PHOTOS: view from nameless bar on happy hour nights, Carnaval parade on Margarita island, Making sushi at CIPLC Ladies' night.
So, after months-well years-of waxing poetic about my journey and my life here, I realized that I have never really told you what "life" here looks like.
On school days, I wake up to the most gorgeous sunrise peeking over the mountains, reflecting off the water, and filtering into my bedroom around 6 AM. I am in my car and navigating the daily driving game by 7. Mornings before school starts are social times-coffee with the VZ staff in the cantina, catching up with yearbook editors to check on deadlines, chatting with parents who have questions, greeting students. Beginning at 8, I either teach two or three 80 minute classes each day. "A" day classes are Social studies, Math, and PE with 19 6th graders and B days are English with 6th grade again and Fitness with 22 high schoolers. There is a 20 minute break each Morning and 30 minutes for lunch. I usually stay in my room for these because the 6th graders love to congregate there to chat, play games, work...and I like to supervise. Then, every day at 1 we have a 30 minute homeroom/advisory-6th graders again for me. Usually there is tutoring, studying, project work, club meetings, and general middle school silliness. Fridays we put on music and dance around the room for 30 minutes, laughing and shouting lyrics while we do conga lines and Michael jackson moves-sshhhhh, don't tell.
My classroom is on the third/top floor in the farthest corner of the building. Noone ever comes up there-it is like a hideout. We have two bathrooms and two storage rooms in our classroom along with a huge amount of space to house computers, desks, couches, and plenty of floor space for sprawling about. There are always projects in various stages of completion and materials for the projects filling every corner, plus posters and completed projects displayed around the room- including on the CEILING!
As for after school hours, well, Mondays and Wednesdays I have done various things such as salsa dancing lessons, kite boarding lessons (that I had to quit for awhile due to a head first crash into the beach, two black eyes, and slight concussion), and now, Spanish lessons. Tuesdays are MEETings...I won't say anything more about those (four letter word). Thursdays several staff members always manage to meet up for a casual dinner out. Fridays, about twice per month, we have happy hours at a nameless beach bar with 80 cent beers. And, well, Sundays look like they will be meeting nights for our accreditation groups from here on out. Once a month we try to have a staff party that ranges from a huge pot luck to a girls' night to learn to make sushi or a bar B Q-it's always a BLAST. Some other things that happen each month are a book club and a cooking club-both more of excuses to get together than anything terribly serious about cooking or reading books-and both hosted on a rotation basis by various staff members and other people from school.
On weekends and holidays we try to have adventures as well. We plan well ahead and usually travel in small packs. My current pack includes Andrew and Melissa from NYC, Fred from France, and the Thomas family of 6 from Colorado. We have been to Ecuador, Margarita Island a few times, Los Altos mountain, and several beaches. We have plans to go to Colombia and Trinidad in the next year. Also, scuba diving is a large part of my life during the first semester until the water gets too cold and cloudy. I dove over 25 times in just under 4 months.
Some things that make life challenging are-
* the ever increasing power outages that disrupt everything including cooking,
*internet outages that make us feel very disconnected from loved ones and "the world",
*water rationing that makes even simple tasks like laundry become complicated scheduling dramas,
*unpredictable and destabilizing central government that has led to protests that close streets and the devaluation of the B resulting in 100% inflation overnight,
*complicated, expensive, and unreliable airline booking to travel in or out of VZ
*food and goods shortages that affect things like toilet paper, sugar, and milk to name a few,
*language barriers not just due to lack of spanish skills but due to the speed of speech and type of accent here
*rare but still present hostility against "foreigners" as well as a really tough culture to break into and build friendships thus you work with and socialize with the same group of about 40 people 100% of the time,
*lack of options of things to do or places to go-even the list of good restaurants hovers around 10
Overall-it's wonderful. Like I told someone today-VZ has its charms and its curses. I just try to focus on the charms and laugh at the curses. My contract runs through the end of next school year-2011...so, until then at least, you will continue to hear about my life in Venezuela! Thanks for following along...I MISS YOU ALL....OXOXOX
