Christmas vacation: part 1

It has been a long time since I have written and stuff has gone down, including Christmas, New Year´s, lots of traveling and work back in Maturín!

I would like to start with Christmas in Maturin. Strangely enough, Christmas is not as big of a deal here as New Year´s so it was hard to get into the Christmas spirit. Things Venezuelans associate with Christmas (gaita music, el plato navideño and buying new clothes) are also not things I associate with Christmas, so that also made it difficult to get in the spirit. The weeks before Christmas turned Maturin into a hellish place where it took an hour or more to get from the center of town to the Uni and where the malls became overwhemlingly crowded with people trying to find last minute gifts. I was not a huge fan of this and tried to avoid the center and shopping malls as much as possible. I was, however, a fan of the amount of parties I got to go to in Venezuela for Christmas. Starting in December I went to about one party a week. I ate A LOT and got to learn a lot about Venezuelan culture during the holidays. I also got to spend a lovely Christmas with the Marcano family. I love and appreciate their kindness a lot!

I then left Maturín to spend some quality time with some other Fulbrighters. It was honestly one of the highlights of my time here in VZ. It was nice to really get to know them better and to just get out and explore some parts of VZ.

Our trip started with some really beautful beaches in the western part of Venezuela, a trip to the mountain town Mérida and a trip to Los Llanos. The beach included escapades of three gringitas going around and making lots of random Venezuelan friends and spending our days relaxing on the beach. Good times. We spent New Year´s there which is a very family oriented event in Venezuela and I spent it with Anna and Emma, 2 gringas. We decided rather than being cooped up in our posada, we would go out on the town. We stumbled upon party after party of venezuelans celebrating the New Year. We made quite a spectacle of ourselves, but it was great fun.

We then took a bus habilitado to the mountain town of Mérida. We got our bus tickets the day of, and unknown to us, a bus habilitado is a bus that they decide to send at the last minute because of demand. It was also a microbus, which is a normal bus that goes around cities usually, not the nice overnight bus, so we knew it was going to be very unconfortable ride from the get-go. It was questionable at the time of arrival to get on the bus whether there were enough seats for everyone who had bought tickets. Thus we asked Antoni to shove his way onto the bus to assure that we got seats. There were three of us, so we ended up sitting in the vey back row of the bus. Unfortunately, the bus lacked shock absorbers. You know those 3-D chair things you sit in at theme parts that move around with the movie screen? It was kind of like that, only without the movie and for 12 hours. I remember thinking it was ridiculous that the girl next to me popped a valium. Looking back on it, she knew what she was doing. She was fast asleep and I was not. But we made it safe and sound, the most important thing.

Once in Mérida, we did some exploring of the city and I got to see the normal sites and eat the typical andian food. Mérida is truely a Venezuela gem. It is laid back, well-organized and has a culture all to its own. It is relatively safe by Venezuelan standards and the weather is relatively cool. We went to the zoo, ate some new foods, which I will list below.Coromoto is an ice cream shop with 860 flavors, and has the Guisness record for that. Of course, we went there. It has really odd flavors like octupus, salmon and ground beef and then more normal flavors like oreo and chocolate. I tried black bean, pumpkin and tostone (fried green plantain) and then Cri Cri, which is a delicious venezuelan chocolate bar.
Some other food I ate was:
Vitimina: Liquid cake, with an alcoholic twist. I am a huge fan.
Arepas Andinas: Like the traditional venezuelan arepa, but made from wheat flour rather than corn flour, really delicious
Pastelitos: Not so common in the oriente, they are like empanadas but smaller and slightly more tasty
Levantón Andina: An aphrodisiac drink they sell that contains about 80 ingredients


I will continue writing about my Christmas break journies again tomorrow. Just to get you excited, it involves anacondas and bollywood dancing.:)