Venezuela, Merida

this is just to let everyone know I made it to venezuela alive. Even made it a few days in the capital. That was fun, and I´ll write about my adventures there later.

I remember before I started my trip, one of my friends said, ¨You´ll never make it thru central america man, you can´t go to venezuela now.¨ Well, first of all, venezuela isn´t in central america, and second of all, I went there anyway! Who cares where you´re suppossed to go? You just go where you want in life, that´s my new philosophy.

Anyway, one really funny thing I´ve got to write down is, last night I went to the music university, and got into a chorus class. This one kid was wearing a long sleeve button shirt, and underneath he had a t shirt with an american flag, big and right across the front. He had the shirt half unbuttonned to reveal it. On the top it said, ¨United States of America¨ I thought it was pretty hilarious. So I went into the class, because they invited me in to listen. It was so cool hearing them sing. They were singing a hymn, about god blessing us all, and all this peace. It was just what I needed. I was pooped out from a 18 hour bus ride the night before, on which I didn´t sleep much. Plus I didn´t sleep much because when I got in to Caracas, I stayed up all night waiting for the bus to Caracas. The taxis wanted to charge about 70 dollars...so I stayed up with two girls I met at the airport. The next day, no naps, we went right out to experience the city. I ended up crashing at about 7...then decided to take the bus overnight next night! So it was a rough few days. Last night I went out and had a drink, made it till 12, then slept until 10. That was real nice.

Anyway, there have been many adventures in between, but I´m getting distracted again, sorry. As I was saying. Then, in to the chorus class comes this guy with a hat with the american flag. I was like, I thought they aren´t suppossed to like america. Well, truth is, I´m not the biggest fan, but you can´t go by stereotypes. Another guy in class had a NY hat, and seemed like about half of them had something from america on. I think they were about 18. So the younger generation isn´t too anti american.

I sat down to lunch the day before with this guy from Venezuela. He spoke english, so we spoke in english. He said, Chavez doesn´t like Bush too much, and he wondered why. Because Bush is stupid, I said. I went on to explain how neither I, nor probably the majority of people in our country like Bush. He was quite pleased I think. He said, he thinks all people are the same. China, Africa, the same. I said, yeah, everyone is different, but the same. He shook my hand for that one. Then he said, be careful here and Columbia, because there isn´t anything worse than a north american to them. I´m pretty sure he wasn´t talking about canada or mexico, but the good ol u.s of a. And that´s true, but at the same time, people approach you as an individual, and it doesn´t matter where you´re from, but who you are.

Today, I just went around the market with an international crew: Iran, Venezuela, France, Britian, Canada, States, Greece...it was cool. We went to the market and got all kinds of food, because we are going to cook up the bomb meal tonight. So I have to get back pretty quick, because I´m to butcher the chickens, maybe with this new switchblade I got...finally get to try it on more than pineapple, ha ha. I might use a butcher knife instead though. Yeah, we got whole chickens!

Anyway, just wanted to give the low down. Now I´m in Merida, a real chill town with huge mountains looming over it, and it has a few guinness world records, get this--the longest, highest teleferico (gondola) in the world, and the ice cream shop with the most flavors. How about that? I´m gunna try them both...it´s nice to get to somewhere a little more chill than caracas, it´s mad there. Anyway, I´ll write about that later.

Until then, Peace!

Colin

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