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.