A Few Additional Things

February 28th, 2009

Venezuela. A country that i am still trying to figure out. Slowly I am figuring it out, this is true, but even when I leave, I still will not have a firm grasp on what is happening in this country.

Politically everything has been quite stoic. Chavez won and everyone has pretty much accepted the fact. There was graffitti and posters everywhere, I mean everywhere, and in the past two weeks or so, the city workers have been cleaning it up. They are painting over the graffitti and scrapping all the posters off all city property. No riots here in Merida or anything of that sort. Which is good. (Yes Mom, Bubby, and anyone else pretending to worry about me, I am safe.)

So far I have stayed very safe in this country, somehow and I have thus avoiding getting anything stolen from myself. I decided to follow the herd and go see a bullfight, my very first bullfight. It was pretty....umm... I have no words to describe it. It wasn't terribly gruesome, but it was horrible. Especially, watching the bulls fall and die. It started out with a nice, but not great, flamenco dancing session and a bunch of pomp and circumstance. Later, the matadors came out. There were three and each of them did 2 fights. The first one was on a horse, the other two on foot. What they do is they piss off the bull a bunch of times, stab it once or so then send it out into the ring. Then the matadors do their "dance" and stab the bull a couple more times with several little daggers that have flowers or flags on them to "decorate" the bull. Finally they take a large sword and attempt to stab it all the way through the bull to do a 1 hit kill. Once or twice they were able to do this. But usually it took several stabs, a sign of a poorly skilled matador. Then came the worst part, watching the bulls slowly realize it was dying. It started to move slowly, then blood started coming out of its nose and mouth, then it finally would just collapse and die. At this point the crowd would either cheer or boo depending on the skill of the matador during that fight. It was mostly a giant drunk fest. I have never seen so many people so drunk. It was intense.

Leaving the stadium was a fiasco. The was a big party in the street for the Internation Festival of the Sun, not really sure where the name comes from. Basically, a lot of the Meridians I talked to don't even go to it and stay inside all day for all 5 days, because basically its craziness. People from all over Venezuela and South America come to Merida for the party and the bullfights. They party in the street basically for 5 days straight and its not uncommon to hear of a few deaths during the period (don't worry we weren't in any danger). But the crowd outside the stadium was just insane. There were so many people, and they targeted a few of us. Some people wanted to stay and party, but once a few people got pick-pocketed, I not included, we decided to leave and go to the closest thing Venezuela has to something called a Pub. It was pretty chill. (The pick pocketing here is pretty intense. A couple people get you to stop then like 4 others just raid all your pockets then run away and the few that stopped you have nothing so you can't chase them to steal it back or whatever.)

The next day we woke up, well atleast a small group of about 10 of us, to go to Lake Maracaibo. It's the big lake in the middle of the country where they drill all their oil, thus it is not the cleanest water in the least. Anyways we took a small tour bus up through the mountains and made a few stops at quaint little mountains towns and views and a short spelunking excursion. We stopped for lunch and had this quite amazing barbeque. It was a giant pile or steak, pork, chicken, cheese and a potato-like vegetable. Superb!

We arrived at the lake and there is surprisingly a lot of security there. Apparently Venezuela has been making some pretty strict wildlife protection laws and such. We took a little motor boat out to the lake from the river we began at. It took about a half hour and we navigated through all sorts of wildlife!

The house we arrived at can best be described as a giant but pretty sturdy shack. It has a few private rooms, but was surrounded basically by a fenced in porch where we hung the hammocks for sleeping. We chilled for awhile, ate a nice meal and went out on a night safari where we saw turtles, snakes, caymen, and more! I actually got to catch one of the smaller caymen. The driver spotted it, shined his flashlight near and motioned for me to grab it as it was swimming pretty close to the boat.

That night we were hoping to see some amazing lightning that is one of a kind. It only happens in this one place in the world and is not caused by storms and there is not thunder with it. It sometimes just occasionally happens and lights up the night sky. (If you want more info search Catatumbo Lightning)
We didn’t get to see any but the next day we went on a safari to the place where the lightning usually occurs. We saw some pretty dead trees (after being stuck by lightning) and cool wildlife again!

We went back and had a relaxing Tuesday.

I had classes Wednesday and Thursday which was largely a joke, like always.

It was a pretty relaxing weekend too. Saturday a few of us went to the Botanical gardens which was super sweet! We were hoping to do the rope course they have set up in the jungle area but the people were closing a bit early when we got there, so we just walked around. Beautiful. And the best part was I could breathe the air and not taste any pollution! How fantastic.


Well I hope all stays well with everyone! Best wishes wherever you are reading this from.

Gerbil

Gosh this is a strange place.

We were sitting outside a grocery store waiting for people to come out to finish buying food for the weekend trip and a young couple, about my age, tries walking in the store. Mind you she is fidgeting with something in her pocket and it wasn't until she got closer that we realized it was a gerbil. Well the store security would not let her bring it in, so she was freaking out, well not so much but she needed to go in the store. So somehow they were able to commandeer a box, about shoe box size, and store the gerbil in there, but still they were not allowed. So they attempted to ask the booth people outside the store selling phones or what not service items to hold it and everyone was like no. However one who was watching all this transpire.... was like why not and called them over and held the box while the couple went on their merry way inside.

Cars.

So...

Let's just get one thing out in the open, Venezuelans LOVE their car stereos. Jesus Christ. First of all, I have yet to see a car in this country (bus, taxi, etc included) that still had the factory installed stereo. No. Those factory stereos and speakers are not good enough for venezuela. They NEED the fancy thingers with volume and bass so loud you can here it a mile away, er excuse me 2 kilometers away.

Also, I don't think they car how the cars work, just as long as they work. I was in a bus the other day and noticed it had a automatic transmission. Not that weird because they have alot of American cars here (thus autotransmissions)...but it was set on Reverse. Yes I check this several times. THe transmission said reverse...but it was going up hill--forward. Hmm.

What the Fuck Venezuela?

So Yesterday I was walking back from a pizza place for dinner. And we were waiting to cross the street.

Well with the cars, several motorcycle are pretty common in Venezuelan traffic, but the motorcycle that passed had an interesting sound...a sort of clicking. Well right, no more than 2 feet, in front of us a motorcycle zoomed by with a driver and a passenger holding a tight rope. Well, behind the motorcycle, on the other side of the rope, was a medium sized brown horse half-galloping down the street....

Only in Venezuela.

Some new experiences....

February 15th, 2009

I guess I should start off by saying Happy Belated Valentine’s Day, or Día de la Amistad, here in Venezuela.

It’s been awhile since I last wrote anything. So I am going to start off from a week ago, when I went Paragliding. Paragliding is first of all very different from parasailing, where a boat and a body of water are usually involved. Paragliding is where you have a giant chute tied to your back and you jump off a cliff and use the wind and drive around the sky for awhile. You can go up, down, left, right, and in circles. It was pretty intense. First of all there were 10 of us going and 5 pilots. We took a safari jeep up to a cliff and the 5 tallest people went first. They sailed around for about a half hour in the sky and then came back down to the top of the cliff. The 5 smaller people, I included, went next. I got strapped into a giant pack with an attached seat. I got clipped to the pilot and then the wind picked us off the ground. My pilot is a professional paraglider and even competes around the world including Europe and the States. He took me around for awhile doing all sorts of barrel rolls and other such things. I was able to have some my camera up there and took several pictures and videos. Some are up on the photo sites, other you can see when I get back to the States.

I think it’s been quite a normal week. I did on Monday go out to a fantastic vegetarian restaurant. It’s not fantastic by any American restaurant standard, but at the Venezuelan level, it’s pretty good. I had a full meal, which is near impossible to find on the streets of Venezuela. It was quite expensive for Venezuela though. With a glass of wine at the legal rate my meal was about $20 USD. It was a nice start to the week.

The rest of the week went pretty smoothly. I am still trying to figure out how half this country functions because mostly it just seems that people make up rules and other such things.

Thursday I had my first exam, and it was largely bullshit. Ha. Not to be rude or anything but I am use to objective tests that ask you what some gene does or how to form a certain chemical. I am not use to these open ended essay tests. Also, it was pretty much impossible to write in the amount of time they gave us and with the amount of paper they gave us. We had 7 questions on culture, civilization, and identity that were pretty much open ended. Questions like Define and characterize culture. What is popular culture? What is western culture? What are the effect of globalization? We were given 1-2 sheets of paper and 2 hours. In the states, in English, I would be expected to write pages and pages on each topic, but however here I am only alloted barely enough time to write a paragraph or two.

Thursday night was a nice fun bar/discotheque night.

Friday afternoon we left for the hot springs. It was about a 2 hour bus ride up to the trail and then an hour and a half hike from the bus stop to the campsite. From there it was about 5 minutes from the springs. It was a nice, but slightly challenging hike. We set up camp basically on the edge of the mountain. It was raining and getting dark, but stopped soon. The hot springs were nice. Man Made. They pretty much just damned up a small hot spring to make a medium sized pool on the ledge of a mountain. It was a fun evening.

The night was fucking cold, but I survived. Barely sleeping I got up at dawn and stayed outside only to get heavily burned. We started heading down around 12 and were home by 4.

Sunday was the day of voting. Everything is pretty divided here. Merida, the town I am in, voted no on the amendment by like 49.9% to 50.1% for chavez to extend his maximum term limit. The rest of the country voted 55% to 45% in favor of yes. The night was pretty wild. People were riding all around the city either blowing their horns or chanting NO is No (for the losing opposition).

Well since I am not getting this up until wednesday I can say stuff about this week. Pretty relaxing. I studied a bit more than I’ve been doing lately.

Thursday starts the big carnival here. It’s basically the equivalent of Mardi Gras but 10000 times more intense. There is bull fights, trash everywhere and drunk people by the masses to be expected.

I think I may hence be going away for a few days.....


Peace and Prosperity to all.

Some thoughts

January 6th, 2009

So I want to reiterate that nothing I say is based on painfully and scientifically researched information. Everything is based on acute observations and personal opinions. So don’t go on Jeopardy or a court of law with the majority of what is in my blog.
This is a strange, strange country. I still can’t figure out the logic around most of it. Laws don’t really exist. All the Venezuelans we talk to are like this is illegal, or that is illegal, but it really doesn’t matter. The corruption here is so common and prevalent that if you do do anything illegal, you can easily just pay off the cops or anyone else who catches you.
There is no order to anything that happens here. The busses come when they want and in whatever vehicle they want. Literally some of the busses here are just large 30 year old vans that someone stuck a line sign on, and they drive around the city on their routes sometime between the hours of 6am and 10pm more or less.
Nobody literally cares about health and safety here. On the back of all the cigarette packages there are random signs that tell of the health hazards that smoking causes like impotency, cancer, death, 2nd hand effects, etc. Or drinking and driving. I’ve seen billboards telling people not to drink and drive, but still cab drivers will have an open beer when they take people or they will stop at the liquor store and the way to the destination to buy a beer. Or like last night (Mom and Bubby you might not want to read this) we went to a nice Hip-Hop club not on the main road. Anyways when we were waiting for cabs at the end of the night an off duty bus drove by. One of the Venezuelans called him over and he decided to drive the ten of us to another club. Hmm. Nice of him, but when we got on the bus he was drinking a beer and he had a cooler full of empty beer bottles. We safely got to the club though somehow. Hmm. I wonder how this country functions.
On to another subject. Anyway, I was told by numerous people who probably have no scientific basis for their argument, but presented it in a valid way nevertheless that Venezuela has the most beautiful women. Hmm. I still cannot confirm nor deny this as one I haven’t been everywhere and two I’ve only seen mountain venezuelans, etc. The women here are pretty attractive though, it’s true. Some are very very attractive as well. They all do like to show off their upper bodies...ALOT! But the very unfortunate thing so far is that a grand majority of them don’t seem to act their age. Too add the fact, the Venezuelan girls that hang out at VEN-USA, the school I am at, are super young already. 15-18 years old mostly with the majority being 16/17 while acting several years younger. It’s like middle school again. It’s slightly obnoxious and annoying.
Also I don’t know how I feel of this kissing to say hi and goodbye everytime you see somebody. I think I will think about this and write more later.
So soon in about two weeks on February 15th, I think, there is going to be an vote to on an amendment to the constitution. Chavez wants to get rid of term limits for the presidency. There is already signs and graffiti everywhere saying either Si Va Chavez (Yes) or No es No (No). It’s going to be pretty tense on election day.

Hmm anyway, just finished my last class today so I think I am going to post this blog and go out for a bit.

PARAGLIDING on sunday afternoon!

Photos

Hey all. Some of you don't have facebook so I put some photos on my Google site http://picasaweb.google.com/seanianbernstein/ . If you can get on facebook, view them there because I described most of them, but if you can't describe them on Google.

Enjoy!

http://picasaweb.google.com/seanianbernstein/