Mi escuela

As you may have noticed, I sometimes use Spanish words in my text. After studying and using mostly Spanish in my day-to-day life, Spanish words have started coming to mind naturally and its getting more and more difficult to say or type anything in English or Polish without Spanish slipping out. The Spanish language aggressively takes over! I fear that with time the Spanish words will begin to appear more frequently, and sometime in June i will be writing only en Espanol.
Since learning Spanish is my primary activity here I would like to say few words about my Spanish school. First of all, i would not call this place a school. Everything from the teachers, who are my friends and, in most cases are younger than me, to the overall atmosphere which is very LAID BACK, and not to mention the motto of our immersion program, which emphasizes the sociable, cultural aspect of our studies. More or less our classes resemble loose conversations that could easily take place at the bar or other "social" place. According to our profesora de profesores - Cathy, it works. Not trying to be like a patient who thinks he is smarter than a surgeon, I try to believe her. Moreover, this sounds like learning Spanish with no extraordinary hard work and I like it. I have classes for a total of 4 hours a day, Monday through Friday. I my class I have only one classmate - David, who is also a Rotary student. For a while there were four of us including Whitney - another Rotary student, and Howard - an economics professo, who came to Venezuela looking for confirmation of his socialist beliefs. For some unclear reasons we got separated and Whitney now has classes one on one, and Howard joined a different group of students from the US with ideas a bit more in the line with his political interests. Despite being separated Whitney, David and I spend most of the time together and I am sure in a while will be considered a conspiracy.
Regardless, for the first time in my life I am enjoying going to school. If this makes me an eaven semi-fluent Spanish speaker by the end of July I will call this palce "la escuela perfecta"

El pueblo dijo Si

February the 15th, 2009 was a very important day for the future of Venezuela. That day there was a vote on a on a constitutional referendum to remove the two-term limit from the Venezuelan Constitution of 1999. This would allow politicians to stay in the office for as long as they continue to win elections. That day people decide whether to let current president Hugo Chavez run for the office indefinitely. This is Chavez's second attempt to try to remain in power following the referendum that was held in Venezuela on December 2, 2007 that also included several other proposals that would have given Chavez dictatorship power. Mainly due to waste student protests, spontaneous mobilization and campaign of the opposition referendum of the 2007 was the first Chavez election loss. According to the existing regulations (before referendum) Chavez will leave office in 2012 as his second term of holding the office comes to an end.
The need for constitutional changes brought together Chavez supporters around red Si campaign - well financed, better organized, and warmly welcomed by the authorities. Critics of the proposal changes ran the No campaign; which in most cases consisted of student meetings and demonstrations. As the eye-witness of the pre referendum turmoil always had the impression that police and security forces, however passive and rather quiet, were here to protect and help Chavistas.
The vote was something more than just another referendum. In the country where real opposition to the government barely exists, is disorganized and has few capabilities of reaching the society (most of the mass media are controlled by the government), giving the rulers even a slight chance to strengthen their power is highly dangerous. Many people feel completely dissatisfied with the style and direction outlined by the Chavez-run government; most of those people are former Chavez supporters...but, as the polls showed, there weren't enough who felt the same way.


A little update on my housing situation. I changed my host family. I live far away from the school now, my bed is even smaller, but with people that I really like...and they don't charge me $10 every time I do my laundry.

Do you know?
There are 4 TV channels with national reach in Venezuela after taking RCTV off the air for being critical of the government and encouraging attempts to overthrow Chavez. Two of them - Televen and Venevision - are very sympathetic to Hugo Chavez, and the other two - TVes (state run station that replaced RCTV over the air) and Venezolana de Television - are simply government propaganda. However the RCTV - Venezoela's oldest private broadcaster is still available through cable networks alongside with another opposition station Globovision, luck of possibility of public broadcast (government permission) causes significant shortage of their audience.

Mi familia

The essence of cultural experience abroad is to live the life of the locals. Some travel staying in highly rated resorts worldwide. Top ten of "Travel Chanel" is their guide; with cable TV, great views from the balcony and 3 steps from the beach all being mandatory. I might be wrong, but most of their cultural experience comes from the street view they had taking a taxi from the airport. Some look for relatively cheap, economical stays picking youth hostels. These, usually full of young, hardcore travelers from all over the globe i.e., Western Europe, give you the opportunity to make very intensive 3-day-long friendships since this is only one stop on their one year journey that includes 100 other places on the whole continent.

Others are lucky (me) and have a chance to fully derive the advantages of the local culture and experience the true, local daily life by staying with the host family. My family here in Merida, includes Sra Marisol (who is actually my third consecutive mom following my biological and American), my dad, Sr Enrique, and a little sister, Victoria. Honestly, especially the first few days, I felt completely helpless here with my Spanish language skills close to zero. I relied on my parents like a child. Senor Enrique took me to school the first day of classes to show me the way and I felt like I was a child again. Indeed ignorance the language, and not being able to express yourself takes you back to those days. Because of this reason it is crucial to find the family that would actually be YOUR FAMILLY. From the very beginning I realized that my family is an example of total professionalism in dealing with host students. To be more precise, thay act a little bit bored with the situation, whats more and worse, I am being treated like a naive source of income. Hey! my mom would give me a way better rate for doing the loundry home than at the laundromat. They have hosted students for more than 12 years, it becomes their proffesion, and it seams like there is no room for the sentiments any more. So sad...

Familly meals are important part of the day, and the second meal-lunch consumed around one o'clock is the biggest and most important. Breakfast and dinner are only supplements and are not that unique; most likely being something between a bowl of cereal and coffee with empanadas (stuffed pastry, here in Venezuela usually fried with cheese or ground beef). Lunch is usually the time when all the familly members gather together. So far my Venezuelan lunches include rice, some rice or lots of rice. Alongside the rice go platanos (plantains) - fried, baked or boiled and optional Arepas. An arepa is bread made of corn, emblematic for venezuela and usually homemade. Arepas are as tipical Venezuelan food as hamburgers are in The USA. However hamburgers are quite popular here in Venezuela too (I have seen a few McDonalds) a hamburger bought on the street, is not necessarily made of beef. Any kind of sandwich that looks like a hamburger is simply called a hamburger. Of course a Big Mac is a Big Mac...even in Paris where they call it "Le Big Mac".

Do you know?
Since January 1, 2008 Venezuela has used two currencies. The "bolivar fuerte" is the new currency of Venezuela and coegsists with the old "bolivar", which oryginaly was supposed to be repalced by the bolivar fuerte at the rate 1=1000 due to inflation. According to currency exchange rules here in Venezuela US dollar can be only exchanged at fixed rate of 2.15 bolivares fuerte to a dollar. Since this rate is far, far away from the economical reality black market is growing offering much more adequate rates.