As you know, we spent the New Year in Mérida, Venezuela. It’s a mountainous town located in the Venezuelan Andes. We had heard a lot about its tourism and it’s supposed to be one of the better developed areas in the country. The Mérida airport is closed, so we flew into Vigía, which is about a 2 hour drive away.

The entire town is surrounded by mountains (sort of like Caracas) and apparently the snowy season is in June and July. This was the only mountain – Pico Bolívar – that had snow and I was told it keeps it year round.

There are numerous public spaces/parks – another similarity to Caracas and an abundance of greenery.

The town’s main attraction is the world’s longest and highest cable car system, which lucky for me is currently under repair. You can tell that a lot of the town’s tourism was based on this because there are about 50 hotels, like the one you see above, within a 1 minute walking distance of the entrance.

During the day, the weather was very nice and sometimes even hot. But, every night the sky was completely clouded and it became a freezing – well by my standards – 40-50 degrees Fahrenheit.

So, as we were making our final descent in Miami, I started to get as excited as my little guy who spent the entire 2.5 hours saying “Mommy, we’re flying!” What I initially thought was a feeling of new adventure, was really a comfort in going back to the familiar. Anyone who’s been to Miami International Airport knows that it’s in perpetual construction and there’s always something new – even that felt familiar.

When we were driving on I-95 to go home, which has also had some work done to it in the past 18 months, it all felt the same. I knew the exit signs, I knew how much farther we had to go, I knew the crazy drivers who were going to speed past to get in front of you only to slam on their brakes. Before we even made it home, I finally accepted that the word I’d been avoiding is that this felt like home.

I used to think of myself as a nomad. I had no trouble packing up and moving to a new place when I felt the time was right. I never really felt like I was leaving a home behind, I was simply going to create a new one wherever I went. Well, I don’t know if it’s age or the fact that Venezuelan society is a bit more difficult to infiltrate , but I now know that for the time being, South Florida is where I consider to be my home.

My first few days there were blissful. The humidity was at about 70% and the temperature was over 100F. It was normal…expected. I didn’t want to anything and I wanted to do everything. The latter is what got me into trouble the remainder of my trip. This picture is the view from my bedroom window. It’s nothing fancy, but it’s home (wow, that’s 4 times in one post ).

I was recently reading a post at I Eat My Pigeon where Liv was talking about the similarities and differences of living in Japan, Ireland and Italy. It dawned on me that I’ve noticed a lot similarities here in Venezuela not with South Florida, but Haiti. At first glance, they appear to be two completely different places, but there’s no escaping the Caribbean/Latin American blood.

Street vendors: Known as buhoneros in Venezuela, street vendors are just about everywhere. From bootleg CD’s/DVD’s to costume jewelry, you can get a variety of items right on the street. In Haiti, street vendors are more abundant and also sell food – aside from licensed hot dog vendors, etc., I have yet to see informal food sales here. My first job out of college was working with street vendors all over Haiti. The motivation of street vendors to make a living reminds me that most people in poverty do not wait for handouts.

Unreliable service people: Your washer and dryer stop working. You ask your neighbor if they know a repairman and they give you a number. You speak to the repairman who says he’ll be there Monday at 10 AM. You plan your day around being home when he arrives. At 11 AM when there’s no sign of said repairman, you call him and he says he was hung up at another job and won’t be there until 12 PM. The day either ends with him finally showing up only to tell you the parts he need will take a week to find OR after waiting another 2 hours for him to show up you tell him to forget about it. This has Haiti written all over it

Rural lifestyle: The first picture is of Caracas and the second is of my hometown of Jacmel. Believe it or not, once you leave Caracas, there are a lot of small towns that look very much like the second picture. You see small homes perched on the side of a mountain and you wonder what’s keeping it from sliding down. You find people sitting on their porch in the middle of the day, greeting the occasional passerby. Everyone knows each other and the days move at a slower pace. Every time I drive through one of these towns I can almost immediately identify characters from my own town: the oldest families, the youth itching to leave, the gossips who know what’s going on with everybody else. It always gives me a bit of nostalgia, but it also feels nice to have this cultural connection in a foreign place.

Somehow this third month just came and went. To make sure that I didn’t forget this month, I took stock of my my latest realizations.

• You can never estimate how long it will take to get something done. What you may think is a simple errand can turn out to taking the whole day to accomplish (more on this in another post)
• Even when conducting business, Venezuelans enjoy personal chit chat
• Finding an apartment to my liking that is affordable is not easy – in other words, housing is limited
• Spanish is not impossible to learn, but I will probably never speak it as well as I speak English
• Venezuelans take their vacations seriously (which seems to be whenever kids are on vacation, too), so booking a vacation in advance is absolutely necessary
• Similar to South Florida, there is always something to do – theatre, concerts, museums. Caracas is culturally rich

These beautiful pictures are of Caracas. I thought they displayed what I sometimes feel about living here – it can be tumultuous, but there’s a lot of beauty.

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We’ve now been in Caracas for one month and I thought I would do a self check-up on how we are adapting.

I remember at the end of the kids’ first week of school, I had this feeling as though the situation were temporary. I don’t know if it was because most of the move thus far had felt a bit surreal (it has not sunk in that I now live Venezuela) or if the first week came and went so fast. It made me think of the previous times they had started school and how I felt about it then. While I may have felt a bit of nostalgia, I don’t think it felt so transitory.

I know that a lot of these feelings have to do with the stress that we have been feeling since the earthquake in Haiti, but I can’t help but wonder how long this feeling will last. When I lived abroad during college, I think the excitement overpowered any other feelings (even homesickness) and I can’t recall feeling anything but that.

As for my Spanish, I am noticing that I understand a lot more of what people say. I have confirmed that Venezuelans tend to speak a bit fast – I guess like New Yorkers speak English – so that doesn’t help. Once things settle down a bit more, I plan on signing up for a course and/or enlisting the help of a private tutor. In the meantime, I am not afraid to say “como?” and “no entiendo”

I still find Venezuelans to be extremely polite and thoughtful and I have been overwhelmed by their support for Haiti during these times. So much so, that I will dedicate an entire post to tell more about their efforts — stay tuned…

Photo credit: a.drian

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