The travel day was, like I said, long. My flight left at 6am from Puerto Ordaz, so Fr. Greg and I left the house at 4:40 am. In Caracas I had over four hours until my 11:50 flight, so I wasn't in a huge rush but the lines were really long. They also weren't labeled very well. I got in one line that looked promising, only to be told ten minutes into waiting that I needed to go to another line first. In this new line, however, I made a friend. A young guy a few places ahead of me in line just gave me an "I'm an American" vibe. This may sound strange but part of it was his sideburns..they were squared off how we usually have our sideburns, rather than kind of tapered to a point like Hispanics usually have. When he pulled a blue passport out of his pocket I tapped him on the shoulder and asked him if he was American and lo and behold, he was. Born in Miami, he moved back to Venezuela for the first 18 years of his life, and since has been living in Miami again for the past 7 years. A really interesting guy, it was great to spend most of the morning with him as we were on the same flight to Miami.
My first few hours in Miami were really weird language-wise. It actually started on the plane. Hearing the flight attendants speaking in English to each other a few times kind of caused me to pause and turn around to see who was speaking. It started to get weirder when I got to the customs and immigration booth. I just felt kind out of it. I've definitely been speaking English in Venezuela, but only for a few minutes a day at the most, and then more reading/typing in the evenings. Hearing and speaking it at first felt weird. The funniest/strangest conversation was after I passed through immigration. I needed to find where to check in to get my boarding pass to MSP. A woman who worked at the airport stepped forward saying "Señora" to a woman who looked like she was about to fall. After she passed, I kind of just jumped into asking the worker about where I could get my boarding pass, in Spanish. After a sentence or so I realized I was in America, said so out loud, switched to English for a second, got a weird look from the woman, switched back to Spanish...it was just a really strange conversation. She ended up replying in Spanish, answering my question, but then said "have a good day" in English. Like I said, a strange conversation. The first couple hours were like that, I was a little thrown each time I was spoken to in English. However, in Miami it seems that everyone speaks Spanish. All of the airport employees do, and there were plenty of travelers speaking in Spanish, overhearing snippets of conversation in Spanish was kind of comforting background noise. I wasn't expecting to be dealing with any other language issues other than this. However, I was wearing my Bayern-München soccer jersey, carrying a purple backpack, and am tall with blue eyes and blonde hair. Apparently, I pass pretty well for German. I got a little head nod from a guy as I was walking out of a bookshop which I thought was a little odd, I kinda returned it and kept walking. We were going in the same direction and about twenty seconds later he approached me and started speaking in German. So here I am, mildly freaking out being in between Spanish and English, when another language gets thrown into the mix. I got out an awkward "nicht deutsch", but it turned out he spoke English as well. A funny run-in.
Being home has been great. 70 degree temperature change, not so much. I'm not usually a freeze baby but I have been COLD the past few days. After less than 24 hours of being in the country, Michael convinced me to go snowboarding. It was cold but a lot of fun. I went to CDH yesterday, I sat in on a few of my Spanish 1 teachers' classes to get some ideas for my own classes. I saw a lot of teachers and friends, it was a busy day with not enough time for everything. Dani had a dance competition last night, and Michael has a band concert tonight. We cut down a Christmas tree on Sunday. I saw Brian and Nick at their swim meet at the U. It's great to be back.
