El Rio

I was so busy this weekend, it was almost too busy. I went from one thing to the next constantly. It was a really fun weekend though so I can't complain. Friday was one the little Brito cousins first birthday party. I was planning on just going for a couple hours, but ended up being there until late. Waking up for my 7am class the next morning was great. The class went really well though, there were 20+ people there and the lesson went well. When I got home it was almost 9. I made a couple sandwiches and threw some chips in a bag for lunch and took a taxi to La Llovizna. My friend Maria who I had gone there with before was going with some friends for the day so she invited me. There were about 10 of them, it was a lot of fun just hanging out with them, playing games and learning how to make balloon animals. I left there around 3, instead of taking a taxi home I got one instead to Orinokia, the mall. Walked around for a bit and then used the cheap phone booths at the cell phone store to make a couple calls to the U.S. I stopped when if I kept talking for another minute I wouldn't have enough money for the bus home. Hopped in a van and made it home, after being there for just 20 minutes my friends Leibarg and Arianna were walking by and invited me to come watch the baseball game with them. Navegantes vs los Leones, the two big teams in Venezuela. I've been asked a few times which team I support, I usually just say los twins de minnesota but that night I chose the navegantes, because yojan santana played for them. they won, so i chose right.

After a late night at Arianna's house with that group I had to be up at 630am to go to the river with Andreina, Patricia, Paola, Pati and Paola's mom, and a few uncles or something that I never really found out who they were. I walked down to Los Arenales, where they live, and got in the back of a truck for a two hour ride. An hour of that was on a terrible road winding around in the forest. Not my favorite ride. Once we got there though it was great. I'm not sure why they call it going to the river, because it's a lake. But maybe it's connected to the river. It was really pretty, I have some pictures of it that I'll put up. We spent the day there, jumping off the dock, swimming, eating sugarcane which is so delicious, getting sunburned (just me), having hold-your-breath competitions, skipping rocks, etc. It was a great day I had a lot of fun. 

On the way

Patricia

Patricia pushing people in

The house

Whoo front flip off the dock. Took a few tries to get this picture

Orinokia y Fotos

Haven't posted anything for a little while. Things are going pretty well here. I go to the Casa de Hogar in the morning Mondays Wednesdays and Fridays usually, I'm going to spend the night there one of these days. I have classes Monday Tuesday Thursday and Saturday, during the week at 3pm and on Saturday at 7am. Other than that I'm pretty much free, this morning I slept in a bit, then left here at 9 and went to Orinokia, the mall in Puerto Ordaz, to "recharge" my phone, which means buy more credit. For $4/month I get 1000 seconds of calls to other people with the same cell phone company, and 200 messages to the same company. The call time is plenty, I could probably do with a few more messages. Whenever someone doesn't have "saldo" (credit), their phone can still receive texts and calls. It doesn't cost anything for those ever. So if someone doesnt have credit and gets a text it's common for them to ask, can you gift me a message. which sounds funny to me. Also this morning I bought the last Twilight book, NOT for myself, it's Andreina's birthday next Friday and she mentioned once that she's read them all but the last one.
I'm going to look through my pictures from the last couple weeks and throw a few on here.

probably the holiest graffiti i've ever seen

 Monseñor Sandoval, Papa Benedicto XVI, Archbishop Neinstedt (MSP)

La Iglesia Jesucristo Resucitado

From the church, view of Puerto Ordaz

Fr. Tim baptizing someone

La Boda

Thursday night I went to the wedding of our neighbor, Sarah. She got married to a man named Christian who is from Italy. I'm not sure how they met. She went to MN last September with the group so I think I actually met her up there. Here in Venezuela more than back home, churches don't mix. The Catholic Church and the Evangelicals do not mix. She's evangelical, but Fr. Greg explained that her and her family have always been really respectful and amicable, and since they live so close I guess theyve become friends. When her and her brother went to MN they paid their own way, they just really wanted to go. So to go to a evangelical wedding, Fr. didn't want to make the minister or anyone mad so he didn't wear his blacks with the priest collar thing. There has got to be a proper name for that. So for the first time in 14 years he wore a button down shirt with a tie. He said it took a couple tries to remember how to tie the tie haha. The day before the wedding he asked the mother of the bride what time we should get there, she told him 630-7. The invitation said 7. We showed up at about ten to seven, to find the groom and four other people there. At 755 the choir/band showed up, and at 820 the wedding started. Right on time. Waiting was not bad though actually, it was just Fr. Greg and I so we just hung out talking in English, he told me a bunch of stories from when he was in college at UST, he had some good ones. Who knew pre-seminary could be so much fun? Not me. The actual wedding was pretty short, the minister said "Gloria a Dios" about a million times, it was like a filler. When he told the bride and groom they could sit down he followed with gloria a dios. "You can sit down to rest, gloria a Dios".

poor quality pictures..sorry

The reception was at Club Italo, the nicest club in Puerto Ordaz. It was really impressive, there was a big pool and water slide, I only saw part of the club but it was really nice. We got there around 930 and met Gladys, Yusemaris, Andreinna, and Jaqueline who didn't go to the actual ceremony. Oh and we picked up Omar on the way as well. They are all a lot of fun. There was a huge pre-dinner buffet, and then actual dinner was served. Everyone got a huge plate of turkey, chicken, hallaca which is really hard to explain I'm not going to try, and a sweet bread with both ham and a few olives baked into it. Fr Greg and I were the biggest eaters at our table and we still only ate half a plate each. Gladys brought a bag just for that purpose, they'll probably be eating that meal for the next few days at their house haha ohh man so later they served cake. It was overly air conditioned in the room, so the frosting on the cake was solid. No one really thought anything of that, it seemed like a great idea to wrap them up and bring some cake home. Not so great of idea as it turns out, the frosting melted and Gladys' bag was a mess in the morning. Oops. There was lots of dancing throughout the night which was a lot of fun. Merengue I can handle. At one point the bride came to our table and grabbed my hand to come dance with her, it was great. Fr. Greg was tired and left around midnight, the plan was for us all to go with him but the girls decided they would improvise a ride home so I stayed with them. I got home at 6am. The sun was risen. Awesome.

La Llovizna

So, Saturday. I took a taxi to La Llovizna, a park on the Caroní River. I met two friends from Puerto Ordaz there, Edgard and Maria. Edgard is a seminarian, he goes to a seminary in Guatemala. The two times I tried to get the story on why he goes to Guatemala for the seminary I didn't understand and so gave up and smiled and nodded. Something about a scholarship. Maria is a friend who I met at a function at a church in Puerto Ordaz, she's an engineering student at university. Well it was raining when I first got there, and of course I wasn't wearing a rain jacket so I got soaked. Which was ok. We wandered around the park for an hour or two, it's pretty big and has a few large ponds/small lakes on the island. The main attraction is the view of the waterfall. There is a large hydroelectric dam upriver of the island (it powers most of this area of Venezuela, and also is sold to Brazil) , and a few hundred yards later a mid-size waterfall. It's more wide than it is tall but it's really cool. We could actually get really close to it which was fun. It was fun for me as we were walking around to think about how my friends who have come to Venezuela on the CDH trips have been right there where I was. A few of the lookout spots I recognized from pictures of their trips. I don't really know what else to say about the park I think the pictures will tell about it better than I can. 

Rio Caroní

From the top

Hydro-electric dam

Turbines inside those are spun by the water to make the energy

So La Llovizna is the green park on the river, I live NW of it in Guaiparo. The east side of the river is San Felix, west side is Puerto Ordaz with bridges connecting. Minneapolis/St. Paul anyone?

Skype

So this weekend all of my closest friends are home, Brian, Nick, and Teddy from St. Johns for the weekend, Teddy T from Creighton for a week for fall break, and Kelly from Iowa for the weekend. Which was making me kind of homesick, knowing they all got to be together but I couldnt be there. But last night they all skyped me from Teddy's house, which was pretty much the best thing ever. It was great to see all of them at the same time, and I laughed until I cried more than once. Brian's birthday was last week, and the tradition of giving him a 6XL article of clothing was carried on. (Casual Men's XL on Snelling, great store). He was wearing the article of clothing while we skyped. And no shirt. I'll put a picture below. Tschann or Nick made a joke about Teddy Kline's eating habits, this probably won't sound funny at all now but about Jeff Kline serving chili for breakfast. Haha nevermind, definitely still funny. Kelly might have broken her toe again? Well done. The boot may live on. It was such a great time, I'm really glad that I was able to see them all. I miss them and everyone a lot but last night made me feel so much better, thanks you five.

The shorts

Sorry Beebs no eyes. Miss you all!

Temprano

Whooo it is 741 am. I've already been across the city to another parish, taught an English class, made it back across the city, and listened to Lovelier Than You by B.o.B. 5 times. Sweet. The English class was awesome though, there were 20 people there! at 6am!! Father Carlos had told me that it should be a really basic course, but turns out they all are already not too bad at English. I found out they all study English for an hour a day. Which is really impressive. So my prepared lesson about numbers and letters and spelling their names outloud in English was a little lame. But it's ok it was a good start to see where they're at, next week I think I'm going to either do something with introductions and greetings and basic conversations or the calendar and telling time, etc. Haven't decided yet. But yeah. 20 teenagers and young people (I don't think anyone was over 22, and there was a surprisingly unabashed 12 year old who volunteered to stand up in front of everyone and spell his name in English) showing up at 6am on a Saturday morning to come to a class run by an 18 year old not-qualified-for-nothin gringo was really cool. I guess the true test will be to see if they show up again next week hahaha we'll see what happens.

I'm going to La Llovizna this morning with a couple friends from Puerto Ordaz. It's a park; state, national, city, idk how that works but yeah! Should be fun I'll probably post on here later tonight about it. Have a good day!

--p.s. blogger.com is really annoying. server doesn't respond half the time when I try to post things. thank god for copy and paste so I don't lose everything ever time that happens. like it just did. 

--another p.s. I added my location on this post. not really clear on how that works or how it will show up on the actual blog. if it works, maybe you will be able to see exactly where I live. if not, bummer. you can always google image venezuela, zoom in on ciudad guayana, east side of the river, guaiparo. or just be satisfied with knowing im somewhere in venezuela. whatever works.

Niño

A little earlier this evening I was sitting here at my desk, skyping with Teddy Tschann, when I heard a little knock at my door. Usually that would be Father Greg, and he waits until I open the door. So when the door swung open I was a bit surprised, but it wasn't Father Greg. Out of nowhere my room was invaded my a random little kid, maybe 3 years old. He started running around, turning on and off the light, hiding in my closet, etc. It was really cute for just about two minutes. He can't really talk yet but can definitely make a lot of noise. While I was still skyping Teddy he was on my bed behind me jumping up and down haha it was actually pretty funny. Then he fell off the bed. Oops. No permanent damage. I had to tell Teddy I'd call him back later, I spent the next half hour chasing after this kid and trying to make sure he didn't get into too much trouble. He tried to open every single drawer, explore every closet nook and cranny, etc, in the entire house. He's the son of a woman who lives nearby, Jessica. She is Claudia's sister. She was over talking with Fr. and her son escaped the tv room where they had left him to watch cartoons. So I became babysitter. It was kind of fun but at the same time I kept thinking I have no idea how she could do that all the time.

Can you find him?

Today was a national holiday in Venezuela, no work, no school, nada. The first five or so people who I asked what the holiday was for didn't know or didn't care to explain, they had an attitude of who cares we don't have to do anything. Works for me. Turns out it's something to do with celebrating the indigenous people of Venezuela. I did no celebrating of indigenous people but it was nice to have a day of even less responsibility than I usually have. I hung out with the boys at the Casa de Hogar in the morning, we ate oranges and watched the replay of the Venezuela vs Argentina soccer game from last night. Venezuela won 1-0, huge upset, and the goal was awesome. A header off of a corner. Sweet. After lunch, Andreina, Junior and I went to Puerto Ordaz so I could buy some dress pants. I'm going to a wedding next week so I got a pair of nice black dress pants for the equivalent of $16. Some things are really cheap, others are more than double the price of what we pay in the US. I don't get it.

La Vervena

Saturday morning I went to a two and a half hour deaconal ordination mass. I just made up the word deaconal, not sure if that's proper or not. A man being ordained a deacon. That. Really long especially because I didn't understand more than a phrase here or there, even the bishop while reading something got lost a few times. It was interesting though, it's not every day that you go to one of those. At one point the man being ordained was laying face down on the altar. I seriously see the bishop a few times a week, he speaks a little bit of english and always calls my name and says hi to me. which is cool. I've been meeting lots of priests, a Father Diego who mentioned that he found my blog has been very welcoming and friendly, I like him a lot. He speaks just a little english, he is eager to learn. Yesterday at lunch after the ordination, Fr. Tim and I were sitting at a table with four other priests. When I told one Fr. Jose that I am teaching english here, he asked if I could come to his parish to teach as well. Which of course I agreed to, what I didnt quite realize is that he wants me to come at 6am Saturday mornings. SO that will be awesome. But if there are people there that want to learn it will be good to go teach them. He texted me today saying he'll be by to pick me up at 540am. 

Today was La Vervena, which was an event for the entire Catholic Church of the Diocese of Ciudad Guayana. Many of the parishes from both San Felix and Puerto Ordaz came together at a social club in Puerto Ordaz, which was extremely nice by the way, olympic size pool, biggest wave pool ive ever seen, etc, it was awesome. I really wanted to jump in but no dice. The point of the event was to raise money for the parishes and especially for the seminary in Ciudad Bolivar, where Jose Antonio goes. 8 of the seminarians were in town this weekend, they stayed in the apartment at the parish here in Guaiparo. It was fun hanging out with them Saturday night, and great to see Jose and catch up with him. Strangely, it was kind of weird to speak english with him. I've gotten used to speaking spanish at all times, so I kept forgetting that I could/should speak english with him. Speaking spanish has gotten better, it's becoming easier to understand what people are saying to me, but I definitely still get frustrated when I cant understand. Asking como? como? over and over again is getting really old. But all in good time! Today Andreina asked me if I realized that I actually speak pretty well, and that she thinks I've been doing better than some of the other gringos that have come here when they were at this point in their stay. Not sure how much of that is true, but I don't think she realized how much that meant to me and how nice it was to hear. Anyway, La Vervena was great. There were lots of groups selling various food and drink which were all really good. it was a hot day so the tezana was a favorite of mine. it's basically various diced fruits frozen mixed with tea. very tasty. There was dancing, both organized dance groups and spontaneous dancing to the live band that played. Jose's sisters Nykaris and Zuleynis both were in a dancing group, it was really fun to see them, they are really good at dancing. Friday night they attempted to teach me how to dance calypso again. It's really hard. Wow this has been a ramble. Whoops. Chao!

With some of the seminarians

Jose Antonio was the MC for La Vervena

Zuleynis and Naykaris dancing

Un mes

Last night I was thinking about what to do this morning, and I decided to go on a little adventure. I didn't really have an objective except to go somewhere on my own and look around. So I got on a bus and went to San Felix, the shopping center on this side of the river. I went there a few weeks ago with José, so I had a bit of an idea of how to get there. It was a half hour bus ride each way, I was lucky to get a seat on the way there, not so lucky on the way back. It was an interesting morning, I just wandered. It's a really big area. The streets are full of vendors as well as the storefronts, taxis and trucks still drove (kind of) slowly down the middle of the streets. I bought some food, basically just deep fried bread but it was really tasty. 

Ok. Five minutes ago it was sunny and hot out. I just opened my window and it's pouring rain. 

Anyway. While walking through crowds, I get lots of strange looks. This morning was no exception. It's kind of funny to watch people do double takes when they see a gringo walking by. 

Today I have officially been here for a month. I got to Venezuela a month ago yesterday, but it was a month ago today that I arrived here in Guaiparo. The time has gone by really quickly, it does not seem like it's already been a month. I guess that's a good thing, if I was having a terrible time the time would be dragging by. I changed things up for coming home, I'll be back at the beginning of December instead of towards the end, and the fam is going to come down in the spring sometime rather than for Thanksgiving. 

Lluvia

It's raining and I'm loving it. It doesn't rain every day, but probably every other or so. Sometimes it's just a quick shower, other days it's lasted for a few hours. It's coming down pretty hard right now. Life pretty much just stops while it's raining. Conveniently, it always seems to rain during the downtime after lunch where everyone is just at home relaxing anyway. Or maybe everyone is home relaxing because this is the time when it rains.

Fútbol y Mujeres

I went to a soccer game yesterday! Maria, a woman who works at the church, asked me a few days ago when I'm going to come to her house. I didnt really know how to respond to that so I went with wellll whenever you want me to! So she invited me to go to the game with her and her family. She mentioned that she had daughters who were going to go, and winked at me saying they are pretty. That has happened a lot actually. This morning after mass I was talking with Ruth, who got her visa!!! , when an older woman I hadn't met approached me and took my arm saying she wanted to introduce me to her daughter. Her daughter, who is tall and very pretty, got embarrassed when she realized what her mom was doing but it was funny. She's really nice. Her mother made sure I knew that she does not have a boyfriend. Later, Ruth made sure I knew she is 22.

Back to the soccer game. Father Greg gave Rene, who lives nearby, and I a ride to Maria's house which is in a different barrio. From there we walked up to the highway and got on a bus that took us to the stadium. The stadium is impressive from the outside, at night when there are games I've seen it while driving by, the roof is lit up and actually changes colors. I'll try to find a picture of it. Tickets are extremely cheap, only 10 BSF which is $1.25. The atmosphere was exactly what you would expect from a South American soccer game, lots of chanting and painted faces. The teams playing were the state teams from here in Bolivar and some other state that I don't remember. So a pretty big game. It was a good game as well, the home team won 2-0 with two awesome goals, one 10 minutes in and the other with 10 minutes left. When the opposing teams goalie was in our end, the rowdiest section would do the "wag your fingers and scream" thing we do before kick offs in football games. When he kicked it, the whole stadium yelled "hijo de puta!!" hijo=son de=of puta=figure it out. Awesome.

Outside the stadium at night. Picture from the internet, terrible quality sorry

Yep, that is a homemade flamethrower

Sweet