Day One-Traveling

Sunday January 17th- Monday January 18th: Mom and I left Sunday night after work (and the incredible Vikings game) to drive over to Miami. We slept over at Emily's new apartment (which is really nice!) and left at 3:45am to head to the airport. There was no traffic! Everything went smooth through the airport and I met up with the other VENUSA students in Miami. The first flight was good. I watched friends and played Tetris on the in flight personal monitors. We landed in Caracas and the scenery was gorgeous! There were about 20 of us traveling together with Hector from VENUSA. Thank goodness Hector helped us through all the traveling. I can't imagine going through all that alone!
After we all got our luggage through customs, the Venezuelan nature of things began. We were in no rush at all to get to our next flight, which did leave 4 hours later, but still there was no sense of motivation at all. That's the way life is here and its hard to adjust to coming from a place where everyone is always rushing to go somewhere. Anyway, we exchanged money and boarded our plane to El Vigia. The airport in El Vigia was really small! We landed on the runway and then walked on the tarmac to the one room baggage claim area. This was around 5pm, so it had been a long day already and we still had an hour and a half bus ride to Merida. It gets dark here around 6:30 and when it gets dark it happens fast because the mountains are so high that the sun doesn't peak through. So most of us fell asleep on the bus ride through las montanas a Merida.
My host family was there to pick me up at VENUSA. My dad is a doctor that delivers babies and my mom is a nutritionist. I also have a sister Rosa, who is 19 and studies las lenguas modernas (modern languages) at the University of Los Andes, ULA. My dad, Rosa y su novio picked me up and took me to the apartment. It is very small! Smaller than my apartment at school. The size difference in the houses and the beds as well as the portions is significant. For dinner that night we had arepas, which is kind of like a flat biscuit, and scrambled eggs. They don't eat heavy meals for dinner. But they also typically don't eat until 8 or 9pm.
Oh! funniest part of the day: I went to take a shower before finally sleeping and there was a large garbage bin in the shower filled with water. I went to go ask the mom why that was in the shower and if I should move it and she told me that it was a reservoir. But I still didnt understand why it was in the tiny shower. She asked if it bothered me. Well, it didn't other than I thought maybe they wouldn't want me to shower with it in there. Nope...I just showered with the lid on the bin. Hahaha!