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/