The Day I Fell in Love with Venezuela

So, despite those lows below, It is also very important to show pictures and say how much I love and appreciate Venezuela. Even though it's really polluted here, the landscape is breathtaking. We are entirely surrounded by the Andes and when you walk on the street you are walking mostly on a steep incline. It's funny because Venezuelans are used to that steep incline, they walk very slowly and don't really break a sweat, but all of us troop into Venusa (our school) after our breaks sweating our asses off, but it certainly feels great. I was not really getting much exercise when I left Chicago and that was really bumming me out.
But now I get some sweet moving in. I walked to school today and got here around 9 AM even though my classes don't start until 1. Today will be the first day of classes and I hope that they go well. Classes are long from 1-7 PM and then we usually have activities after that. The left picture here is a dog running up to me. He was sleeping under that truck but I came closer to take a picture and he came happily running towards me. He is probably a stray, although he might be a house dog, but dog leashes are rare here and there are many stray dogs running around. They look really dirty and they are so adorable. People tell us not to touch them, but I did pet one. I do a lot of things that people say not to do like I'm invisible. That dog wanted to follow me onto the bus wagging his tail.

Yesterday I fell in love with Venezuela. Despite the difficulties of this whole transitioning process, yesterday we got to leave Merida, and we were shown just how beautiful this country is. Instead of just looking up at the sky and seeing the mountains, we were shown them by being in them. When you look up at the Andes in Merida, you see little houses on the sides of the mountains and you wonder how those people get up there. But we went up the mountain by way of bus zig zagging in and out of the streets that you can't see from the bottom of the mountain. So when we were going through the mountains we got higher and higher and passed all of the little hillside communities that you usually only see from a distance in Merida. They were beautiful and colorful, street vendors on the sides of the roads selling collectables from the city and candies, breads, and clothing. Unfortunately we didn't really get to stop at a lot of these, but we got to stop at historical places along the way.

One of these places was a church entirely made with stones hand fitted together by a man when he was 80 years old with no architectural (sp?) experience. It was extremely beautiful.

Prior to visiting the church, however, we stopped at the Sierra Nevada National Park which I was so excited to be at. The higher up we traveled the more the air became clean. The altitude kind of gave me a head ache but it wasn't anything that a little tylenol couldn't help. Unfortunately we didn't stay at Sierra Nevada very long...Bus tours just sort of take you through areas, let you off to take some pictures and say that you've been there, and then you get back on the bus and go somewhere else. But it was still worth it because we got to see places in Venezuela that we otherwise would have been staring up at from the ground. In this picture you can see that I was doing something that people tell you not to do, but my invisible self said, "Go ahead, get close to the wild bull. See what happens." And so although we only stopped at Sierra Nevada for a little while, it was breathtakingly beautiful, I almost got speared by a bull---that picture is moments before I scurried away---and also peed in a mostly open area because there was nowhere else to pee.

After that, we went to a place to eat and it had a store attached. I bought some gifts for people there, and bought a hand woven blanket and scarf. It was funny because other Venezuelans who are not used to going to higher altitudes would be wearing winter coats and mittens and said that it was "freezing". I'm sure it is freezing by their standards because the weather is usually warm in Merida. The place we ate at was pretty good and they had a lot of cookies and stuff to buy that were delicious.

And after that, we began the great trek. Unfortunately I have to go right now, but will blog later about hiking in the Andes. With lots and lots and lots of gorgeous pictures. Hasta luego!