US and Venezuela are at it again

Here's an article from the BBC site (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/4747828.stm) outlining the latest in the squabbling between the US and Venezuela. Sigh. I hope I have some way of getting home when it's time.

Venezuela cuts US airline flights

Continental Airlines flights from Houston are likely to be affected

Venezuela is cutting flights by US airlines as relations between the two countries continue to deteriorate.

From 1 March, flights by Delta and Continental Airlines will be cut by up to 70%, and American Airlines flights will also be affected, officials say.

They accuse the US - which imposed a similar ban on Venezuela 10 years ago - of failing to give Venezuelan carriers equal access to American soil.

Relations between the two countries have long been strained.

They have hit new lows in recent weeks after a tit-for-tat expulsion row over allegations of spying, and a fierce exchange of words between US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.

Safety issue

Continental Airlines has been running a daily service from Venezuela to Houston, and weekly flights to New York. Delta Airlines currently flies daily to Atlanta, and American Airlines to Puerto Rico and Miami.

Venezuela's National Aviation Institute said in a statement: "We have exhausted all avenues with the US aeronautical authority.

"We have been forced to reduce the frequency of flights of US airline companies from the US."

The institute accused the US aviation authorities of failing "to give Venezuelan airlines the rights they deserve under bilateral agreements".

The US Federal Aviation Administration restricted Venezuelan carriers into the US in 1996 ruling that their airline safety procedures needed to be tightened.

Venezuelan officials say their safety standards have improved since then.

Wonder what it will be next?

The Liberator and other aspects of Venezuelan life

I had an interesting afternoon today, even though I didn't get as much work done as I should have. When I went to the archive this morning there was a young man working there who looked familiar, but I do tend to see some of the some people in the archives without really knowing there. Anyway, he asked me if I was working on slaves and I affirmed that I was. He told me he was also and asked if I wanted to get coffee later and talk about our work. I said sure (well, I actually said "como no". So when the archive closed we set out for coffee. He headed over to the museum in the cathedral; howerver, the coffee shop there was closed. I commented that I had not been to that museum. He looked surprised and asked if I had been to la casa Bolivar and I confessed that I had not made it there yet either. La casa Bolivar is the home where Simon Bolivar - liberator of South America - was born. So we headed over to first the museum and then the house. It was quite interesting and I learned some stuff about Bolivar. I know, you are now all saying "Oh no, not another history lesson!" Well, what can I say. It's what I do. I won't bore you all with the life of Simon Bolivar. But you should understant that he is a very important figure here. In every city in Venezuela there must be a Plaza Bolivar complete with the requisite statue. So, here are some of the things I picked up today. Bolivar was a Venezuelan born Spaniard who traveled to the Caribbean, Mexico, and Europe before returning to Venezuela to start the independence movement from Spain. He issued his proclamation of independence from Jamaica, and wrote it in both Spanish and English. He married in Spain, but his wife died, who was something like 19 when they married, died a few years later and he never remarried. (He did have a lover though, whose name I forget, but lived with him in la quinta Bolivar, which I visited in Bogota). He led the movement for independence from Venezuela to Colombia then Bolivia and Ecuador and finally to Peru, where he met up with the southern liberator San Martin. Bolivia, obviously, took his name for their country. OK, end of history lesson. Anyway, why this young man wanted to spend the afternoon with a gringa old enough to be his mother I don't know, but we finally made it to a coffee shop and sat there talking about politics, Venezuelan and North American, culture, the influence of the church, corruption and lack of respect for law, and other aspects of life in Venezuela until they closed the coffee shop. All in all, a very nice afternoon. The other big thing in the past week was the refigerator problem, which I am grateful to report is fixed after two visits by the repairmen, a new fan, several bags of ice, loss of some food, and a wasted day and a half on my part. But not as frustrating as the electric company, and overall proof that you can get good service here. These guys came out on a Saturday, which was the following day from when I called them.

Things seem to have settled down after the trading of insults between Chavez and the US and the mutual expulsion of diplomats. Last week or so, (maybe more, I've lost track of time) Dick Cheney compared Chavez to Hitler. Nice. In return Chavez said the US was ruled by a crazy man and called Bush the Hitler of North America. Then, Chavez said one of the guys from the embassy had to leave Venezuela because he was a spy. (a spy in the embassy - surely not) The next day the US forced a Venezuelan diplomat to leave the US while claiming it was not retaliation. Then Chavez started insulting Tony Blair, calling him a puppet of the US and worse, I guess. If it didn't have the potential to develop into serious stuff, I'd feel like saying "boys, learn to play together nicely."

I just had the perfect view outside my window of fireworks. I don't know why, but from time to time there are fireworks in my neighborhood. Being on the seventh floor, I have a great perspective.

A new telenovela started last week here, so I decided to try one from the beginning. I really am not a fan of soap operas in any language, but it's a good way to practice my Spanish and the telenovelas here are really a cross between our soaps and series like ER or Desperate Housewives. They are an hour and are on every week night. This one is not too bad, but I'm still working on who all the people are and what their relationship with each other is. I also try to catch apretty well known Spanish program called Aqui no hay quien viva. It's a weekly comedy program about the neighbors in a building. The Spain Spanish is more difficult for me, but it's a pretty good program. Of course, with cable I get many of the same programs as in the states, just a few weeks later. And lots of reruns.

An update to my previous post - los leones won the Caribbean Series, as I can attest to by the fireworks and shouting outside my window at 1:00 in the morning. I figure that's when the fans returned from Valencia to Caracas.

OK, enough for now.

The pictures are from one of the beaches in the state of Vargas. It is the same area that had the terrible mudslides in December 1999 in which thousands of people died and many homes were lost. The picture was actually taken in Summer 2004, when I was here the first time, from the window of my friend's apartment.

Saludos from Caracas.

sports - north and south

I'm not an avid sports person and football (American) is really not one of my favorite sports. However, I was interested to note that today (Sunday 5 February) is Super Bowl at home. It struck me as strange because Venezuela is hosting the Caribbean World Series in baseball. Baseball is a big sport here - probably even bigger than fútbol though Venezuela does have a soccer team, Vino Tinto. Anyway, los leones (the Lions), one of the Caracas teams, has been doing well and is leading the series. Last night they defeated the team from the Dominican Republic. The four teams involved in the series are Venezuela, Mexico, Dominican Republic, and Puerto Rico (los Venados de Mazatlán de México, Gigantes de Carolina de Puerto Rico, Tigres del Licey de República Dominicana y Leones del Caracas de Venezuela). I've learned that this series was started in 1946 with teams from Venezuela, Mexico, Cuba, and the US. In 1960 Cuba withdrew, thereby terminating the series until 1970 when Mexico entered. The individual team with the most wins is the Tigers from Licey, Dominican Republic. The Dominican is also the country with the most titles (15) followed by Puerto Rico with 14, and 5 each for Venezuela and Mexico. A trivia fact: Latin America sends lots of baseball players north (the Venezuelans were ecstatic when White Sox coached by an Venezuelan won the World Series), but one of the stars of the Leones is California native Harold Eckert.

la mariposa de la muerte

One morning last week I got up and, as usual, headed for the bathroom. When I looked in the mirror, I saw hanging on my wall, near the ceiling, a huge brown and black moth. (see picture) I totally freaked. The wing span on the thing was at least 8". It was just sitting there perfectly still. Being somewhat of a wimp around bugs I got the broom and started poking at him, hoping to encourage him to fly out the window, which of course is in a different room. The only direction he wanted to fly was toward the mirrors. I could hear his wings flapping - they were not wispy little things. He'd flap around for a bit and then I guess he'd be tired because he'd stop, perched somewhere. The whole time I'm not exactly shouting, but loudly encouraging this guy to leave, telling him "you have to go out" and "no, this way." If my neighbor heard me she probably thought I was losing it entirely - la loca norteamericana. After three or four attempts, he came to rest on the soap dish. I summoned up all my courage, got a plastic bowl with a lid, trapped him in it and released him out the window. Whew - that was over. So I thought. A couple of evenings later, I'm sitting there watching TV with the wondow open (you have to understand that no one has screens on their windows here) and in flies another giant moth. This time he's closer to the window so the broom trick worked. I ushered him out and shut the window. In between these two visits I had seen one of these moths hanging on the building where my friend lives. I asked her about them and she said yes, they do sometimes come inside, but she didn't know anything else about them.
Although by this time I had decided that these things were harmless, I wanted to find out what they were. So I started searching the internet and discovered that they are called the black witch moth in English and la mariposa de la muerte in Spanish and are common from Brazil as far north as Texas and Arizona. They are completely harmless and prone to flying inside building, attracted by the light. The Spanish name (butterfly of death) comes from a legend that if there is illness in the house and the moth flies in, someone dies. There are other fables surrounding this moth, which may be the largest species of moth in the world. (source: http://texasento.net/witch.htm) Since I had never seen one before about a week ago and now I've seen several (I've also seen some in the building where one of the archives is located) I'm thinking that it must a seasonal thing. They migrate, so maybe it's migration season here. The reports I read said that they have been seen in New Mexico as well as Texas and Arizona, but this is my first time. I think I've taken care of the problem by opening my windows less wide from both sides rather than just from one side (they slide sideways). What is ironic is that I've been struggling with the open window issue because of mosquitos and didn't realize I had a much bigger problem!

El Hatillo

 

misc. ramblings

This post is called misc. ramblings because I really don't have much interesting to say. However, I'll ramble on for a while and hopefully it will not be too boring.
I played around with the template for the blog over the weekend. I really liked the first format, but it bugged me that it only used part of the screen. At least, that's the way it appeared on my computer. Maybe that's not the case on other computers. So I went looking for something that used the whole screen, which this new format does. But the letters seem huge. So I can't decide whether or not I like it. I'd welcome comments on the new format. Keep the new one or go back to the old one?
It's hard to believe, but my time in Venezuela is half over, today. I'm amazed how quickly and how slowly the time has gone. I've never been away from my home for this long. It's strange. I've never thought of myself as a person who gets homesick. When I was a kid I thought girl scout camp was great and I would have been happy to stay there the whole summer. I rarely went home on the weekends when I was in college. But it was daunting to think about living in another country for ten months. Now it just is - it's what I'm doing and sometimes when I try to envision my life back in Albuquerque I have a hard time. Of course, the fact that I sold my house, packed up all my belongings, and gave away the cats has something to do with that. The dog I get back at least - once I find a place to live. Life would be way better here if I had a pet. I miss my pets almost as much as I miss my friends. I tried to convince my landlord he should rent me a dog or cat along with the apartment, but he didn't think too much of that idea. He tried to tell me animals were not allowed in the building, which I know isn't true because I've seen a number of pets, including in the the apartment of the conserje.
Things are settling down here after the World Social Forum that was held in Caracas last week. I did not have an opportunity to attend any of the events, unfortunately, but it seems that they were well attended and there were tens of thousands of people here from all over the world. I saw a good number of them walking around downtown last week. I talked with a man on the metro who is with one of the TV stations here, and he thought the forum was going very well.
Today was a beautiful day - warm (29 or 20c) and sunny. The weather in Caracas really is good, even though I complained a lot about the heat when I first got here. I was used to nice cool desert nights and had trouble sleeping in the warmer temps of Caracas. But I've discovered that winter here means cooler nights. I do miss snow however.
I posted another photo of El Hatillo because I like to see photos. I used the "Blog this" button in Picassa, which worked pretty well, but it looks like I now have a link to Picassa on my blog. It's a good program for organizing and working with digital photographs, and it's free, but I hadn't intended to be an advertising vehicle. Oh well.
Communication is always welcome.
Hasta luego.