my poor parents

Umm. Alright. So, my parents are supposed to be here. They were actually supposed to be here at 2:35 this afternoon. I waited for them to get in, oh-so-patiently. I even figured out the "system" of announcing flights at the Merida airport - I say "system" in quotes because there is no system. There are no monitors. If you want to know if a flight has arrived or is arriving, you either watch the sky to see if it's coming in or you have to ask an airline representative. Otherwise, ya just stand around and wait.

Anyway, like I said, my parents are supposed to be here right now. I don't know where they are.

After waiting for a while, around 3 I asked someone if their flight from Caracas had been delayed, and sure enough, it had been. They told me it would probably arrive around 4:30. I waited and waited some more, and meanwhile, the valley Merida sits in got foggier and foggier. 4:30 rolled around, I looked to the sky, no plane. 4:45 there came an announcement. (My God, an announcement! That's a step up.) The announcement basically said that, due to the fog, all flights had been redirected to the airport in El Vigia, 45 minutes away. The airline told me my parents flight would have been redirected there as well. Great.

Since my Spanish-speaking abilities and my level of stress have a direct correlation (in other words, the Spanish part of my brain doesn't work when I'm freaking out like this!), I ran down the street to school to get help from Astrid, the study abroad director. She called the airport in El Vigia, and they said no flights had come in yet, but to keep calling back. Now I'm just waiting around until Astrid calls again.

As far as I know, all this means my parents are still in Caracas, but I have no way of knowing that for sure. They also have no real way of getting a hold of me to tell me where they are. They have my homestay family's phone number, but as my homestay family doesn't speak English and my parents certainly don't speak Spanish, a lot of good that does when I'm not there.

I'm sure this will all get figured out and that my parents are fine. I hope that they aren't terribly worried because I'm doing enough worrying for all three of us. Probably end up prematurely gray. I'd just feel so much better if I knew where my monolingual, very gringo-looking parents were...

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone. Hope you are all safe and warm, enjoying the holiday with your families.

I'm missing my family a little bit today, though I know I will see my mom and Mike tomorrow afternoon. It just doesn't feel much like Thanksgiving here today at all because Venezuelans don't celebrate it, of course, so it's just another normal day here.

I had a Venezuelan-style potluck dinner with the other American students and some of our host families. There was no turkey, no stuffing, but plenty of chicken and rice, and fried plantains. Thanksgiving just isn't Thanksgiving without fried plantains. Actually, it was a nice break from tradition, in a lot of ways. The only thing I really missed (other than my family) were the pies. Venezuela suffers from a lack of pie. Very sad. Here is my mission for you all: eat some pie for me, whatever kind it may be - pumpkin, pecan, apple, lemon meringue, no matter! And please, do me the favor of getting so uncomfortably full that you can't imagine eating for the next 48 hours. That's what Thanksgiving is all about.

Home in a week and a half!

Yay! Hooray! Go me!

Three 10-page papers, one 6-page paper, and one lonely 4-pager later, it's all done. All five of my papers are completed, turned in, out of sight and out of mind, WHEW! and I'm nearly done with classes altogether. It doesn't seem quite possible, but somehow, it's true.

You know what else doesn't seem possible? I've been in Venezuela for over three months now and I'm going back home again in two weeks. That just can't be. It's gone by so quickly. Three months ago I was crammed into an 18-seat plane with a bunch of other adventurous Americans, cruising over the Caribbean sea, wathcing the sunset over the water and wondering what on earth I was doing and what the next few months were going to bring. And now I know. At least, sort of, because I still haven't stopped wondering - if Venezuela is anything, it's full of surprises.

And now it's almost time to go home and who knows what surprises await me there... things like PEANUT BUTTER and a washing maching with a SPIN CYCLE. Have I ever mentioned how the spin cycle on my homestay family's washing machine doesn't work? And I have to wring out all my clothes before I can hang them out to dry? Only to have them get rained on anyway? Yeah, I'm looking forward to doing laundry when I get home.

Anyway, more on what I'm looking forward to when I go home and what I'll miss about here next time I write. My parents will be here in four days!

can't make any promises

This past weekend I made my second and last 12-hour overnight bus trip to go to the beach. This time, 'twas Anna, Stephanie, Sara, and Megan, so we didn't have to deal so much with the stress of keeping a large group of people happy. We went to a place called Chichiriviche, which is Spanish for the place of teal water and islands covered in white sand and palm trees. Actually, I have no idea what it means but that's probably not far off the mark. It was a pretty nice time, except for having a mysterious illness that left me incapable of doing anything except sleeping and watching television in my hotel room on Saturday, while my friends all went off to another lovely little island to enjoy the Caribbean.

The next couple weeks I will spend working on my five term papers that are all due very, very soon. I've been feeling a little stressed out about it, even though I know I will get everything done without much trouble. But at the same time, there's all this other, end of my time in Venezuela stuff that I want to be doing, like hanging out with the friends I've made here, many of whom live in Minnesota and I can see them if I want, but some of them (one in particular!) lives in Sweden and though I would like to make a trip there sometime, it's probably going to be a while. Not to mention my Venezuelan friends, who knows if I will see them again.

A lot of people are away this weekend at various beaches, so I'm hoping I can use this time to get the majority of my work done. My last day of classes is November 25th (Thanksgiving) and then the next day, my parents are coming here! To Venezuela! To see me! And I get to be their tour guide. I'm pretty excited. And then I'm going home! Wahoo! Anyway, what with the endless paper-writing, I can't promise there will be a lot of blogging. Hope everyone is doing well.

sin agua, otra vez

Sunday morning, my host mom went to turn on the kitchen faucet and the noise of the pipes trying to puke out water was quite audible. My mom and I watched in shock as the sink gave out enough slightly brownish water to fill a glass, and then the pipes gave a horrible death groan and the faucet SHUDDERED and then all was quiet. No more water came out. Not like we were going to use the poopy water anyway, but it's the principle of the thing, people.

So my house is without water, AGAIN. For who knows how long. We actually didn't have to go 7 days without water, because it came back on again last Tuesday evening and it seemed for good. And there was much rejoicing in La Quinta Froilana°, by Americans and Jehovah's Witnesses alike! Oh, but the rejoicing commenced too soon.

This time we don't even have an estimate of how long it will be off, because apparently a pipe ruptured somewhere and it could be a week before it's fixed! Trying to take it in stride is not working for me right now because I HAVE NOT SHOWERED SINCE SATURDAY MORNING. I'm actually skipping class this afternoon so I can take a shower at someone else's house. I'm just hoping my professor will understand because I'm also doing it for the sake of everyone around me. It's not pretty.

°"La Quinta Froilana" is the name of the house I live in. It's actually an official part of the address! How many people can say they've lived in a house with a name? How cool am I?