...to a Caraqueña Christmas

Braving the sea of humanity in Sabana Grande (an avenida with MANY little markets, stores, and malls), I've emerged triumphant from my shopping trip with some slightly fashionista outdoorsy pants (it would have been financial suicide to buy clothes from the VZ equivalent of REI here - VERY expensive) and thick socks.  I'm fairly certain half of the entire population of Venezuela is currently in the capital city.  The city swells in the weeks before Christmas.  Shop owners from "El Interior" of the country come to buy clothes and sell them (marked-up, of course) back home.  Prices are already high as stores take advantage of the Christmas-season buying frenzy.  There are certain little Venezuelan traditions that ensure that ever year is a good year for retail.  For example:

Everyone has a new outfit for New Year's celebrations.  Might as well bring in the new year looking smashing in some brand-new ropa!

• As a subset for the new clothes, there's another excellent Venezuelan tradition involving ropa interior (underwear):  welcoming the new year in yellow underwear is supposed to bring you good luck.  I'm not sure whether this is good luck for your sex life or life in general (I've been told both), but either way, probably better to just hedge your bets and buy a pair.  I was in a store today that had an entire section set aside for yellow undies of allll shapes and sizes

Other fun Venezuelan holiday traditions include (these are pulled from a presentation I did to students at the CVA about American and Venezuelan Christmases):

Venezuelans paint their houses (inside and out) over Christmas.  It's a tradition that involves the whole family, music and cervezas.  How awesome to have a new room color every year!

While you will hear some Christmas carols here, the Venezuelan Christmas music is known as 'gaitas' - lively upbeat music (not actually about Christmasy topics) coming from Maracaibo.  Also, all the national channels (ABC/CBS/NBC equivalents)  write and perform (with the help of the TV personalities and actors from the station) full Christmas songs that are played constantly during the month of December. The stations usually compete with each other for the most popular songs.  This one from RCTV (a station  no longer in existence after they got on the wrong side of the Presidente) is actually pretty awesome: RCTV Christmas Song

Venezuelans celebrate Christmas on the 24th.  They spend the evening of the 24th with the family and, after midnight, hit the town, visiting friends, going to the discoteques, and basically partying all night.  Some Venezuelan friends who have been in the USA for Christmas told me how bored they were by the much quieter American Christmas Eve.

You can definitely find Santa hanging around malls, ready to listen to what the kiddies want for Christmas.  HOWEVER, while Santa has trickled down here from the US, it's the Niño Jesus (Baby Jesus) who has always brought the presents.  Yes.  The baby Jesus comes to your house.  I'm not sure how...no one is very clear on that bit (there's no back-story like Santa coming down the chimney).  Does he crawl in a window?  Magic himself through the door?  I smile every time I hear an exasperated mother ask her kid to 'ask the Baby Jesus' for the present and stop pestering her.

Christmas food (platos navideños) consist of Ayacas (tamales with meat, chicken, olives, and raisins), Pernil (pork), Pan de jamon (a sweet-bread sandwich with ham, olives and raisins), and ensalada de gallina (the best chicken salad you've ever had in your life).

I'll be happy when the city calms down a little bit after the 24th, but it's been interesting.  Still, I didn't realize until yesterday how much I missed me some American Christmas - some of the students at CVA El Centro did a presentation involving lots of carols.  I'll be coming down a mountain on the 25th.  My fellow ETAs better be ready to sing their way down...

...to becoming an Oblea addict

Best. Dessert. Ever.  I've been in Caracas one month and I'm already addicted.  The flat bread is literally a larger version of 'hostia' or the Host that you get at church.  On top of it you put a little piece of heaven: arequipe.  It's like dulce de leche but better.  I would eat it by the jar if I wouldn't get judged for it.  If you want to get crazy, you can add a bit of condensed milk, or maybe some chocolate, or some peanut butter (shout-out to Olga, the last ETA to arrive, who brought me a big jar of Creamy, Reduced-Fat, Jif!).  

 Rosa and I had a Girls' Night on Friday that consisted of Oblea-making, and entirely too much Disney.*

 

*'Disney' does not refer to timeless and classic Disney movies (which I will appreciate and treasure always) - instead it refers to that horrible posse of teen sensations that seem to captivate today's kiddies.  I've had more than my fill of Justin Beiber, Selena Gomez, Demi Lovato, etc...

Ingredients: Hostia, Arequipe, Condensed Milk, PB

Look, it's Mickey Mouse on the Hostia!

Rosa demonstrates obla-making with condensed milk

I demonstrate oblea-eating...

Deliciousness...

Just one and a half weeks of classes to go and then we start on our almost month-long Christmas holidays.  Completely unoutdoorsy me will tango with the Amazonas as the ETAs take on their second adventure, visiting Angel Falls and then going on a six-day hike up Roraima mountain.

Then it's back to Caracas for New Year's...and birthday festivities!

On the work front, I'm going to be leading a Teens' Conversation Club in January at Las Mercedes.  Also looking at launching Movie Clubs at both Las Mercedes and El Centro.  Hmmm and maybe a Debate Club?  Let's see what happens with that one...

Okay, flaky internet means it took entirely too long to upload this post.  And in the interim, I've been staring at these pictures of oblea deliciousness...might be time for another...

...to the best worst beach trip ever

There is enough comically bad luck in our collective Fulbright group to start a moderately successful reality show. 

With the birthday girl - best birthday trip ever!

We spent Thursday-Sunday celebrating Thanksgiving and Camille's (one of the ETAs) birthday in Falcon State at Chichiriviche, the jumping-off point for some of the most beautiful beaches in Venezuela.  Did we see aforementioned beautiful beaches?  Nooooo.  Why? Well, our trip happened to be poorly-timed with the worst storms and flooding that Falcon State has seen in over ten years.  So it rained.  And flooded. All weekend.

Yes, that's the road in front of our posada...or built-in pool, depending on how you look at it

 The seven of us (five ETAs, Carlo - a Fulbrighter in Merida - and Carlo's roommate Juan), spent the weekend eating, drinking about two liters of rum (we started at noon on Friday and finished about 12 hours later), eating, dancing, eating (really. for lack of anything else to do we ate. a lot.), and sniffing our rank clothes.  We played HOURS of cards (best 10Bfs, we've spent): gin rummy, texas hold 'em, spoons, circle of death, B.S., Egyptian Rat Screw, etc.  The Spanish deck of cards only had 12 numbers, running from one to twelve, with suits being gold coins, clubs (a massive club which looked like a pickle), daggers/swords, and cups.

Toting rum, water, and cups.  Well-prepared for a rainy weekend.

We swam in the ocean, in the pouring rain - we were determined to get some beach time in.  It felt great (after all, it's the Caribbean), and there were some excellent waves.  You just had to watch you didn't get impaled by a piece of driftwood making its way to shore.  The cayos (keys), were completely off limits because massive amounts of flooding and storms had forced Falcon State to declare a state of emergency.

Great swimming conditions.  You can see one of the cayos off in the distance!

One of the rented rooms in our posada flooded, meaning that there was about 3 inches of standing water in the room, forcing Carolyn and Jillian to get all cozy with Camille and me.  All the water in and around our posada meant that we were lunch for all the little buggies in 10km radius.  My feet are a mess.  As we walked around town, we got the pitying look of the locals who were wondering what 7 gringos were doing wandering around Chichi at the end of the rainy season (note to self: check rainy/dry season before beaching next time).

Annnnd the word of the weekend is...DENGUE!

 Adding insult to injury, Sunday morning, the day we were supposed to leave, the sun was out, there was a GORGEOUS coastal breeze and it was generally a perfect day to go to the beach.  About half our group (myself included) caught buses back to our respective towns, staring sadly out the window at the wind whipping through the palm trees.  The other half of our group swore to get some proper beach time in and, last I heard, spent a happy few hours on one of the cayos.

The trip was ridiculous - so terrible it was amazing.  The way I see it, we have seven months (knock-on-wood) of amazing, serene, beach weekends ahead of us.  This trip was infinitely more memorable.  And, assuming the universe is run like a giant balance sheet, with all the ridiculousness of the past weekend, I think the rest of our trips should be some pretty smooth sailing.  Good thing too, because we've got some crazy hiking/camping and Angel Falls coming up in December!

Excellent weekend.

...to sharing some Turkey Day love!

So, CVA Las Mercedes - in staying true to the AMERICAN part of its being a Venezuelan-American Center - has no classes on Thursday and Friday, a nod to the Thanksgiving holiday.  Of course, given that there was no Pilgrim/Indian Kodak moment 400 years ago in South America (the Spanish invaders mostly steamrolled over all the natives), most Venezuelans are relatively uninformed about the holiday.  As the resident gringa, I was tasked with bringing Thanksgiving to the CVA.

It was easy to do with the kiddies.  For the kids' levels, I typed up instructions for a long-revered Thanksgiving craft...*drumroll*...THE HAND TURKEY!  That's right, you know you remember it: place your hand on a piece of paper, trace it, decorate it, and voila! Turkey.  For some of the more advanced students, my instructions dictated that they write what they were thankful for on the turkey itself.  I was totally blown away by the drawings these kids came up with.  Here I was expecting little brown hands, with red, yellow, and orange feathers.  Instead, these kids went crazy with colors and embellishments!  There was probably a little confusion about what Thanksgiving itself was (I don't know how many teachers bothered to explain much about the holiday, or how many teachers knew much about the holiday themselves).  That may explain some of the turkeys which had Christmas hats and presents scattered around. :-)  There was also a bit of a linguistic confusion: pavo real - literally 'royal turkey' - is Spanish for peacock.  These little hand turkeys look a bit like peacocks.  That would explain the green, purple, and blue 'turkeys'.  Didn't matter if they were purple or Santa Claus with feathers - they were SO GOOD!  One of my personal favorites was a turkey where the student wrote on the fingers what he was grateful for.  The whole turkey was green except for the pinkie finger, which was colored red with hearts (here he'd written 'girlfriend').  Instead of gushing even more, I'll just post some pictures.

Spent all morning posting these up like a proud mama

These kids are so creative!

For the profes and some of the advance classes, I put together a mini-presentation for today, for the half-hour we get between classes at noon.  It consisted of a short Powerpoint, a mini-activity, and a potluck snack.  The Powerpoint went over a brief history of Thanksgiving (por ejemplo, did you know that it was Lincoln that made Thanksgiving a national holiday?), and then explained what a present-day Thanksgiving looked like (food, family, football, shopping, etc.)  It was really interesting to find out what Venezuelans had heard about, and what was new.  For example, EVERYONE here knows about Black Friday (apparently people will work trips to the US around Black Friday to take advantage of the shopping), but few people had heard about how tons of Americans also set aside a few hours to watch some of the biggest football rivalries play on Tgiving Day.  Oh, and the presidential turkey pardon got some laughs as well :-)

The activity for the profes consisted of taking some construction-paper feathers that I'd cut out and writing what they were thankful for on them - then we pasted them around a massive clip-art turkey and posted that on the bulletin board as the profes' contribution to the Thanksgiving celebration!  

I'm thankful for: Family, Friends and New Experiences

 
Add in some delicious noms with everything from pan de jamon (a Christmas specialty here - basically yummy bread with bits of ham, olives, and raisins tucked up in it...sounds crazy but it's scrumptious, I promise) to platano chips, and you have a perfect midday snack.


For the big day itself, I've been graciously let off work by CVA El Centro, so I'm busing up from Caracas to Valencia, then from Valencia up to Chichiriviche to join the rest of my gringo compadres for a nice long beach weekend.  Still not 1000% sure that I know how to get there all the way, but vamos a ver.  All in the spirit of aventura, right?  Can't wait to see mis companeros - we haven't seen each other since orientation at the beginning of the month!  I'm keeping my fingers crossed that the rainy season decides to end a few days early and doesn't intrude on our surf and sand. 

Besos to all those back home - a very happy Thanksgiving! 

...to being conquistadora de los Teens

I just finished Day 2 of teaching my first class ever.  And I feel like I've been walloped by Hurricane TEEN.  I'm teaching the CVA's Teen Class of Module 2, a Monday and Wednesday 90-minute class that starts at 3:45.  Module 2 means that in the 8-class course, these kids cover the second two units in the 'Starter' of the Attitude series (the text that's used by CVA to teach Adults).  So this is the second English class they've had. Ever.  And thus far, they know how to basically introduce themselves, say where they're from, how to spell their names, etc.

CVA methodology requires that we speak to our students (be they in the lowest level or the highest) in English for the full 90-minutes of the class.  So at the lower levels, when they know all of about 5 words, there is a whoooole lot of miming and exaggerated acting required.  (It's not nearly as hopeless as it sounds - given the enormous number of Spanish-English cognates, the students actually do really well at grasping the gist of what's going on)

As I think I  mentioned before, CVA isn't a school - it's more of a supplementary learning center.  Adults and kids/teens attend classes before/after/during work/school.  I think a lot of my kids come to class directly from school (some are still wearing their uniforms).  Teaching a teen class (technically, ages 12-16, but most of my kids are between 12-14), provides insight into a verrrry different classroom environment.  CVA makes a point of banning cell phones in class (it's one of the rules we go through on the first day), but even then I've heard from other profes that students of all ages will just stroll out of class to answer phone calls.  Then there's the chatting.  Imagine that one reeeally talkative kid in class that always got yelled at by the teacher in class (or shamed into silence some other way).  Multiply that kid by about 10 and you've got my class.  It's something I've heard about across Latin America - that culture of everyone shutting up and listening to the profe doesn't really exist here.  Or maybe I'm just not scary enough ;-)

Anyway, throw some general teen craziness (ie lots of giggling and whispering over books) and you've got one frazzled profe.  The kids themselves are wonderful, but keeping up with 17 of them isn't easy.  Assign some in-class work and you'll find that half of them have already done it at home, so then they're tugging at me saying 'Teacher, finished, teacher!' while I'm trying to help other students (note to self: incorporate alternate activities for the Speedy Gonzalez's in the class).  To quote the teens 'Que fastidio!' (How annoying!)

That being said, I love the vast majority of my 17 kids.  They continue to wow me with their enthusiasm (even if it's somewhat misdirected) and their love of the Smartboard never ceases to amuse me...seriously let's face it: who DOESN'T love the Smartboard?!  I'm being kept on my toes for sure.

...to finally resolving that housing issue!

This post has been about a week coming.  Apart from the crazy financial issues that make Venezuela oh-so-interesante, my biggest other concern coming in was definitely housing.  Things didn't look so hot when I arrived.  Even the wonderful folks at the embassy were a tad bit nervous, and I spent a solid afternoon during orientation discussing housing options and weighing safety with the cheapness of just living in a box in the park.  In spite of everyone - CVA, the embassy, my few contacts in VZ - pulling out the stops to come up with any patch of floor I could sleep on, things still looked less-than-encouraging.

I spent mornings at the hotel (during orientation) perusing the latest classified ads in El Universal.  Remember the classified section?  It's like Craig's List before Craig's List existed.  Potentially sketchy to be making calls based on ad in the paper?  Yeah.  Did that stop me?  No.  Actually, I can be this brave in retrospect because I had wonderful and knowledgeable Caracas locals to visit the places with me and make calls on my behalf.  Dreams of getting an apartment were quickly downsized to looking for a comfortable room in a part of the city where I could walk around mas o menos safely.

In one of those ever-appearing "Welcome to Venezuela" moments (the lovable catchphrase that is uttered, either in Spanish or English, every time something goes wrong, falls apart, etc), it was nigh impossible to find a perfect place.  Either the place was great but the location was sketch, or vice versa.  There was one notable visit with a 5' elderly lady, we ETAs lovingly nicknamed (Abuela Loca - Crazy Granny).  Picture this tiny, chain smoking, rum-chugging, big-shade wearing, shorts-sporting, big-black-crosstrainers-wearing, fan of George W. Bush.  She loved Bush.  She named one of her three cats after Bush (one of the other ones was called Gorda - 'Fat' - because she was fat).  She had this badass Billabong cap she wore with style. Seriously, Abuela Loca and I totally hit it off and she lived in a FANTASTIC part of town; only the house itself stopped me from moving (it was a little TOO old).  It is my secret wish to start hanging out with her, maybe catch a movie or something. 

Just as I was about to despair entirely, we visited another place, in a part of town called Chacao, considered one of the safest and nicest neighborhoods in Caracas (it's governed by the opposition and has a solid and reliable police force).  There I met Damaris and her lovely sister and 8-year-old daughter.  I've got a cozy little room in the back of an apartment with a gorgeous view of the city.  I moved in on Friday and have loved it so far.  I get to walk to and from work (much to the shock of many) and am less than a block from the metro.  No complaints here, and what a relief to be settled at last!

The view from the balcony of my new home!

...to exploring VZ and ending up a crash test dummy

Ohhh goodness.  Craziest. Day. Ever.  Yesterday started as a seemingly innocent trip out to the beach.  I joined my friend Yadri's boyfriend Jens, and some of his German compatriotas on a weekend day trip to a beach about two hours outside of Caracas.  It was raining as we drove, but cleared up more and more as we got closer to the coast.  By the time we were in site of the water, it was hot and sunny.  The beach was lovely, accessible only by terrible dirt roads, and tucked behind groves of trees and other general greenery.  The waves of the Caribbean were lovely, much bigger than those pitiful things up in the Atlantic.  It was perfect surfing weather: as I can't surf, it was perfect ride-the-waves-and-try-to-stay-out-of-the-way-of-surfers weather.

We passed the day drinking cervezas, Cuba Libres (rum and coke), lounging around on the sand, running into the sea for a quick dip every now and then, etc.  Vendors paraded up and down the sand, attempting to ply beach-goers with everything from shark-tooth necklaces to fresh fish and oysters.  Having been told that fresh fish at the beach was 'muy rico', I was sorely tempted.  Okay, yeah I totally ordered some.  It came out fried, with these delicious-looking platanos covered with cheese, ketchup and some kind of cream (side note: need to join a gym).  Fairly spectacular and completely fresh!

Choosing our fish

Que RICO esta comida!

Things started winding down around five (when I say winding down, I mean that the kids we were renting the beach chairs from came to collect them).  Most of the group opted to stay the night in a posada (like a hotel/hostel), while a few of us decided to return.  Jens and I hopped into his pick-up for the ride back.  It gets dark quickly in Venezuela, and by the time we reached the main highway a little before six, it was totally dark.  We're speeding along on the autopista, chattering away in Spanish (a second language for both of us, but I don't speak German, and Jens' can understand but doesn't speak too much English), and I was worrying that I was going to be a terrible passenger and fall asleep on my poor driver.  Needn't have worried. 

While consulting the iTouch to find out what the conversion of liters to gallons was (just one of those things that comes up when Europeans and Americans talk), I heard/felt this terrific hit, and before I knew it, we careened into the concrete barrier of the highway at about 65mph, and then the truck flipped onto the passenger side and suddenly my face was about six inches from the ground as my window shattered and sparks flew towards my face as we slid about 100 feet to a stop.  And all the while I'm sideways, just waiting for some final impact that's going give me that horrible injury that people who are in these accidents always get.  We shuddered to a stop, the underside of the truck facing traffic on our side of the highway, me, inches from the pavement, and Jens in the air about 3 feet above me, strapped in on the drivers side.  After ascertaining that (by some miracle) we were both okay, I was distracted by horn honking and screeches outside of the car.  We'd rolled over around a curve and drivers could only see our accident as they came careening around the bend.  Not a good place to be.  If this accident didn't kill us, there was a solid chance one of those other drivers might.

Jens hopped out of the car and then lifted me out and carried me across the highway (I wasn't wearing shoes and I think was a little too shocked to make it on my own).  Meanwhile there were cars stopping all around us, other cars whizzing by and honking, lights everywhere, etc.  And I'm barefoot, in a bathing suit and a wrap, on a highway.  With the help of about a dozen guys (who came out of nowhere, I think a bus stopped), Jens pushed the car back onto all four wheels and somehow (thank you American car-makers) managed to DRIVE IT off to the side of the highway. 

The whole episode is a blur but apparently we'd hit a tire in the road.  The tire was dropped by a bus (the same bus that was stopped?), that came back, took the tire, and sped off (maybe not wanting to get in trouble?).  All the while we're stopped with our VERY broken car on the side of the road, people kept telling us we had to keep moving, the area was very dangerous, we couldn't just stop, etc.  There was this wonderful guy from Caracas who stopped to help and was SO good, he made the Good Samaritan look like a selfish bastard.  He made us follow him (going about 10mph) until we got to a more brightly lit area, helped us with calling a tow truck, and waited until we were well on our way back to the city before leaving. 

There was the drama with the Venezuelan version of OnStar's emergency setting, which should've been activated when we said 'ayuda' (help), but put us on hold for about ten minutes.  We enjoyed some phone advertisements, got hung-up on a few times, and finally got on the phone with some woman who wanted the license plate number, chastised us for not being 100% sure what it was, asked multiple times for the mobile phone number we could be reached at, and then finally told us that she would send someone (never saw them).

See where that glass is missing?  Yeah, I was sitting there...

Then there were the bomberos (firemen) who stopped checked out the damage then told us we should get off the road because things were very dangerous (thank you, firemen).  They followed us for awhile then left.  Then there was the craziness with the tow trucks.  A bunch of them wanted money up front, which we didn't have since they were asking for hundreds of bolivares.  One of them took us about half a mile to a brightly lit area (some place slightly mas 'seguro').  We couldn't ride in the cab with that fellow, however; we rode instead in the busted up truck.  The one that ended up taking us the 45 minutes back to El Hatillo (right outside of the downtown Caracas area, where Jens lived) actually stopped us at a mall so we could get him half of the money (picture 10-minute frantic dash around a mall looking for the correct ATM, all the while deafened by LOUD live Christmas music.  Yes, it's the middle of November and there are daily Christmas shows). 

We made it back to Jens' house with the pobre pick-up truck finalmente at around 10:30.  I came out of the whole ordeal with a little rug-burn on my shoulder (from where the seat-belt bit into me when we flipped), and a bruised/scratched leg.  Both Jens and I woke up this morning with sore necks, but nothing that feels like anything more than strained muscles. 

I don't think I've ever been so scared in my life and I still can't believe that we both managed to walk away.  I've never been so grateful that I was wearing my seatbelt (which doesn't always happen in Venezuela) - there's no saying what would've happened if I hadn't been.  I'm feeling so lucky, and so blessed to be alive - major props to whatever guardian angel was keeping an eye out for us last night.