Last day in Merida :(

I hate saying goodbyes! I went to yoga this morning with Eira for the last time. I really enjoyed going every tues/thurs and although some of Eldilio's exercises were a bit strange I always felt better afterwards. Except today I had a hard time concentrating and letting my mind relax because there was one of those HUGE nasty brown butterflies just chillin' on the white wall. It was basically staring me down.

Today at school, I just had to sign in for my geography class and check my grades. Todo chevere! Then I went up to Plaza Belen to buy some cocosette in bulk. BEST DAY EVER! Cocosette fudge and cocosette cookies are packed in my luggage right now. They better not take them away from me at the airport. If they do I will scarf them all down!! No wasting of the cocosette allowed.

Tonight there was a party in VENUSA and I danced until they pulled me off the dance floor! Merengue and salsa baby! Ugh..but I had a very hard time saying goodbye to Johan. I started crying when he thanked me for being such a special person to his sons and to the whole family. He couldn't hold back the tears either. What a beautiful family! I will miss them so much, but they offered me a place to stay when I return. So I need to come back as soon as possible.

Overall this was the best experience of my life! and I knew it would be! There's nothing more I could have done to make this any better. Everything worked out so well and I thoroughly enjoyed my time here. It's sad because I spent some of my time here wishing to go back home and now that I finally am leaving for home, I'm wishing to stay in Merida. I'll be leaving in 4 short hours to head to El Vigia, ending my life in Merida......at least for now.

Ultima Dia con mi novio y su familia

I had mentioned to Johan and Yija before that mi padre venezolano made me french toast for breakfast, but they had no idea what it was. So today I went over to there house to make them french toast. Johan had a soccer game in Mucuchies with his team Los Caballeros de Merida. So it was just Yija, the boys and I hanging out all day. They loved the french toast! and then we played for futbol for a while in the street. Oh and before I went to there house I had to get the ingredients and some colored pencils for my libro infantil and I ran into HARRY! (johan's cousin). I told him I was headed over to their house and he said he would be there too later on in the day. Well, it turns out he's their neighbor! haha I had no idea. I was out playing in the streets with the little kids. Then we just had music playing and hung outside with Yija, Harry and other family members. Apparently, everybody lives on the same street. I know that Johan's crazy mother lives below them. She yelled at the boys for being too loud when they were playing futbol. They wanted me to stay longer but I had so much homework to finish up! The last week of school always kills.....even in Venezuela.

Xcor acapella concert

Angel and Rosa invited me to an acapella concert tonight because Angel's uncle sings in the group. It was incredible the way they sang!!! Angel's brother Ali came too with his girlfriend. (Man, is he cute!) Anyway, the group started off singing a tribute to Michael Jackson. I was dancing and singing along for sure. Then they sang some spanish songs and then What is love? by Cher. This just proved how americanized the music is here in Venezuela. It amazes me how much influence we have on the culture and I didn't even realize it!

Zapatos Rotos

So those cute turqoise shoes I bought yesterday...well I wore them out last night for only 2 hours and they fell apart. That's what I get for buying shoes in VZ? Well I told my mom about them today during lunch and she gave told me I should return them and see if I could either get my money back or exchange them for a new pair. I was super nervous because I didn't know how I was going to argue my point/explain what happened in spanish. So I had Marissa come along for moral support.
When we got on the buseta, the same younger kids from yesterday were sitting behind us!! as if they were waiting for us to get on the bus?! so crazy! We just started giggling and they of course were trying to tell us things in english, but we couldn't understand anything they were saying. They told us we were beautiful and then asked for a kiss when we went to get off the bus. How can people BE so forward?

Anyway, I walked into the store with my broken shoes and a smile on my face. The lady recognized me right away and asked how I was doing. Ummmmm....well not so good. I explained the best I could and showed her what happened with my shoes. She got on the phone to call the manufacturer or something. Then she offered to exchange them for another pair, but they didn't have my size. So then she said I could find a different style of shoe or get my money back! She was so nice about it! SCORE! Successfully argued my point in a nice way and got my money back. Then Marissa and I spent it at the Merengada place. Chococambur otra vez!

On our buseta home, the cutest little boy with a crooked smile sat in front of us and heard us speaking english. He said Hello! and then grinned from ear to ear. He pulled out his trompo (spinning top) and started wrapping the string around like he was getting ready to play with it on the buseta. I told him that my friend Fernando had one of those too and that I could make it spin!! He was so cute and just grinned that crooked smile of his. People here are so friendly!

Shopping day with Marissa

I love Marissa! We have so much fun together and today we hit up all the descuentos in el centro. I got some really cute dark turqoise wedges, a headband and a Venezuelan baseball cap. Afterwards we went to this smoothie place I have been wanting to try out and boy was it good! I ordered a Chococambur merengada which is banana and chocolate with ice cream. IT WAS THE BEST MERENGADA! It's just sad that I found this amazing store with only 6 days left in Venezuela. I guess that just means I will have to go everyday to try new flavors and make up for lost time.

Oh and we walked passed the gobierno in Plaza Bolivar and it was all decorated with yellow, blue and red for the 200th Independence day this past Monday. It looked really cool, but I didn't take a picture: 1. Didn't have my camera and 2. thought that maybe if I did take a picture the guard that's always standing outside would shoot me.

Then to get home I flagged down a buseta in El Centro, but sometimes they don't stop for you. However, this one looked like it was slowing down and so I literally threw myslef at the bus from the curb, fell up the stairs and then landed near the driver. Then I quickly looked back to see if Marissa made it on, because I jumped in such a hurry and she was just getting on like normal people. The driver and I were laughing so hard...as was the rest of the bus. Oh well.....brightened some people's day.

(yes another entry about food, but when you feel like you're on vacation you can make excuses for your eating habits. At least that's what I've been doing. :)

Debate

Leunam, my history professor, organized a debate today at VENUSA. It was venezuelans vs. Americans and the two topics were: Global Warming and then Politics in Venezuela. The first part of the debate was really great, mainly because I think everyone is in agreement that the climate of the Earth is changing so no hot tempers. However, when we switched to the politics of Venezuela it got a little heated. There were Chavista's there and anti-chavistas so of course they were going to butt heads. Funny part was one of the VENUSA students, Juampi, who hangs out with all the gringos all the time is a chavista?! He was getting really into the debate and actually cutting people off when they were speaking. Johan was not really happy with him! Nothing got too out of control and for the gringos we didn't have anyplace arguing with them on this subject. I feel that we only have an outsider's perspective on this and although we spent almost 4 months living here...it's not enough to justify our opinion. The venezuelans live this everyday! The debate was really great and very informative. For me, I enjoyed hearing both sides argue their point. After the debate, everbody cooled off over some Solera Azul. haha Only in VZ!

Of course when I got back from the debate I went to the tienda to buy some chocolate from my favorite tienda man. and only in venezuela can you strike up a conversation about politics and Chavez in a tienda while people come in buy what they need to buy and throw in their two cents on the matter!! I talked to him for about 20 minutes!

Last WEDNESDAY!

I HATE WEDNESDAY'S, but today was my last one! I was out of it for my last class, but who cares!? Because on our walk home, the sky and mountains were beautiful! The sun was setting behind the mountain painting the sky with different shades of orange and red, while still casting light on the other mountain range. It was so gorgeous! Great way to end the day! Then I came home and watched Friends! So exhausted tonight though. Oh and I saw Eldilio in the street today on his moto. He didn't see me though, but I can tell him about it tomorrow at yoga class!

Day to myself and band...

We got back from our Choroni trip this morning around 8am from the overnight bus from Maracay. We watched a horrible movie (I think it was called Death Sentence) with Kevin Bacon where everyone died! Great images for me to fall asleep to....not. When I got back home I talked with Eira about my trip, took a shower and then thought I was going to take a nap, but I suddenly had energy to go shopping in el centro. Well today is the bicentennial celebration of Venezuelan Independence! Feliz 200 anos a Venezuela!!So there were a ton of people in el centro and a parade with bands! I shopped around, got some Vivaldi ice cream and then headed to Mercado Principal. Then later tonight I went with Marissa to her sister's band concert. It was a concert celebrating the bicentennial and all the musicians were wearing these really awesome Venezuelan windbreakers! They played 1812 overture! haha I love that music is a universal language. Viva la musica! not Chavez. hahaha

Last day in Choroni

The beach was crowded beyond belief! So many people it was not worth being there. So Marissa and I went shopping instead and then headed back to pack for our trip home. The same taxi drivers were nice enough to come pick us up again from Maracay. It's almost a 2 hour drive! But a beautiful drive up a very large mountain, into the selva nublada and then down the otherside of the mountain. Scary, winding roads that don't look wide enough to fit two cars, but somehow does.

Oh and I forgot to mention on our ride there we saw leaf cutter ants marching along the side of the road when we slowed down to make a really sharp hairpin turn. SO AWESOME! Those ants are amazing and I always hear about them on national geographic and other shows. Viva la selva nublada!

We had the taxi's drop us off at a T.G.I.Friday's! We were so ognoxious when we entered into the restaurante. "Oh my gosh, SALT! and ketchup! I just want to eat that ketchup straight out of the bottle! Hamburgers! Chocolate brownies!" haha you would have thought that we hadn't eaten in days. embarassing!

Una Lancha a Chuao

We were told that Saturday would be when everybody came to the beach for the independence weekend and so, having spent the last two days at Playa Grande, we took a lancha out to other beaches. The area to get into the lanchas was total chaos. So many tourists trying to get into the boats that were crowded around a very small piece of shore. Insanity! The boat ride was really great though. I just love being out on the water. We played in the waves at Playa Chuao for a while before we took a bus into the pueblo of Chuao, which is unique in it's cultivation of cacao. Yes that's right they specialize in chocolate! A pueblo built for me?....I think so! The town was so small, people just sitting around doing nothing but making chocolate in their homes. I bought a dark chocolate bar that was so rich and natural! and then we ate some chocolate ice cream that tasted like a fudgecicle! yum yum yum.

After that beach we got back on the lancha to head to another one, but on our way there it started down pouring! Here we are riding along the coast in a lancha getting soaked. what fun! Later we headed back to Choroni, made pasta with veggies and then played some more Ultimate Charades.

Surfs up dude!

We weren't lying about taking surf lessons from Tarzan. It worked out perfect because 6 of us in our group wanted to do it and so he took us out in pairs! It was so much fun!! We first practiced standing up in the sand first to figure out how we were going to place our feet on the board. Then we hit the water with our boards! It was harder than it looked, but I ended up getting the hang of it. I stood up 3 times and once I rode the wave for a really long time and got an applause from some people!! Tarzan was a great teacher and got us all to stand up. Amazing!
We walked back home to our cabaña (there was no danger in walking at all) and then made tacos with beans tonight for dinner. Then Jackie taught us how to play ultimate charades, which is now my new favorite game!

Everybody writes down words on little slips of paper and puts them all together in a hat. Split up into teams and start the game!
1st round: just like catch phrase, use the words in the hat to get your team to guess as many words in 45 seconds. Do this until there are no words left. Keep score by how many words your team guessed!

2nd round: Put the same words back in the hat, but now you have to silently act them out. This time you have 1 min to get your team to guess as many correct words. Again keep score

3rd round: put all the words back and now you can only saw one word and that's it for your team to guess the word. 1min time for each person until the words run out.

We started writing down words for our third game of ultimate Charades when a mysterious truck pulls up near our cabaña and we all freak! Our cabaña was literally tucked away in the middle of nowhere. Who could this be?! The truck pulls in front of us and backs in. Someone was standing up in the back of the truck and soon enough we realized it was TARZAN!!!!! NO WAY!! He came to pick us up and take us into el centro. We heard there may have been tambores, but didn't have a ride into the town and so were fine with just staying home. Then tarzan shows up. Apparently he is friends with Margarita and the town is so small that he knew where we were staying!
No tambores that night, but there were a ton of people on the dock area dancing to music.

Cabaña Añil...yeah not so much

Thanks to Jackie and Johan we were able to secure a posada for the busy independence day weekend in Choroni, however when we arrived it wasn't exactly what we had expected. First off, the taxi drivers couldn't even find the place and there is only one main road leading in and out of the city. It turns out it was tucked away very far from the beach even though online it said 5 minutes a la playa. One of the taxi drivers was really worried about us walking to the beach and our security in general, which freaked out some of the girls. The owner, Margarita, was really nice and I felt bad that some people in our group were expressing their disappointment in front of her. So I started a friendly converstation with her, scoping the place out. It had two matrimonial beds and then one twin bed. We had 7 people and the other two had to sleep on cots on the floor. Not an ideal situation, but it worked. I asked about being 5 minutes away from the beach and she answered yes in a car. Ay que chimbo! (that's what Eira said!) So she stretched the truth a little on that one, but it got worse. Our fully-equipped kitchen was actually outdoors and we had to start a fire as our 'stove'. Again not ideal. Well since we had already paid, there was really nothing we could do. Somehow the group cheered up and changed our negative attitude.
Margarita told us about some busetas that take us to the beach for only 2b's. We changed into our suits and then headed to the beach. Playa Grande! y fue muy bonita. No habia nadie en la playa y parece como nuestra playa privada!! But we did meet surfer dude that looked like Tarzan (that was our nickname for him). He offered to give us lessons and we said that we would tomorrow. It was only 50b's a person for 30min and he said that he wouldn't really be keeping track of time.
That night we made some pasta and played games! Jackie brought travel scattegories and then we played that game Auntie Julie taught me that's kind of like scattegories but you want the same answers as other people. They really liked the game! We also started a game of 'who would be most likey to..." and I got voted

Most likely to win Survivor
Most likely to be famous
Most likely to date somebody way older than me. hahah Thanks guys!!

Great news was that we had AC in our rooms and so slept really well. However, my twin bed had a tendency to fall apart! We tried watching a movie on someone's computer and there were 3 people sitting on my bed. Well one of us moved and then BOOM! all of us were on the floor!!! We thought we broke the bed, but the cardboard piece underneath just fell off its bracket. Fixable!

Choroni Beach Weekend

We left tonight on an overnight bus (13hrs!) to head to Choroni which is a city with very beautiful beaches! The buses here are so insane, because they keep them freezing cold. Everybody that i've talked to about the buses always complain about how cold they keep the bus, so why not just turn the AC down a tad? Oh yeah that's right... I've given up on trying to figure out why venezolanos do things the way they do.

TANGENT: remember how everybody uses straws here? Well, one of the venezolanos told me they do that because someone could have licked the can!! Seriously?! So you can pee in the streets, leave trash all over the sidewalks, never have toilet paper OR soap in public restrooms, but will use a straw because someone MAY have licked the can! what?!

Anyway, the overnight bus trip was okay. I couldn't ever get comfortable and was in a silly mood the whole time. Slept a little though!

Mariposa en mi cuarto

Tuesday mornings=yoga class! I love going to yoga with Eira because I always feel better afterwards. However, this morning when I woke up there was a monstrous butterfly in my room just chillin' on the window curtains. I didn't see it until I got up out of bed to turn off my alarm and it started fluttering around my head!! I screamed and ran into the kitchen where Eira was making breakfast and asked her to get rid of it. haha She was just as scared as I was, but we got it out the window. I guess they come out now because of the rain, but they are huge! Not like a regular butterfly....it's brown and the size of a small bat. I also have no idea how it entered in my room because the windows were closed!

CATATUMBO!

Finally we made this trip happen! Catatumbo is located en el estado Zulia which is near Lago Maracaibo. We took a jeep from Merida to Catatumbo stopping along the way at a coffee plantation and Laguna de Urao. Then we made it to Puerta Concha, which was a small little village situated on a port that lead out to Lake Maracaibo. All the fishermen were there and it did not smell good. Omar, our guide, came speeding around the corner in his boat and we piled in. The scenery also looked very similar to the Everglades and it was beautiful! We saw so many animals: monkeys, birds, caiman, lizards, freshwater dolphins and fish. Apparently Omar has 30/30 vision or something because he saw a green snake on a branch that was covered with green leaves while we were speeding by on the boat. IMPOSSIBLE...but not for Omar. We came out from the rio to Lago Maracaibo and then set ourselves up in our palafito. These houses are built on stilts above the water! and people sleep in hammocks!
The palafito was really cute. Maybe someday I wouldn't mind owning one and coming down every once in a while for some relaxation. It was so peaceful and quiet and right on the water. Later on we took a boat safari with Omar to look at the birds and take a little tour of the southern part of Lago Maracaibo. The sky was an amazing mixture of pinks, blues, grays, and oranges. It looked too good to be true! We came back from the safari, had dinner and then just watched the sky for a while. When can you ever take time to do that in life?

After dinner we took another boat safari out at night, but this time with a very big flashlight because we were going caiman huntin'! Their eyes glow red if you shine a bright enough light on them. We found a ton and tried to grab them but Ysaac couldn't catch them.

So the main reason tourists come here is because of the colorful lightning! It's unique to this part of Venezuela because the cold air from Merida y los Andes mixes with the hot air from el Mar Caribe and then something about methane produces the lightning. A natural phenomenon like no other! We stayed up watching the lightning before we fell asleep in our hammocks. In the middle of the night there was a huge storm that woke us all up. My first thought was: hmmmm little tin house over the water in combination with a very strong storm and lightning = NOT GOOD! But Omar said the houses never get struck by lightning. Maybe he was just saying that but it help me fall back asleep to the sounds of the storm. Our return trip to Merida included stopping at beautiful waterfalls on the side of the street and a national park of caves. However, the river was high and so we couldn't go very far in the caves. Fine with me.....I rediscovered that I really hate bats!

This was probably one of my favorite memories so far! I would love to come back and sleep in hammocks in the palafitos again. I'm telling you I want to own one of these someday!

Karaoke and Sangria night!

VENUSA held another karaoke night tonight and since I wasn't able to make it to the last one, Kelsey and I started the party off right by singing WHAM!'s Wake Me Up Before You Go Go. We kind of hogged the microphone tonight: I also sang Fanny Lu (by myself), Loba by Shakira, Te amo with eduardo....y mucho mas. Marissa and I stayed until they had to tell us to go home. We were having so much fun! Never been 'kicked' out of school before.

Travel Day

We were all pretty tired today due to lack of sleep the night before and my legs are sore today from dancing! So much fun last night! Today we had a really long layover in the Caracas airport which really is not that big to have such a long layover. But I started and finished Dear John while we were waiting. GREAT BOOK! Maybe when we get back to Merida they'll have the movie on the streets?

Last Day in Margarita!

Can't believe our trip went by so fast! Today is our final day of spring break in paradise. We lounged by the pool most of the day and I finished reading the Alchemist. Loved that book! Can't wait to get back home and read this summer! We of course did water aerobics in the pool again...gotta work off some of those chocolate croissants. Then tonight we went to Kammy Beach for a concert: it was Los Cadillac's and Caramelos de Cianuro. They played Por Ahora, which is my favorite reggaeton song. So I was dancing all over the place like a maniac. But apparently it was good enough that some venezolano started dancing with me, but when I told him I didn't really want to dance (yo quiero estar soltera, por ahora. lol) he was very confused and walked away mumbling that he thought I was venezuelan. How could I turn him down? hahah Well I did!
The concert ended at 3am and then we took the bus back which was provided by our hotel. We changed, packed up our stuff and then headed to the beach to watch the sunrise. Our flight left at 8am and we had to be on the road by 6am so we just didn't go to bed tonight. Okay we slept a little on the beach waiting for the sun to rise. Great ending to a fantastic trip!