PTA Fridays and Sticking out in Anaco

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A wonderful discovery was made this Friday: Every Friday, the PTA will have a bake sale where pizza, pancakes, donuts, empinadas, and much more will be available during morning recess and lunch. Each week!

Now for the second part: Usuaully, I feel, the goal when living in or traveling in another country is to blend in, to assimilate. However, when you seem to be the only blonde person in the city (or perhaps the country) this becomes much more difficult. Add height to being blonde, and the "sticking-outness" only increases. It is also customary here to wear jeans ALL THE TIME, no matter how warm it gets. Coming from Minnesota, 70 degrees is about my limit to wear jeans, or long sleeved shirts for that matter - unless I am camping and it is night around a campfire. So now we have tall, blonde, and a refusal to sweat to death in the name of fashion, or blending in, which, in any case, was rendered nearly impossible by the first two. This is compounded by the fact that my Spanish is still sleeping somewhere in the back of my brain. Yesterday, Erin, Heather (the 1st grade and kindergarten teachers), and I decided to go shopping. While we got normal things like hammocks and lamps, we also found, in Erin's words, "wonderful tacky touist Venezuelan flag ponchos", which we bought with the sole purpose of wearing to Angel Falls later this year. So in case we didn't stick out before yesterday, we certainly do now.

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