, it was cool throwing snowballs and watching them disappear into the white sky. The trip took 2 days, about 14 hours of hiking and a massive toll on my feet, which froze all night.

When we got back to the city—two Sunday nights ago now--the streets were like mini rivers. The curbs are nearly 2 feet tall here but the drainage system is not up to snuff and the sidewalks are about a feet wide. We experienced about five times that classic movie scene where the main character’s bad day gets worse as he gets soaked by the splash from a passing car. 

                       

Aside from that 2-day trip to Pan de Azucar, nothing else out of the ordinary has happened. I substitute-taught three classes of English at VEN-USA which was fun. What a confusing language though. Tomorrow seven Americans and three Venezuelans and I will make our way to the Gran Sabana, where the waterfalls and rainforests of Eastern Venezuela await us! I am expecting about 50 hours in total bus time, so I guess we’ll see how much I really enjoy free time after this journey.

As I was writing this, my bed broke. I guess it wanted to fit in with the broken TV, microwave and shower in our apartment! Waaaaa!

Anyway, thanks again for reading and hopefully this adventure will bring some more interesting material and good photos for the next time around! 

Mérida

One of the reasons I came to Venezuela and not, say, Spain, was that I thought I would be less tempted to go traveling all over and more likely to enjoy the country's culture and style of living. The first few weeks here, I definitely didn't get a chance to know the city because of how much traveling I did and how new everything was. But the past few weeks I've been able to settle down and get to know the town and develop a general routine here. Unlike all of the other posts thus far I don't have any sort of adventure to write about this time, but this post will more or less give you a basic idea of what life here is like for me.

The city of Mérida has about 200,000 people and it feels about like Madison in terms of its actual physical size. There is a big downtown area called "el centro" which runs about 4 blocks wide and 10 blocks long. There are about four big plazas within this area and tons of little stores and mini-shopping malls. I have been there quite a few times now and I am still awed at how so many of these stores haven't gone out of business. For every four stores, at least one is a "Zapateria", or shoe store. So many shoes! I haven't done the math, but my guess is the supply is much greater than the demand because Venezuelans aren't any crazier about shoes than the rest of the world is .There are also tons of practically identical convenience stores and pharmacies which sell a variety of things, and lots of vendors outside selling food and fútbol jerseys and the like. "Panaderias," or bread stores, are also everywhere and they sell great stuff for insanely low prices. You can buy basically four loaves of Venezuelan french bread for 10BSF ($1.25), as well as lots of little sweets like donuts or rolls for less than a buck.

Even though there is a lot of redundancy in the stores, I've found a few pretty cool ones a ways from the plazas. I went into  a few bookstores and found a hanful of used english classics translated to spanish. I bought "Adios a las Armas" (Farewell to Arms) and have been reading that when I can. It is very slow and sometimes frustrating but it is helping my spanish and the book itself is pretty intruiging. Before I came here I bought the english copy of the same book, so if ever I'm confused I can reference that.

I've also started watching ESPN and CNN and"Los Simpson" a lot, which helps my listening a lot. That is easiest the most difficult thing for me at this point. There are people whose accents are so strong or who speak so fast that I can barely understand anything they say, but at this point I can understand about 90% of what my mom and professors say, which is a lot more than I could the first week.

I sought out and found 3 music stores in the centro and ended up buying a guitar this weekend. I was hoping to get a Venezuelan one, but those are either very expensive and nice, or extremely cheap and practically unplayable. So I settled on a cheap classical one from Taiwan that played a lot nicer than the venezuelan ones of the same price. It's so nice to play again--I really never had time at Madison so I'm looking forward to getting back into that hobby and already have some big fattie callouses re-forming. Also in the musical realm, I've enjoyed going to a bar called "La Botana" in the centro, which is decked out in Bob Marley posters, Jamaican flags, good pizza, cheap beer and has a lot of cool Reggae bands that play every weekend.

I would say the transportation has been pretty easy to figure out--from my house I can pretty much go straight up the same road to get to my school, the centro, and most anywhere else I need to go within the city. There are three ways of getting around, besides walking. You can take a taxi, the fastest method assuming no traffic, for about 30 BSF ($3.50). You just have to make sure it's not a "gypsy" taxi that will rob or kidnap or abuse you, but no one has had any problems with that. You can also take a bus for 2BSF ($0.25) during the day. One of the perks of taking a bus is that you are guaranteed at some point in your venture to see a Venezuelan come on to the bus, hand everyone a product of some sort (usually a candy or chocolate) and announce it is a very good deal. The most memorable product  was a cd featuring some guy preaching about Jesus over soft latin-american music, which was sold by this guy who came on the bus playing sample tracks badly distorted by his cheap boombox. It was hard not to laugh. Also there are trolley-buses that run from 8-12 and 4-8 down the central part of the road. They are much faster than the other options when there is traffic and are also the cleanest thing in the city. Unlike the trash, which is collected maybe once or twice a week and otherwise collects on street corners, the trolley is very well taken care of by the oversupplied government workers who scold you for eating, drinking or putting your feet up on the seats.

I've continued to like all the food and my stomach seems to have come to terms with it for the most part. My mom doesn't provide a variety of food but I don't mind because there's always a lot and it's good. We will have a big slab of chicken, steak or ham every night alongside either platanos (basically tasteless bananas), potatos, yuca or rice.

Breakfasts are not quite as good. My favorite has been fried bananas with cheese, but we've only gotten that twice. Usually it's corn flakes, oatmeal, arepa (this is the definitive food of Venezuela; a mild tasting circular grilled bread that isn't very well received by everyone outside of Venezuela) with cheese or eggs, empanadas or paper thin pancakes. But we usually have fruit juice with breakfast and my god is that good. It's weird because in the US I think of smoothies and shakes as something of a luxury, but they are very cheap here and probably much better tasting. For lunches I usually have something similar to my dinners--meat, salad, rice, juice--at school or at a place nearby there.

It's time to run, but before I do, here is the link to my most recent flickr page (I lost the first one's password, but the old pictures are still there). Life is good! And as always, thanks for reading,
http://www.flickr.com/photos/77457295@N07/

No hay aventura sin problemas

This past weekend my friend Carter and I took a four-day, three-night hiking trip to the country's second largest mountain, Pico Humboldt. Even though I’d been traveling a lot since I’d been here, the 5 days we had off because of “Carnaval” festivities seemed the only reasonable time to take on this adventure. And I had read in my Venezuelan Travel book that the view from the top and the way there were absolutely gorgeous. So last Tuesday, we shopped around the city until we found the cheapest guiding company that could take us this weekend. We got what we paid for.

We met our guide around 9 a.m. Saturday morning. His name was Leonardo, and he seemed to be very happy and funny for a 54 year old. We packed a car and drove about an hour to the Sierra Nevada national park. When we had stuffed full our 3 packs, inside and out, and were just about all ready to begin, Leo shouted “Mierda” (shit, in Spanish) and explained that he had forgotten the tent poles in his house. Quickly he told us to wait in the shade and he hitchhiked back to the city to grab them. Neither of us was expecting everything to go smoothly, so we didn’t mind the two and a half hour delay too much. But it was the beginning of a “Mierda”-ton of mistakes, blatant lies, and nonsense on his behalf that would make the weekend a lot less fun than it should have been. I will avoid getting into too many of those details but suffice it to say he was extremely frustrating.

When he returned, he gave us some empanadas he had bought, promptly stuffed the poles into his sack and headed up the trail without waiting for us. Almost nothing was as difficult as those first 10 minutes of climbing were. Walking straight uphill, both my lungs and legs were immediately exhausted and I kept thinking, what on earth did I get myself into? But this faded pretty quickly, and while the first day was long it was very beautiful. There were lots of green shrubbery and some cool trees that only exist in the lower parts of tropical mountains. We used water from the mountains’ streams to fill our water bottles, which is completely pure and fine to drink.

Unlike the Boundary Waters, which has plentiful campsites on almost every lake, this route only had 2 good places to camp. This made for a long first day. Because we had left so late, we didn’t get to the 1^st campsite until well after nightfall, it must have been around 9 p.m. We had walked for about 3 hours with our headlamps on, and for each minute of those 3 hours we were under the impression we were just a few minutes from our campsite, because that is what our guide continued to tell us. The rest of the weekend we were very skeptical of any of his time estimates. 

When we finally arrived at the campsite, which we shared with about 6 other tents, we found it full of trash but with a decent spot to pitch our tent. We threw on all the warm clothes we had, which for me was 4 layers on top and bottom, and huddled around the stove. This weekend was the first time I have been to that gives you sunburn in an hour during the day, and freezes your water bottle overnight. It must have gone from 65 degrees F to 20 in 8 hours.

Generally speaking, everything tastes good in the wilderness and you will eat just about anything, but we didn’t need any convincing when he made a delicious cooked chicken and vegetable dish. Then we slept like rocks, on rocks.

We got up the next morning and had some delicious coffee and beginning-to-become-stale bread with cheese. I don’t remember the 2^nd day very well, but what I do is a lot of hiking and climbing, eating a delicious pineapple and nothing else for 8 hours, and a transition from green forests into silver and brown rocks as we got higher up in the mountains. We got to our campsite by the big “Laguna Verde” (green lake), where we would spend the next two nights, just before dark. We ate for dinner a mixture of ground beef, vegetables, salt and a lot of vegetable oil that he heated all together. It tasted okay, but it looked like the BP oil spill.

The third day was both the coolest, because we got to look around from the top of Pico Humboldt, and the most difficult, because of the climb it took to get there. We got up at 4:00 a.m. and ate another group’s leftover dinner for breakfast, which was actually the best breakfast we had. We, thankfully, went with another group of 5 up the mountain. If not for them, we’d have had no food and only 3 water bottles to sustain us for 10 hours. We climbed for about 3 hours through rocky stuff before we got to the huge plateau of ice leading up to the peak. At that point, the altitude really began to take its effect. Altitude sickness, in the way I experienced it, is the feeling you get when you stand up and all the blood rushes to your head—only much more frequent and intense.

We wore helmets and harnesses and strapped into a long rope when we got near the peak, but the climb itself wasn’t horribly difficult. The last few steps to the top were rather anticlimactic, but the view was anything but! We could see clearly and at all angles over miles of other mountain peaks and clouds and the specs that were our tents and the lake far below. It was ridiculously quiet, save for the wind, away from the traffic of the city and any planes. We took photos and exchanged high fives and whatnot for about 15 minutes before turning back and heading down the way we came. Halftime! The hike down to the campsite went fairly quickly, I suppose it took about 3 hours, and we finally had some free time to play some cards and chat. We had some noodles with leftover BP oil spill for dinner and went to bed around sundown.

We got up on the last morning, Tuesday, at 6 am, which was two hours later than we had planned, but the way back was surprisingly much faster than we expected. But that didn’t mean it was much easier. Hiking upwards gives you the sense that your lungs and calves are getting a great workout. Hiking down makes you feel like you’re am a step away from having Adrian Peterson’s knee and a broken ankle. But we booked it the last day and, despite only eating very stale bread, made it back to the park’s entrance by around 4:00. There was a truck waiting there for us, which was a great surprise as we were expecting to have to wait for a taxi back to the city. Then the best surprise of all was the nice, free cold beer we got when we returned to the guide company’s office in Mérida. I am not much of a beer connoisseur, and I’m sure what we had was bottom of the barrel, cheap Venezuelan light beer, but at that point, boy! did it taste good!

It’s Friday now, and my legs are still horribly sore, my lips are cracking, my face is all sunburnt and peeling, and I’m finally over a bout with constipation I had for a couple days. The trip was easily the most strenuous physical workout I’ve ever had, and the lack of sleep and nourishment made it harder, and the incompetence of our guide made it harder yet. But it was still totally worth it and an experience I imagine I won’t forget any time soon.

El Parásito y los Llanos

Last monday began the worst three days of my trip so far, but what followed were probably the best. Around mid-day on monday my stomach began turning and twisting, an awful feeling I would wish only on my brothers. Just kidding. But really, it was a miserable afternoon that I spent in bed, though I was able to sleep for about four hours. I steadily improved over the next day but the following night (tues) it was just as bad as the day before so my mama insisted I get checked out the following morning. A lab by my school discovered I had "Endogérmina," a stomach ailment/bacteria. I got some liquid medicine and fortunately that eased my stomach over the next few days and now I feel completely normal. Or should I say, regular!

With that out of the way, here is what I can remember of our weekend adventure to Los Llanos, the plainsland that covers much of central Venezuela:

Thursday morning we woke up at 4am and took a bus that left at 5:30. Like most things here, whether because of my still novice Spanish listening skills or because of Venezuelans' tendency to not explain things well, I had no idea what to expect on this car trip. My understanding was it would be about 3-5 hours. It was 12. But we stopped a few times and ate some really delicious meat and fruit, and it was actually a pretty fun road trip.

We arrived (we being 20 of the 27 Americans in our Abroad group and four Venezuelan guides/drivers) at this campamiento, basically a farm that hosts travel groups every weekend, around 5. We unpacked and quickly went back in the two vehicles, one jeep, one bus, to go on a quick safari of sorts. Some people got to ride atop the vehicles, and one of the Venezuelans shouted to stop the cars. He had seen a large snake. Toto, one of the guides, went and captured the Anaconda (a pretty small one) armed with a stick, bare hands and bare feet. It was really cool to see the two layers of fangs and its tongue and feel its scales. We saw a couple other things that night: lots of cayman, tropical birds, and Capibaras. Capibaras are the world's largest living rodents, and they are adorable.

The next day we woke up very early and some of us went Pirahna fishing while others went horseback riding. We drove to this little river and Toto showed us how to fish. It was just like the kind of fishing we do in North America but without a rod or a reel; rather a little stick attached to the line and hook. You throw the hook out, like a softball pitcher almost, and wait to feel the nibble before jolting your hand back to set the hook. First I caught a fish whose name I cannot recall, but then I caught a Pirhanna and was surprised at how colorful they were. I had been under the impression they were ruthless disgusting ugly creatures. I then learned that the stick attached to the rope also makes a good club to kill them with, and that what we caught would be our lunch the following day. Despite my early luck I caught absolutlely zero fish over the following 3 hours. After a while a little kid, he couldn't have been more than 8, came along and showed us all up. He probably caught 20 in about thirty minutes, and bashed each one over the head, allthewhile showing no emotion at all.

After that I got to go horseback riding, and was lucky enough to have one of the fastest horses. I raced a buddy and holy cow!, was that fun. I think I had "trotted" once or twice as a kid at camp, but never did I come close to going this fast. Pete: I should have listened when you told me to be a jockey.

Later in the day we went to a river and boarded two long boats, like the ones in "Tintin and the Broken Ear".  Every turn we were welcomed by more Cayman and capibaras and a few familiar birds, including a Blue Heron. Also, there was an enormous female Anaconda our guide spotted hiding in a log. Probably 9 inches in diameter. The creature was waiting to mate. But the coolest thing were these pink river dolphins that jumped out of the water a few meters from our boat. We returned after a while to another delicious meal and got to listen to a local three-piece Venezuelan band.

Sunday, we went on another safari and our guides caught another Anaconda and a cayman, but unfortunately couldn't find any anteaters. The climate was remarkably more hot and humid than it is in Mérida, and if not for the people, I would have thought we were in Central Africa.

Then we went back home, a 8 hour drive this time, where my mama was very excited to tell us that her favorite candidate, Henrique Capriles, had won the presidential primary by a huge margin that day. He will face Chávez in October. Literally everyone in Mérida dislikes Chávez and thinks he is crazy--but this is a very rich city and I don't think it will be a very close and interesting election. There is more I have to say on that matter but there are three people in this room speaking very loudly on skype so I have had enough of this for now. Peace, and thanks for reading!

Aguas termales y otras cosas

This being my 14th day in Mérida, I'm more or less acclimated to the way of life here. I know the basic layout  of the city nd I have started thinking in Bolivares (the $ here) rather than converting everything to US dollars. My spanish is improving, but it's still very hard to understand people because of how fast they speak.

Last week I started observing an English class at my school. It's so weird to see something that you've always known be taught in a classroom setting. For example, I know that "wrote" is the past tense of "write" and "lit" is the past tense of "light", but these are "irregular verbs" that the kids (mostly 17-19 year olds) must memorize. I more or less just sit there, occasionally helping the teacher (who is Venezuelan) and the class pronounce words, But I think teaching english as a foreign language is quite interesting and something I could see myself doing after college somewhere.

My classes are going pretty well. They are all in spanish and two hours long, which is a long time to focus and try to understand a different language. But they're far less work intensive than Madison, so I've enjoyed having a lot more free time.

The highlight of this past weekend was going to "aguas termales," aka thermal waters or hot springs. Ever since I played Kid-Icarus on Gameboy as a kid I have known that hot springs exist as some form of  natural meditation but I honestly never had any idea what they were. What I learned is that they are basically a natural hot tub, and they're awesome. We took a bus 1.5 hours into the mountains and then climbed for about 30 some minutes before we found this little man-made nook, supplied with hot water by a little stream going up into the mountains. We hung out in the little pool for about 3 hours, enough time for my upper body to get completely scorched by the sun. Fortunately aloe vera grows all over here!

I haven't said much about the culture here to this point. I think that in a lot of ways, it is very similar to Madison. There are a ton of university students, who are all very nice and willing to meet new people. In fact, everyone here is extremely nice and many go out of there way to introduce themselves or help us Americans out. After hearing so many words of caution regarding kidnapping and whatnot, it has been a pleasant surprise how genuine and friendly the people are here. That said, I still keep my guard up and don't venture alone ever after dark.

Venezuelans are also remarkably pokey. If you plan to meet a group of Venezuelans at 8:00, chances are they will arrive anywhere from 10 to 30 minutes late, without apology nor excuse. The sense of efficiency and punctuality is nonexistant. Eye contact is also very important: it is disrespectful to look down or away from someone that you encounter walking on the street.

This weekend, hopefully, our group of gringos is going with a few guides to Los Llanos, an area with wide stretching plains that features all sorts of awesome zoography. We are hoping for Anacondas and Crocodiles, at the least. Lastly, here is the site where I have been posting a few photos: http://www.flickr.com/photos/75211262@N04/sets/72157629164942869/  Hasta luego!

Men will fly someday! I have been there. I have seen it!

This weekend was a good one. On friday we went into a group of mountains overlooking a lake I cannot remember the name of. The coolest thing was on the way there,  though, when we stopped at an awesome mini-church overlooking the mountains. It was apparently built by a very old architect who only used rocks and searched for years to find ones that fit perfectly. When he built the church, he did not use any glue or cement or nada. Now, there is some cement in certain places because people are theifs and theifs steal rocks. But it was a beautiful little building nonetheless and inside it was buried the architect himself, a grave fit for a king!

Then we stopped at a little mini-zoo which had cages containing monkeys, parrot-like birds and some other animals. One of the monkeys had escaped from his cage, and chased around one of the girls in our group because she had a popsicle. Fearing some sort of rabid monkey disease, she relented and threw the popsicle to the monkey and it then perched itself in front of the caged monkeys and gobbled up the popsicle. Proof that punks exist amongst all animalkind.

When we got to these mountains, we hiked around and there were many great views and also some awesome plants. One plant was a very soft circular plant that had the softest and yet still firm leaves I have seen. It was toilet paper of the gods. I took a piece of a dead one, because here, toilet paper is precious. There is none in most public buildings.

Saturday was the bes day yet, though. After getting up early to search for a cellphone with mi mama, I went with about 15 other students up into the mountains to go paragliding. I had no idea what exactly paragliding was and I was picturing some sort of Wright-brothers-like contraption as we were driving up the snakelike road. Paragliding, though is more like flying underneath a parachute controlled by cords extending down to the pilot's hands. I have put a video up that will do the experience much better justice than this description, but even that is far from sufficient. You will just have to do it someday. It only cost 50 dollars here!

Anyway, we were up in the air for what I think was around 30 minutes (we being the guide "Gonzalo" and I). At one point he decided to some "tricks" and he rotated us outward and this reminded me of highsiding on a sailboat, only instead of being a foot above the water you are a kilometer  above the mountains. I imagine it would be pretty awesome to be a bird, and I thought about this phenomenal  disney scene a couple times in the air. After landing, a van took us back down the mountains and, still dizzy from the paraglide and getting more dizzy from the 270 degree turns our van was taking, I stuck my head out the window to impersonate the birds in another way. Along with the photos from the paraglide, there is a cool photo of this that one of our our chouffers was kind enough to take.

Then last night my 2 roommates and I went with our mama to a fiesta for her cousin. If you can imagine a typical latin american party, this was it: Piñata, Balloons, Salsa music, etc. But once again I have rambled, so thanks for reading and ciao for now!

Rojo significa nada en la noche

Que pasa hombres? This is the first chance I've had to just sit down and relajarse since I left Minnesota. So here is what I have been up to so far:

I left Minneapolis sunday around 3, and then went to Houston. I was very hungry and I thus ate a lot of Chinese food, from Panda Express or Fat Panda or something like that. Long turbulent flights and Airport Chinese food make for an unhappy stomach. So the layover in Houston (~6 hours) was pretty rough, but I spent some of it getting to know some of the other students in my group and some of it over the toilet. Waa! Our plane to Caracas left at midnight, and then we had about a 12 hour layover there. We didn't get to explore at all, but a very cool sight was flying into Caracas during a nice sunrise over through the clouds. It looked like someone stretched black cotton candy over a watercolor painting. Caracas, which is Venezuela's capital city and a good place to get kidnapped, was less gross than I imagined and looked pretty cool all nestled into the mountains.

From Caracas we flew an hour to El Vijia and then took a big bus ride to Merida, where I am now. It was a cool ride. Looking out of an open window at a lot of enormous mountains and trees with spanish moss is not something I have done in Madison or Minneapolis.

So I have been here for appx 48 hours but it feels much longer than that. The first night we (two minnesotans and I) were picked up by our Host Mama, a 70 year old retired woman, who taught us that because policemen don't work at night, and because there are many carjackers, nobody obeys red lights at night. We live in a small apartment that has a beautiful view of the city and los Andes, I will post photos when I have wifi good enough to do so. Her cooking is very good, though the cheese here has a subtle aftertaste that is reminiscent of gasoline. Besides that though, it really is delicious!

Yesterday we had our initiation at VEN-USA, my school. It is small, only about 4 stories and very small lengthwise, but it has a nice lounging room complete with an out-of-tune piano, hammocks, pool, ping pong, and bathrooms with toilet paper. All of these things are hard to come by elsewhere in the city. We were shown around town yesterday afternoon although I have yet to figure out how to get anywhere. The nice thing is, taxi rides cost about 20 bolivar or $2.20 so it is not as big a problem as it could be.

Today I had a long day of class (3 classes, 2 hours apiece). The details I am already forgetting but I have a very funny professor teaching two of my classes, so that's good. Those at school speak more clearly and I can have pretty decent conversations with them in spanish, but with others it is difficult. They don't pronounce the "s" at the end of their words and speak very fast. But I am picking things up faster than I thought.

This weekend I am hoping to do some sort of excursion that involves hanging from ropes off of a bridge (don't worry mother it is safe) and also there is a group trip planned for friday. It's been a blast so far, hope everyone reading this is doing well! Adios!