Yep.

So before picking up where I left off, it might be a good idea to update you on what´s going on in Venezuela. Some mad stuff has recently gone down and it would be a shame to go on and on about my vacation and not let you all know about this.

Money: At the beginning of the year, Chavez decided to devalue the currency. Generally, it was devalued from 2.12 to 4.3... 100 percent ladies and gentlemen. This means that tecnically, prices should sky rocket. I did go with a friend to by 4 razor blades and they cost $160 BsF... about 25 USD. Ahhh. That is the only thing I have really noticed as absurdly expensive so far,but Venezuelans are flocking to the store and buying any sort of good they can before all of the prices go up. A friend I know if buying a car and the dealer told him to buy it by the end of this week, because the price would be twice as much on Monday.

Electricity: There are also some major problems with electricity and there has been rationing around the country. I lose power where I live for 4 hours 3 days a week, every other day from 6-8am and 6-8pm. Apparently, the place that supplies about 70 percent of Venezuela´s electricity is in really, really bad shape so something must be done to conserve energy or the entire system will collapse. Thus, every city lose power to conserve.

RCTV: A Venezuelan TV station was shut down (again) because it refused to comply with some regulations that Chavez set up. This created some major protesting throughout the country, specifically in the Universities, where who are outraged that the station was shut down. There were some innocently killed students from the protesting, that led to more protesting. RCTV is the same station that Chavez claimed was involved in the attempted coup in 2002 and so he removed it from the ait then as well. I honestly have no idea if that was ever proven to be true. It is a sad, sad situation though.

Reading all of this, be aware that most of this is going down in Caracas. I live in Maturín. It is far away from the center of everything and much more tranquil. I live with an elderly couple (who I should really dedicate a blog to, as they are two of the most wonderful people I have ever met) who is extremely concerned with politics and make sure that I am up tp date on my information, but I do not feel the intensity of the politics so much in my city. It would actually be semi-easy to go day to day and not think about any of this.

Needless to say, politically, there is A LOT of tension. I will continue with my vacation story soon, just wanted to update!