Casi Robó

While walking home today from the church around 530, still daylight, I had a small run in. Wasn't too big of a deal but worth telling about. Facebook was already up on my computer when I get home and Nick was online so I told him about it right away. This is the story, five minutes after it happened, copy and pasted from Nicks and my conversation:

a guy just got up in my grill. cut me off on his dirtbike. asked to use my phone. i told him i didnt have one, not true, he asked what was in my bag. i told him just books to teach english. which is true. he drove away, went around the corner and came back going downhill at me. stopped next to me, reached into my fucking backpocket and grabbed my wallet. i grabbed his wrist said no and he dropped it and drove off.

I'm fine though! No worries. Another day in paradise. Just really missing some MN fall weather right now. My cousin is getting married tomorrow!! Congratulations Kelly! Also, my cousin Maria is pregnant! Very exciting stuff going on with the Perra family.

Maestro!

During the mornings this week I've been going to the Casa de Hogar, a home for abandoned boys a few blocks from here. There are 11 boys living there right now, most between 10-14 years old, except for Luis who is 20, and Jesús who is 18. Jesús isn't there every day but the rest live there full time. Luis and Jesús are really the only male role models the younger boys have, so they are glad to have me around. All the staff are women. While I've been there we've played soccer, jammed on bongos/guitars, and worked a lot on schoolwork. Only a few of the boys actually attend school, I'm not sure yet why all of them don't. They go in the afternoons. In the mornings, all of the boys have the chance to work on some schoolwork if they want to. Not all of them choose to. A teacher comes once a week, today was the day, but the rest of the days it's just Luis helping them with what he can. I've been helping one boy named Jhon with his multiplication tables. Today we moved from 3's to 4's (x 0-10). Another boy named Elio was tasked to write the even numbers from 0-1000. He understands the 0,2,4,6,8 concept of it, but every time he got to a number ending in 8 he had to ask me what the next one was. Try as I did I couldn't get him to see the pattern in it. Which was frustrating. The disparity between each boys level of education is big. Since most of them have spent a fair amount of time living on the street, they haven't gotten much for education. Jhon, who I've been working on basic multiplation with, is 12. Elio, 11. It's been hard but fun, the boys are good kids and eager to learn. I got called maestro a few times from across the room when someone needed help, "Maestro! Ayudame!" Seeing them improve at their math skills or spell a word right that I corrected them on earlier is really satisfying. Jhon's smiling face after finally remembering what 6x3 is after multiple times getting stuck on it is something I'll remember for a long time.

Jhon--Yes that is a CDH soccer jersey

Elio writing out the evens from 0-1000

Miedo

Tonight was weird. Kinda saw the darker side of the city. Andreina was over, we were sitting upstairs in the porch talking when a police truck drove by, and then two more. Before tonight I think I've only seen one police truck on my street, so to see three in a row was something. We kind of stopped talking and took note of it, but I forgot about it soon after. We went downstairs to watch a movie, and during it Andreina got a text from a friend of ours. It's a long complicated story, but the friend told us that there had been a shooting nearby and that her ex-boyfriend was being blamed for it. It wasn't him, because he was with her. Some guys who have a grudge against him killed another guy here in Guaiparo, the barrio I live in, and are going to try to spread the word that it was him. Like I said it's complicated. But that explains the police cars earlier. My mom is probably going to get anxious reading this. oops. sorry mom. It is really weird though. It's like holy shit someone my age got shot to death tonight in a drive by, by people my age. To the people here this is pretty normal. Living in Hastings and spending most of my time in nice parts of St. Paul, it's not at all for me. Saymi ended up coming over to watch some of the movie, after I drove her and Andreina home I was a little paranoid. To put the truck in for the night I have to get out, unlock and open the gate, back the truck in, and then close the gate. There's a speed bump right in front of our house so all the cars have to slow down to a crawl as they go over it. Consequently, it seemed like every car driving by was going to stop and jump me. I'm glad to be in my room, with two bolted doors downstairs between me and the street. This is the first night where I've really felt any fear here.

Maestro?

First English class was today! It's crazy that a few months ago I was at CDH learning Spanish, and now I'm in Venezuela teaching English. Today did not go how I expected it to at all. Monday is supposed to be homework help day for kids in 7th and 8th grade. They're to bring their homework from the English class they have at school and I'll help them with it. However, school doesn't start until October 3rd. Which I did not know. SO what that meant for me was that 6 or 7 kids showed up today, never having had an English class, and with no homework for me to help them with. Suddenly I had a class to teach, with no plan whatsoever about what to teach them. The first few minutes were mostly me stumbling around trying to figure out what to do. All the preparation I've done for the classes has been for the advanced classes, with students who already have a decent understanding of English. My plan for tomorrow includes the verb "to be", the importance of using subject pronouns in English, and introductions/getting to know someone. Today however, I suddenly had to teach a group of 12 and 13 year olds completely basic ideas. So, we worked on colors and numbers. Sounds easy right? The thing is, I have no idea how to be a teacher. Looks like I'll be learning as I go. I ended up writing the numbers 1-20 on the board, with the english word for each next to it. We worked on pronunciation by playing the repeat after me game. Great stuff. Moved on to erasing the numerals rearranging the words, then calling on someone to show me where #_ was. I would say the number in spanish, they would choose the (hopefully) correct English word on the board. Not quite sure how to explain that, but it was good. The class ended up working out really well, I could tell the kids actually learned something. Which is nuts. I managed to get through an hour of teaching an English class with no preparation, and at the end the kids all seemed satisfied and happy, and seemed to have learned something. I was satisfied and happy, and definitely learned something. Pretty cool feeling.

Seminario

Yesterday morning I went to the 8am mass, which was Jose's last mass here. Afterwards we walked to his mom's house together so he could say bye to her. I wasn't expecting that to turn into a calypso dancing lesson for me from his sister and neighbor. At 10am I was not ready for that at all.

As we walked back to the rectory, a man came out of his house and stopped us, calling me "padre" as he shook my hand. I didn't really understand the rest of what he said until Jose replied to him. Seeing me, a gringo, and Jose, dressed nicely with a cross on a necklace, he assumed we were priests or at least affiliated with the church. He needed someone to come for a funeral. The way they do it here is that when someone dies, theyre usually buried within 24 hours. Once they can find a priest or a seminarian, basically anyone religiously affiliated, they have the funeral. Jose was all set to do it, just had to go to the house to get some holy water. As we got there, Fr. Tim was arriving so we told him about it so that he could do it. The three of us drove over to the funeral home. There were only about 10 people there for the funeral. The casket was small. The man who died was about 30 or 40, we didn't find out how he died but he had a cut on his nose so I'm not sure if he had an accident of some kind or some kind of violence, I don't know. It was short, only about 10 minutes, and then we left. Out of the 10, maybe 15 people there, there were only 2 men. Thought that was interesting.

Father Tim, Jose, Luis -a new seminarian who lives in another state- and I drove to Ciudad Bolivar to drop the two of them off at the seminary. The seminary is a pretty simple place, nothing fancy at all. Jose got his room assignment for the year and was not too happy about it, he showed me his room from last year which was nice and spacious, and this years, which is about the third of the size of his old room. I met a few of the other seminarians who were around. I'll most likely be able to go over for a few days to visit at some point, they play a lot of sports like volleyball, ping pong, soccer, etc. Saying goodbye to Jose was interesting, I was thinking about how different it's going to be now that he's gone, just with having someone always around who can explain things to me and be there. I'm really glad he was here for the first two and a half weeks I was here, so I was able to meet a lot of people and have a friend helping me get situated.

Last night I did some more driving, I gave Gladys, Andreina and a group of people a ride to their house in another barrio of San Felix. The roads within the barrios have some rediculous speed bumps, and one intersection of note has a huge hole about 10 feet wide and at least 5 feet deep right in the middle of the street.

Ocupado

The internet has been really annoying lately, I've been trying to write about my day the other day but it hasn't been cooperating. Thursday was a fairly busy day. In the morning Jose and I walked to go get hair cuts. I was kind of nervous going into it hah wasn't really sure what was going to happen. I told the guy that I pretty much just wanted it the same as it was, only shorter. He took that creatively. I walked out of the place with a fohawk and gelled hair. So that was interesting. The people at the church office all seemed to like it though, they said now I'm less of a gringo. I haven't gelled it up since then though and I'm not really planning on it. That evening Saymi Jose and I were here at the house and Fr. Greg casually said I could take the truck to bring her home later if I wanted to. So that was awesome, I'm pretty excited about that. Having another independent mode of transportation other than Javier will be really nice so he doesn't have to drive all the time. Fr. doesn't want me to go to Puerto Ordaz yet but that's fine, in time I'm sure he'll be fine with it. I've only been here for two and a half weeks, I wasn't expecting to be able to even drive in San Felix yet. That night Jose and I went to the mens national championship volleyball game here in Ciudad Guayana with his friend Danny who is from Puerto Ordaz. It was nuts. The team from this state, Bolívar, was playing so there were a ton of people there. One guy on the team, who is also on the Venezuelan national team, is just a monster. His legs looked like tree trunks and he was the strongest looking person I think I've ever seen. His serve was so fast that a guy on the other team didn't have time to react and it hit him in the chest. Awesome.
A few days ago we went to the shopping center in San Felix. It's very different than the Puerto Ordaz version. Orinokia and Alta Vista are the shopping malls in P.Ordaz, they are smaller versions of the Mall of America. Air conditioned, really nice. The San Felix centro has a lot of open to the air clothes vendors, little side shops, food vendors lining the streets, etc. We went to the bank so Jose could cash his check, waited in line for 45 minutes which was great in an un airconditioned room with tons of people. The sign on the door that said no wearing hats, no wearing sunglasses, no wearing motorcycle/military looking helmets, and finally, no guns, was kind of funny to me. No combat helmets. Got it.

Patinando

I just got home from ice skating....yup. It was awesome. There's an indoor rink in the mall in Puerto Ordaz, so tonight Claudia and I went. I don't remember if I've talked about her yet, shes my age, lives down the street. She's really nice, decent at English, going to university studying human relations, etc. It was only her second time ever ice skating, which for me seems so strange since I grew up skating all the time. The other kids that were there were amazed at how good I was, and I'm not actually good at all especially compared to any hockey player or Stephanie Rosicki/Claire Godfrey. So I explained that I'm from Minnesota, where everyone knows how to skate. One girl asked how many times I've skated..I tried not to laugh when I said I learned when I was like three years old. I fell once, it was a little embarrassing but I'm blaming it on the skates being really dull. which is actually legit. kind of. Overall, a great night!

Bienvenido a Mis 80a Benedicion!

This is what the sign said at the entrance of the party I went to Saturday night. It was Ruth's grandmothers 80th birthday party. Ruth's mom invited me, and told me I better be wearing nice clothes because it's a formal party and if not she would slap me. So needless to say I was wearing khakis and a button down shirt. Jose told me I looked like a Morman. He didn't go because he had to be up early the next morning to help with mass, so it was kind of my first test of being without him at a social event, I couldnt turn to him when I didnt understand for a translation or a slower version of what was said in spanish. I was actually really nervous, I've never been nervous for a birthday party before. It turned out to be a lot of fun. Loud music was being played the whole night, I got a lot better at dancing (at least I think so, not sure what the women who I danced with would say). Merengue is my favorite because it's the easiest, salsa is really hard and reggaeton is hard for me to dance to as well. At midnight a mariachi band showed up, dressed in the full outfit including sombreros. it was great, i had no idea they were coming and all of a sudden they were strolling in singing playing guitars and a trumpet. they sang a succession of happy birthday songs to ruth's grandmother, who at 80 is a really tough looking lady. After they left the cake was cut up, we finally ate the birthday cake around 1230, a late night birthday party and for an 80 year old! There were people of all ages there, all of the family and also friends of individuals in the family, I spent most of the night with 4 of Ruth's coworkers. A little after 1am was the "hora loca", crazy hour. It definitely was crazy. Out of nowhere whistles, lei's, hats, glitter and sparkly stuff to throw, etc. were being handed out. Two men with drums started playing, another guy had a shaker or maraca of somekind, and then literally everyone was dancing. For most of the night it had been maybe 15 or so people dancing at a time, but for this 45 minutes or so everyone was. Lots of loud drumming, whistles blowing, people yelling, it was great. The first thing Jose asked me the next morning was how was the hora loca? i guess it's a big thing at pretty much every party i'll go to here.

I met the bishop this morning. Jose had an interview with him so I tagged along. He's a really nice guy, studied theology in New York and speaks pretty good English. He was very welcoming and said he was excited that I'm here. I'm realizing that Jose is kind of a big deal here, he gets really good grades and everyone is really looking forward to him becoming a priest. I found out the other day that he started college when he was 15, and went to three years of an 8 year med school program before deciding he wants to be a priest.

Rode the bus today, realized a minute too late that the guy didnt give me enough change. well done senor.

Venezuelan cooking

 Jose looked at me as I was watching him with this, smiled and said "Bienvenido a Venezuela". Yesterday was Javier's birthday, but there were a bunch of police around searching for someone so we stayed in the house. But so tonight we went to Javier's house and made hotdogs and had cake. Venezuelan hotdogs are an amazing improvement on what we eat in MN. We drove around for a while finding all of the supplies which was an adventure in itself, but eventually we were ready. I sliced all the buns and put them in the strainer over the pot of water to warm up while the hotdogs cooked. What makes the meal is all the toppings. On top of the actual hotdog we put diced onion, crunched up chips, ham, cheese, cilantro, cheese sauce, hot sauce, and really thinly sliced carrots. i had five. they were awesome. a piece of cake (torta here, not pastel) and i was so happy. had to go lay down in the hammock for a while and thought i was going to explode, but i was very happy.

while cooking

english classes

alrighty. english classes schedule has been made. monday, wednesday, friday i will be there from 3-4 helping people who are currently taking english classes with their homework and answering questions, etc. each day will be a different level, 7th and 8th grade, 3rd and 4th grade, and something like older high school level im not quite sure, their school system is different than ours i dont really understand it yet. tuesday and thursday will be the advanced group, from 4-530. that can be any age, depending on what classes theyve had and how much they know. so for those days i'll be doing a lot more active teaching as far as having a plan and activities than the other days. should be fun! i have a book that ms medellin and ms brethorst made when they were teaching down here. so that will be extremely helpful, also I have another book with audio cd's that they had here.

unrelated, but this morning i was in the church office, at first making the plan for the classes, but then hanging out with andreina and jose antonio. ruth came in, who i thought had already left for caracas, to fill out and print off a couple forms that she needed for applying for the visa. when we finished typing in all of the info, every time we went to print it it went blank. it was really frustrating and i dont know why it isnt working. it made me realize that random technical difficulties are just yet another hurdle the people here have when theyre trying to get visas. it's a really long and rediculous process, they were telling me stories of showing up to the office and after waiting in a long, hot line, etc, the officer would see a little mistake or something just didnt quite work right on the computer and they'd so oh sorry, come back another day. on the other hand, for me to get here was so easy. when i told them that all i had to do was buy my plane ticket and fill out the immigration form on the plan here, they were astonished. i dont have to do anything to get into their country, but for them to come to ours is a hugely daunting process.

by the way, the time stamp for this blog is not right. not sure why, but it's two hours behind. it did this while stile in mn too. i definitely was not blogging at 630 this morning, but that's what it says. also, it's off by a half hour. it says 628, but i actually posted the last one at 858. the two hours thing, who knows, but venezuela is a half hour ahead of mn, a half hour behind east coast time. apparently the president was feeling very powerful one day and decided to change time. so yes. just so ya know. it's 119 right now, not whatever it'll say.

5 days

I've been meaning to get on this but things somehow have been really busy, and when I get home I just skype for a bit and go to bed. The picture is from Friday night, we went to the disco, it was on a boat. In the middle is Nina, she looks like a gringa but isn't, and Ruth is on the right, she's engaged to Jake Guzik who came down here a few years ago. She left this morning for Caracas to have an interview for her visa to come to the US. It's called a noviovisa or something like that, when she gets it once she gets to the US she has three months to get married. So that's cool. It'll be great next summer I'll be able to go visit her! She's planning on leaving in January. So yes, disco. I went with these two, and also Jose Antonio, Javier who is Nina's boyfriend, and Claudia who is my age and lives down the street. Ruth and Claudia worked on teaching me how to dance haha it was interesting but really fun. The music they listen to is really good, some of it is the same music we hear in the US like pitbull, etc, or remixes of that, but a lot of it is just spanish too. That was a really fun night.
Since I got here, I've gone to 4 masses and one liturgy of the word. In 5 days. So that's a lot. I'm going to the church soon to start figuring out when to have English classes. On Saturday, Claudia and Jose came over to practice their English. I brought them each a letter from their friend Briana who goes to UST, she was here for a month last January with a group from there. They were both in English, Jose could read his pretty well so I helped Claudia with words she didn't know and pronounciation. She's already pretty good at English though. Pronounciation is a big thing though for both of them, especially vowels since e in spanish sounds like an a in english, etc.
Yesterday we hung out at Javier's house for most of the day. We made chicken soup, first time I've ever actually seen the chicken chopped up and then put in the pot rather than just opening up the can. Cooking when it's 95 degrees out is absolutely terrible. Later on we watched High School Musical and an episode of Hannah Montana, in Spanish. That was kind of fun actually, I already knew the storyline which I think made it easier to understand. Ruth loves HSM, she sang along to all the songs, in English, which was really funny. We went to McDonalds last night, which is really expensive. A big mac costs 50 bolivares, which with the black market exchange rate is 6.25, but the government rate is 12.50 in dollars. rediculous. we just got fries and mcflurrys. delicious. i really liked last night though, i felt like part of the group, chipping in to buy all of the food rather than each ordering individually like we do at home usually, my spanish is getting better so i could be part of the conversation, it was good.
 im about to be late!

El Gringo Viva!

I made it here! Wednesday night we stayed in Caracas, well outside of Caracas near the airport. We actually got to Ciudad Guayana yesterday around 2 or 3. I got settled into my room which is nothing too fancy but it has an air conditioner and a fan so life is good. Yesterday was the feast of the virgin mary appearing in margarita which is an island i think? so there was mass which i went to, all of the people bring their statue of mary with a crown and fancy dress on and set them on tables at the front of the church. I met Javier again who plays guitar for the choir, Fr. Tim and I picked him up on the way to the church. He was at CDH last year with the group. When I told him I remember him from last year he said well I didnt see you! ....he's blind. and a jokester apparently. I met a girl named Andreina (something like that, names are hard) who is really nice. As mass was about to start we somehow ended up in the choir. so for my first mass here, i helped lead 300-some people in song. I didn't know the songs but whatever. Jose Antonio assisted at mass which was fun to see, and afterwards he Fr. Tim and I went out to dinner. I had an enrollado I think it was called, kinda of like a gyro it was really good. Jose Antonio took me out with his friends and had a welcome to Venezuela party it was a lot of fun. Ruth and Javier are his best friends so it was great to meet them. I was not expecting to be out so late on my first night here! Today I am just hanging out, I am going to walk down to the church soon and see what Jose and Andreina are doing. Tonight Fr. Greg said he we are going to go out to dinner and I can meet some more people, ah I  cant remember her name but a girl who lives nearby who is my age, we talked on the phone on Wednesday so I'll get to meet her and whoever else is there. This thing deleted itself as I finished it and only saved half and now I dont remember what else I said haha but life is good, I'm going to walk down to the church now and see what's going on. Hopefully it isn't too hot today, but the weather thing on the computer says 96 degrees and will feel like 116. so. good thing im wearing jeans! hasta luego.

tomorrow

leaving tomorrow. /in three and a half hours. whoooofta. hopefully i havent forgotten anything, the duffel bag will barely close and weighs 50 lbs and my backpack is pretty full too. time to actually go instead of just talk about it! for the past year ive been talking about how im going to venezuela for a gap year before college, yatta yatta but now im actually going. it doesn't quite feel real, kinda like im just going on a trip or something but this time it's for over 8 months with just a two week break in the middle. i cant wait to be there! it'll be great to see jose antonio again, im really glad that he'll be there for the first few weeks im there before he heads back to the seminary. i should get some sleep before we leave, it's 1215 now and we're leaving at 330..that's soon. next post from venezuela!