Merida

We went on a sort of vacation to the city of Merida. Merida Venezuela is a city in western venezuela, in the mountains, known for being a college town and for its plethera of high adventure activities outside of the city.
Our trip involved freezing cold over-air-conditioned overnight bus rides, natural thermal springs high in the mountains, some frisbee tossing with the venezuelen womens championship team, visits to a sweet modern art museum, archeological museum, and a large botanical garden with plants from all over the world, and hanging out with some of the students from evergreen.

Peace

Carnival!!!

Monday and Tuesday were Carnival days, which is a huge holiday throughout South America. There were stealthy water balloon wars in town and a big parade in the nearby town of Sonare.
At the parade there were floats fron different organizations with music playing and usually some kind of princess sitting on top.
There were also people running around in costumes each emp`hasizing a woman´s breasts or but. They enjoyed going around groping people and making wierd sounds. I believe the idea came from long ago when they would dress horrificly and act ridiculous to make fun of master´s wives.
After the parade there was a big reggaetone concert in the town plaza until about 2 in the morning with tons of people dancing. Hope you enjoyed my brief and undetailed explanation but Im really tired from working. Peace and Love.

Naguara! Chevre!

I´ve spent another week working on the farm, we have started a fourth greenhouse and have been working on putting up the plastic covering on the second greenhouse. I have learned that the first two greenhouses will be used to grow a ton of green peppers and tomatoes. Other then that, not much new but here´s a peek into my experience in this part of Venezuela.

So here´s some of the things I encounter daily here.

First some words

Naguara, Chevre- slang words to similar to ¨cool¨ or ¨sweet¨

Buenas - basically the equivelant of saying ¨whats up¨ but instead of asking the question you skip to just saying ¨ït´s good¨

Foods

Empanadas- the most prominent food to buy in town by far, more common then a cheesburger in the US. Fried dough pockets filled with shredded meat, cheese, ham, or black beans

Polar Ice- the main beer brand and sometimes I think the only one. There is at least one alcohol store or bar on every block.

Eurepa- Pockety of dough, eat it plain, cut it and use it as a sandwich, break it into soup, scoop your spaghetti onto it, on the farm we eat them with every meal. Outsidide of the farm they don´t seem to be very common.

Juice- wonderful fruit juice everywhere of many different kinds, Im gonna miss it

Chimo- sort of like chewing tobacco, but is more like a tar. Looks disgusting to me but I am told it is much less disgusting than chewing tobacco and it is place on the roof of the mouth.

Pabellon- awesome meal that has a little of everything; rice, plantains, eggs, shredded meat, beans. Awesomness on a plate


A trip into town...

Sometimes we take a taxi, other times we just hitch a ride on the back of a pickup truck , sometime the taxi is the back of a pickup truck.

Along the streets theres always tons of stands selling burned cd´s and dvd´s. You can find american movies 5 or 6 to a dvd for very cheap.

Music thats popular in america that have found many people to know here: BOB MARLEY, the beatles, 50 cent.

Popular music here is Reggaetone, Salsa, and Merangue

In town theres lots of graffiti on the walls of buildings, mosty with political statements in stupport of Chavez or against. Sometimes there will be art and I have also seen graffiti for the support of palestine.

Misiones
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bolivarian_Missions

These are a big part of the politics and community down here. I have encountered a couple groups of kids who were working for some of the missions. Lately I´ve haves seen the addition of public trash cans with Mision Ribas written on them. This made me very happy because the trash system here is in need of improvement. Especially on the main roads theres is alot of trash on the sides of the street.

Almost all of the light bulbs here are energy efficient bulbs. Chavez helped to start a program to distributre these bulbs to the public in replacement of the old ones.

There seems to be some problems with the electricity here. It will go out randomly with much more frequency than in the US. While we were at the beach there was no electricity in that area,for 2 days.

Motorcycles are everywhere, everywhere. Also cell phones are a big deal. Motorcycles and nice Cell Phones I would say are the materlistic things kids really want.

College is free here. sweetness

O, and alot of people my age in the coutry are married and have a kid. This is different in town and in the city.
Can´t think of anymore randomness for now, peace out!

Voting day!

Excitement! Yesterday, all day was the day to vote ¨Si¨ or ¨no¨ on changing the constitution to allowing for a president to run for re'election indefinetly. As you probably heard, the vote was for ÿes¨.
We spent the day in town with some college students from Washington. Almost every business was closed in town during the day besides a few restaurants. At the areas to vote, we ran into people standing in the streets discussing there stance on the issue.
Late at night when the count was in the town erupted in excitement fireworks were set off, and a caravan of cars and people travled around the town shouting victory to the neighborhood.

Its been very interesting to hear the reasoning behind peoples votes for yes, and no, on the issue. Its unfortunate but I guess expected to sit hear and read the US media´s articles on the issues and find them very one sided.

Peace and Love

coffee fertilizer to the beach

First, i´d like to add something i forgot to mention in the last post. At the culture center for teaching music to inner city kids the founder gave a short speech. In this he said ¨we are not here to become the best musicians we are here to share something, we may not best the best, but we are doing something¨ This was a very inspiring moment.

To start off, on monday mike and I got to travel down into Sonare to pick up fertilizer. We went to the coffee processing center in town where they have a machine that splits the outer shell of the coffee bean away from the inside. We spent the day scooping the outer shells into sacks to bring back to the farm to use as fertilizer. The two farmers we went with, Chivo and Keelder, also bought us some lunch in town at an amazing empanada stand, delicious!

Tuesday morning, not so bright and very early we left town for a journey to the beach. 2 hour bus ride, followed by 5 hours, followed by another hour. The last hour was mega-sweet because it involved going over a mountain through a national park with waterfalls and everywhere. On the other side of the mountain theres the small fishing town and small tourist beach of Choroni.

We spent 3 nights camping on the beach. After the first night we made lots of friends with fellow campers and travellers from all over. The campers, ranging from locals, high school trips, college students on break, and worldwide travelers were all awesome and we banded together for an awesome couple of days.
Then it was some more long bus rides back to town. By the way the bus rides here are insane. Every bus seems to be equipped with a mega-sound system which the driver will not fail to use to blast any of many sorts of latin american music for the entire ride. On the way back I thought we were lucky to get a more luxury-like bus for the 5 hour ride, but that ends up meaning lots and lots and lots and lots of air conditioning. It was a bit cold.
So now I´m back in monte carmelo well actually i´m typing from a cyber cafe in sonare but you know what i mean. Tomorrow is the big election and we will know the results by late tomorrow night. It´s really exciting and has been slowly dawning on me the importance of this vote for the country and maybe the world.

Peace and Love

Part 3

This last week we didnt work much. We spent a couple days helping out the family we are living with. they were planting some new coffee plants. It´s also been raining more than usual here. Some of the locals are blaming the change in weather on Global Warming.

We also went on a random trip to Barquisimeto for a couple of days with some of the students from evergreen college. There we got to visit a school made for teaching music, mainly percussion. The students put on a demonstation for us and we had one insane dance party afterwards. Some of the instruments were crazy. There´s a drum that has a hollw stick sticing out of the top of the drum head. You play it by squeezing and rubbing the stick to push air into the drum.

Love and peace
Chris

So...

So, sorry but no pictures. It´s proved to be a hrader task then I thought to get them from onto one of these computers. Sometime in the future.

So, between encounters with snakes, bright blue centipedes, gigantic moths (these things are bigger than some birds), eating pig intestines, and caring for some kittens, we have been working during the week on the farm. We are almost ready to start planting in one of the greenhouses and two others are coming along. pretty well. Four college students from evergreen college arrived this week and are staying on the farm for awhile so we have had some english speaking company recently which is a nice change of pace.


There has been alot of excitement down here recently because of a vote that is approaching concerning the constitution. The vote will be on whether or not to allow a president to hold office for and indefinite amount of terms.

That all for now, not much else to say.
Steelers!

Love and Peace

Chris

1st 2 weeks- Venezuela

So, right now I'm in the large city of Barquisimeto on a weekend excursion away from the farm. We travelled with and are staying with a friend who is from the area and who is also volunteering on the farm. We've been spending the weekend rock climbing and exploring the city.

In the beginning, duh duh duh! We travelled to the small mountain town of Monte Carmelo outside of Sonare with a Sociology/sustainable agriculture class from Dickenson College. For the 1st week and a half we lived in housing operated by the farm (Las Lajitas- named for the heavy amounts of slate in the ground) made for students to come and study. We got to sit in on classes given by locals on medicinal herbs, politics of the area, and vermiculture.

After the group left we moved into a room in town with a local family. We volunteer 5 days week at the farm, beginning everyday at 5AM with a walk out of town up the hill to the farm. The steepness is nothing short of ridiculous. I'll post a picture sometime. On the farm we have been helping to build some new greenhouses, clearing weeds, and harvesting medicinal herbs.

I haven't seen many crazy animals yet. We've been told there are lots of monkeys in the nearby jungle but it is rare to see them because of their fear of humans. There have been lots of crazy looking spiders and caterpillars. One of the neighbors has a Chiguiri (the largest rodent) as a pet that would come to visit us at times. It has a good time pooping everywhere. (picture coming once I remember to bring my camera to the computer.)

We are living in the tail end of the andes mountains and it gets pretty chilly at night and warm in the late afternoon but never real hot. We are at about a mile in elevation.

We spend out free time playing futbolito (soccer played with a smaller ball on a basketball court.) with the local kids, playing chess, washing clothes by hand, and hanging out at the cabrada (a swimming hole with a waterfall in the jungle) We also taught the kids how to play hot box! ( a game with the frisbee)

The meals on the farm can get pretty boring. Either soup, spaghetti, or rice, along with this thing called a eurepa. We eat Eurepas with every meal, ever meals. It's basically a heavy dough pocket, we tear it up into soup, scoop up rice into it and shove pasta into it. My favorite part of the meals is the fresh fruit juice for lunch made with the fruit on the farm.

It's been fun learning spanish, I feel like i'm immersed in a constant game of catch phrase. I still have trouble ordering food, I just expect to get something different than what I want.

Before I head out, I'll explain the farm a bit. Las Lajitas is an organic farm started about 40 years ago by the community of Monte Carmelo. It has since grown tremendously into being a sort of "model" farm for the country, providing work for many families in Monte Carmelo. Venezuela is currently one of the least agricultural countries in South America and becuase of that Hugo Chavez (Presidente of Venezuela) has been encouraging people to take up more agrculuture in order to make the country more self-sufficient. Las Lajitas, being a sort of model farm, has received grants and loans from the governement in order to continue its growth.
Las Lajitas produces mainly vegetables, some fruit, and some medicinal herbs. Many of the plants are similar to things we are used to in the U.S. but are a different variety. They have onions, parsley, celery, strawberries, corn, lemongrass, lettuce, broccoli, cauliflower and other stuff.
So hopefully that all makes some sense, its hard to try to cram all I have experiences into a short blog. I'll upload some sweet pictures once I can.
Peace
Chris