Universidad de Santo Tomas

I spent the majority of Friday-Wednesday with the group of students from the University of St. Thomas. The group was 11 people in total, 10 students with one faculty advisor. There was one freshman, who is actually Mr. Spika's (a teacher at CDH) daughter. The rest of the group was a pretty even mix of sophomores juniors and seniors. I had a fantastic time hanging out with them. Friday afternoon I knocked on the door of the apartment connected to the church in which they were staying, and walked into a room with 11 Americans in a city where I've only seen three others in my time here. They all looked at me wondering who the heck I was, and I kind of soaked in for a second seeing so many people who speak English and have similar backgrounds to me. All of them were instantly welcoming and easy to get along with. We soon discovered that I know Rachel's dad from CDH, Becca is from Iowa and used to go to Okoboji in the summer, Colin and Joe play football for UST and are teammates with Harry Pitera who I was just in Honduras with, Maria went to Totino-Grace and knows the one person I know who went there, Yin-Yin is from Seattle and lots of her high school friends go to UW, the wonderful small world realizations kept on coming.

Friday night we went to the Plaza de Navidad and ate cake, wandered and endured the stares of all the Venezuelans, and just generally had a good time. For the next few days we went on various adventures throughout the city, sometimes with Father Greg and sometimes not. A few times he asked me to take them to the mall or to Cachamay park by myself, since he knew I knew how to get there, etc. Being a leader of sorts felt a little weird but since I do know my way around and most of their spanish wasn't great it made sense. One of my favorite things that we did was originally supposed to be a fishing expedition. It turned out to be more of a climb huge rocks, stand on top of waterfalls, dive off of small cliffs, enjoy life kind of morning. I don't have any pictures of it, but Maria, one of the students, had her camera so when she puts some on facebook I'll post them on here. It really was a sweet spot. They had done more service before I got here, but one morning we did do some work. Some of us painted the chapel in Campo Rojo, the rest of the group was working around the yard of the chapel in La Laguna. We played baseball in the church's courtyard with the kids who live around there, watched the United States vs. Venezuela soccer game on tv (the US won), took a trip to Ciudad Bolivar, and ate some great food. As a group they had reflection every night, I was able to be there for two of them which was really cool. Each person brought something different to the group. They aren't all in the same major, and aren't all interested in the same things. I am very glad to have had the chance to hang out with them all for the few days I was, and I'm looking forward to getting together with them once I'm back in Minnesota.

I'll put up a few of the pictures that I took, but I didn't have my camera with me much so I'll put up more once I get their pictures.

Miguel

All is well here; this week has been a lot of fun seeing friends and the kids at the Casa Hogar. As I said, Michael Daly was here. He left yesterday to spend a couple days in Caracas before heading back to Minnesota. Walking around the same streets with him that for three months I walked alone or with Venezuelan friends was strange but awesome. As we passed people in the streets we got plenty of looks, people don’t see Americans too often and to see two talking in English is worth pause. We went to el parque Cachamay with Jakeline and Andreina a few days ago. I hadn’t been to it yet; it has a zoo and nice views of some small waterfalls. The zoo didn’t have a whole lot of animals, there were more monkeys running around wild than there were in the pens. There was a jaguar however, which was thankfully inside a pen. Michael and I also went to the Missionaries of Charity house, where there are currently 8 sisters living. Theirs is the same order as Mother Theresa’s. I’m not really sure how I hadn’t gone there before, but I know I’ll be going back soon, possibly once a week? The morning we spent there we became barbers, cutting hair and shaving the men that live in the nursing home the sisters run. The sisters speak English; it is the language of the order worldwide. They are from all over the world; I spoke with one who is from Kenya and another from India. The current Mother Superior is from Germany. Michael worked alongside her in Calcutta while he was there for three months. Overall I was very impressed by my time there, we returned the next morning for mass (in English!), which Father Greg offers there once a week.

The group of students from the University of St. Thomas arrived this morning from the Gran Sabana. They head back to Minnesota on Wednesday, so I’ll actually have a fair amount of time here with them. I’m about to go down to the church to meet them. Fr. Tim said they are going to the Plaza de Navidad tonight so I’m going to kind of attach myself to their group for the next few days and do whatever the church has planned for them. Should be fun! Jose Antonio wants them to come to the seminary on Monday to visit there and play volleyball with them. I hope that works out so I can go see Jose and the rest of the seminarians. I’ll see Jose soon most likely but this will be a good opportunity to see all the other guys. 

Regresando

I'm almost back! Right now I am sitting at a table in the Caracas airport, waiting for my flight that is scheduled to leave at 5pm. I arrived here at 11 this morning from Miami, and have spent the afternoon skyping friends and carousing facebook (the airport has free wifi, awesome). I realized that right now I'm the guy we see in the airport in Minneapolis, or at the Mall of America, who is talking on the phone speaking another language and we have no idea what he is saying. I haven't had a problem getting back into the swing of things with speaking Spanish, however, because I just had a nice warm-up week in Honduras. The week was one of the best I've had there. Surgery-center wise, my spanish has never been better and I felt like I did a very good job translating. There were a lot of students on the trip, some of whom I knew already from past trips and some I did not, which was a lot of fun. The combination of being able to communicate so easily with the kids on the ranch and the fact that after so many trips there so many of them know me was a great feeling. Some of them commented on my being able to speak spanish so much better than in the past which was cool. I got to spend lots of good time with the kids on the ranch, made some new friends and got to hang out with many old ones, and was able to be a part of completing 65 surgeries and tending to 300+ non-surgical patients.

Instead of flying home to Minnesota like everyone else, (or Boston or Chicago or New Mexico, where some were heading home or going straight to school), my mom and I got on a flight to Miami and stayed there last night. Neither of us had been to Miami before so during our 12 hour layover we took a taxi to South Beach. Our taxi driver's ex-wife called him during the ride to tell him about a friend's child being abducted in a mall. He mentioned to us that the mall was in Puerto Ordaz, Venezuela. I mentioned that I'm living across the river from there and go to that mall frequently. SMALL WORLD. His ex-wife is from an hour away from there, and he has been to the city I'm living in. Craziness. Miami Beach was very cool, we got a nice dinner and wandered up and down the beachfront drive. A nice night with my momma.

This morning we got to the airport early, got through security and then went our separate ways. She should be almost home by now after a plane change in New York, and I am now in country number 3 in 21 hours. I have three different currencies in my pocket right now. I am excited to get to San Felix, I have been away for a month and a half. I won't be getting to my house until after 7, so I'm not sure if I'll see any of my Venezuelan friends tonight, but I do know that I will be seeing an American friend. Michael Daly, whose family is responsible for the trips to Honduras, is in the seminary at the University of St. Thomas and has spent the past few weeks here in Venezuela, living directly below my bedroom in the house. I'm excited to see him, we overlap for 4 or 5 days before he heads back to Minnesota. There is also a separate group from UST, but I'm not sure exactly what their status is, I think they may be in the Gran Sabana right now.

I'm so excited to be back, I have missed the people here dearly.

airport pic for ya