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