Blogs from Mérida, Andean, Venezuela, South America

I don't know that I can even begin to describe how wonderful my experience was. If for nothing else, the lessons I learned during my short time there were some of the most important I have learned in my academic career. I learned about the ability of humans to survive and make the most of any inconvenient or unbearable situation. I learned that one of the most important things one can do in life is travel and gain understanding beyond that which can be read in books or watched on television. The situation on the ground will always vary from whatever outside sources may analyze. I learned that freedom of information is undeniably one of the greatest tenets of democracy, and a lack thereof can lead to poverty, dependence, and dictatorship, not to mention mass ignorance. ... read more

Helllo all! I can’t believe it’s been almost a month since I’ve last blogged! So to start where we left off, the weekend after I went to the Zoo with Mark everyone was home after their travels. That weekend we went out every night. That tends to happen here on the weekends, it seems like if you are in Mérida you are going to rumbear (dance, party, etc). Some of us gringas also had a pizza and wine night. We made pizzas, of course they weren’t the same as in the states but wow they were good. It’s amazing how much I miss certain foods! Pizza is one of them. Venezuelans do pizza but there is a serious lack of sauce and too much cheese. So wine night was Friday, that night we also went to ... read more

Choroní We spent Halloween weekend on a beach in the Caribbean. My life is SO difficult sometimes! Anyway, we decided to head out of Mérida for the weekend, we had been in the city for too long. Thursday nights, the 28th, we hopped on a bus for a 12 hour bus ride to Maracay. From Maracay we took a one and a half hour taxi ride to the pueblo Choroní. By the time we got there I was really tired, I had slept maybe for two hours on the bus, it was too difficult to sleep. Don’t get me wrong, the bus was really nice, it was a charter bus where the seats recline and you can sleep. I just don’t sleep well on buses I suppose. Either way, we got to the posada where we ... read more

It must be that I'm just not the best blogger in the world, as I seem to keep forgetting to update you all on my life abroad. However, I haven't done anything too terribly interesting in the past few weeks, so it's not exactly like you're missing out on any great insights. To give a quick summary of my life since I returned from Curaçao: I've been spending a lot more time with Venezuelans than I did at the beginning of the semester, which has really made a huge difference in my experience. I have been able to make a few really close friends with whom I go out with on the weekends and get coffee or lunch with sometimes during the week, which, simply put, is fantastically better than sitting in my school all day ... read more

Zoológico y Té Café This past weekend was a very calm one for me as there were only three gringos in Mérida! Everyone else was off on fabulous adventures (read as: very expensive adventures). I really did appreciate the time to hang out here and do I few things I had been putting of, but it was a pretty quite affair. My friend Mark and I went to the Zoo on Friday. We got to see some pretty legitimate animals and the zoo itself is truly beautiful- it's been designed really well. Mark and I took pictures with a snake as well, what's a trip to the zoo in Venezuela without a picture of some foreign animal around your neck? After the zoo we headed to Te Cafe, a really popular pizza place in the ... read more

Los Llanos This past weekend I had one of the craziest adventures of my life. 17 of us gringos went to Los Llanos for three days. Basically this is a part of Venezuela that is completely flat, los llanos means plains in English, and there are tons of animals that live there. There are many different plains; the ones that we went to were in the state of Barinas, next to the state Mérida. It was an eight or so hour drive that we did in two jeeps. It was crazy. We left from VENUSA pretty early in the morning on Friday and made our way through the mountains to arrive at the plains. It was a really beautiful drive- Venezuela truly is such a diverse country- and I have only seen a tiny part of ... read more

Pero bueno estamos en los Andes, aguas termales estamos hartos de disfrutarlas en el pirineo francés, había que hacer algo más, queríamos hacer una ascensión a algún pico, disfrutar de la altura que no tenemos en Europa. Estuvimos días informándonos, elegimos el Pico Humboldt 4940msnm porque cada etapa acababa en una laguna, y nos gustaba la idea, a parte dicen que es la excursión más bonita que hay por aquí cerca, más que el Pico Bolívar (el pico más alto de Venezuela 5007msnm). En el Instituto Nacional de Parques Nacionales nos informaron más bien que bien, nos dieron un mapa topográfico, nos indicaron donde había cuevas donde guarecernos (porque estamos en época de lluvias y el trayecto pasa por un bosque húmedo, por donde es difícil salir con algo seco) y nos dieron la mala noticia ... read more