The Great Adventure of Life

How to procrastinate

2006-06-29T08:00:00.000-04:00

I'm supposed to be working on my Final Report for Fulbright so I can get the last disbursement, which I need badly. However, I can't remember my username (I have the hardest time with those) so I started reading some of the blogs that I check out regularly. I'm sure I'm not the only person who hits the next blog button - otherwise why would they have that button. I've also found some interesting blogs by linking from other blogs. One that is really interesting is Tuk to the Road by two young women from England who are driving a tuk (a three wheeled vehicle that is used as a taxi in Thailand and India and maybe other places) from Thailand to England to raise money for a mental health organization. They are having great adventures - they are currently in China and are seeing parts of that country few foreigners ever do.

Anyway, I linked from one blog to another and then found this site where they have things you can put on your blog, include those clever little tests. So I did the "What kind of pie are you?" test since I really like pie (or pay here). Here are the results:

You Are Mud Pie

You're the perfect combo of flavor and depth
Those who like you give into their impulses

What Kind of Pie Are You?

There's another site I found called Stumble Upon that creates a button and when you click the button it takes you to a random site - you choose various topics you might want to see - that has been voted good by other Stumble Upon users. Really a time waster.

OK, now I have to do something useful. They still have not emailed me my username for the Fulbright report so I guess I'll go make coffee and continue packing.

Saludos.

It's hard to believe . . . . .

2006-06-28T19:53:00.000-04:00

It's hard to believe a lot of things, but here are a few:

that it has been nearly 2 1/2 months since I last posted to this blog. I have probably lost my three loyal readers.
that I am going home in 2 days 13 hours after living 10 months in Caracas
that people here - in a country who not only did not send a team to the World Cup but probably never has - are so crazy about this tournament. You can't go anywhere without a TV tuned into the games. This includes the beauty shop, restaurants, the universities, and yes, even the archives.
that I am so lucky. I am blessed in so many ways. I have wonderful friends scattered out around the US and now South America. I had the opportunity to live in another country, which is something everyone should experience at least once in their lives. I get to do something I really love - study history - and someday I will get to teach it, which will be really fun.

OK - enough of the list. I really have been busy these past two months. The end of April I went to Quito for a week for a Fulbright Student Enhancement program. That was fun and I got to meet other Fulbrighters from Colombia, Peru, Ecuador, and Bolivia. There are a lot of people doing interesting things out there. In addition to our meetings in Quito we went down to a little town called Baños and another little town on the edge of the rain forest called Puyo. I also took the weekend to do some sightseeing around the are. Saturday, Joy, another Fulbrighter from Colombia, and I visited La mitad del mundo - otherwise known as the equator. Ecuador does a pretty good job of turning something like the equator into a toursit destination. But it was fun and I took the requisite picture of my feet standing on top of the equator - a painted yellow line in this case. Sunday I rode on the teleférico (cable car) to the top of the mountain outside of Quito. It was quite beautiful but the clouds descended while I was there and the mountain was quickly covered in fog.

When I got back to Caracas I was sick for almost two weeks. First I had a cough and cold. The Monday I returned was International Workers Day (Labor Day for the rest of the world except the US) but I went in to the archives on Tuesday. I was coughing so much that one of the women told me to go home and not come back until I was healthy! But I toughed it out, just went to another archive. But then Saturday I got this stomach thing. My roommate in Quito had something similar and maybe that's where that come from. It was too bad because I started not feeling well during the birthday party for Gloria's mom - she turned 80 in May - and had to leave early. I was up all night being sick and called Gloria to come help me Sunday morning. I ended up going to a clinic and getting an IV of saline solution. That did make me feel better. But I still couldn't leave the house (couldn't get too far away from the bathroom) until Friday. So I lost some work time there.

The last week in May Betsy, an old friend from high school (by old I mean I've known her a long time, since she's only a couple of months older than me!) came to visit. We went down to Ciudad Bolívar and from there went to Canaima (a national park) and Angel Falls (the tallest waterfall in the world). It was amazing and lots of fun. I'll have another post in which I describe the trip with pictures, but in the meantime, here's a preview of the falls. The rest of the time that Betsy was here we hung around Caracas doing a little sightseeing.

So, that leaves June, which has been a really busy month. I had a little panic that I didn't have enough material yet, so I've been working long hours collecting digital photos of documents. I was asked to give two talks last week. One (in Spanish) was to a group of history students at UCV (the Central University of Venezuela) and the other was to a group of English teachers at CVA (Centro Venezolano Americano), a school for English. There were both fun, but the one at the university was a bit stressful due to poor commnication on the part of the student organizing it and the resulting poor preparation on my part. But I survived. The weekends have been somewhat busy also, though the only place I went outside of Caracas was to Colonia Tovar, which is a town that had been settled by Germans. It resembles a German village in the mountains and is quite picturesque. Pictures later. It seems my friends from here are leaving Caracas when I do. Actually, Leslie left on Sunday. Jan is leaving the Monday after I leave, and Gloria is coming to the States (actually Albuquerque) on July 4. Caracas will just not be the same.

I am excited to go home and see my friends (I hope to go to Indiana in August to see friends and family there) and Indy the dog. I hope he remembers me. Of course I'm not too sure where I'll be living, but I'm working on it. I'm sure all will be fine. I also need a job - I'm working on that too, but I may end up working at Starbucks or something similar. ¿Quien sabe?

Well, I think that brings me up to the present moment. I have been packing and getting the apartment ready to move. Today was my last day working in the archive. Tomorrow I go to CanTV to cancel internet (hopefully it will be faster than the installation) and to Super Cable to cancel cable TV and then finish packing. I sold my TV and washing maching, but I still have to figure out what to do with the desk. I have been shopping - that started when Betsy was here and hasn't stopped yet. Tomorrow I'm moving down the street to Gloria's apartment for a couple of days. Friday I clean the apartment and hopefully meet with the landlord to return the key. Actually it will be his wife, since he is in Florida. I tried calling her this evening to arrange a time, but had to leave a message. Then I leave for the airport at 5:30am on Saturday. That is probably too early, but one never knows. That's allowing two hours to get there, but it may only be an hour, in which case I'll have lots of time to drink my last Venezuelan coffee (it is sooo good) and check out the wireless internet at the airport. I get back to Albuquerque around 4:45pm local time!

Well, I guess that's enough for this post. I'll do all those trips individually, but I'm not sure if they will all get done by tomorrow. I know, I could have been doing them all along rather than waiting until the last minute.

Holy Week in Caracas

2006-04-16T20:31:00.000-04:00

As I said in my last post, this has been Holy Week. Since most everything - well, schools and the archives at least - were closed for the week, a friend and I took the opportunity to check out some of the sights around the city. A week ago Saturday we took the bus to El Hatillo, a little tourist town outside of Caracas. I had been there before (there are some pictures from there in a previous post), but it's a charming place and I was happy to go again. Then on Monday we took the teleferico (cable car) to the top of Avila and then took a Jeep ride partially down the other side of the mountain to a little town called Galipan. There wasn't much there except some vendors selling jams and flowers and a couple of restaurants. The things to eat there are pernil and fresas con crema (pork and strawberries with cream). Yum! There is also not much at the top of Avila. There are a couple of restaurants and a few food booths and a couple of stores. There is also an ice skating rink called Avila Magica. And there is an old hotel called Humboldt Hotel, named after Alexander von Humboldt, a German baron/scientist/geographer who traveled around Venezuela and other places in Central and South America between 1799 and 1804. The hotel is not in use; however, for 5.000Bs ($2.33) you can tour part of it. We did not do that. Instead we went back down the mountain and visited Quinta de Anauco or the Caracas Museum of Colonial Art. But here's what the hotel - which can be seen from anywhere in the city - looks like. We also got lucky and the clouds drifted away enough so that we could see a little bit of the Caribbean from the top of Avila. If you look closely in the picture you can see a little bit of blue ocean through the clouds.

Quinta de Anauco is a house that was built in 1797 and donated to Venezuela in 1958 with the proviso that it would forever serve as the headquarters of the Museum of Colonial Art of Caracas. The house was restored and furnished with 18th century art and furniture. As you can imagine - I thought this was a wonderful place. It is the best museum I've seen in Caracas and is way better than the casa natal or birthplace of Simon Bolivar. Here's a couple of pictures just to give you a feel for the place. One of the interesting things about the house is that it is representative of the period that I am studying - late colonial and early independence. For example, in the dining room were cups from the hacienda where coffee was served for the first time in the valley of Caracas. Following the wars of independence the economy of Caracas shifted from a reliance on cacao to one where coffee played a much more important role because during the wars the cacao fields had been nearly destroyed and coffee trees produce fruit much faster after planting than do cacao trees. There was also a mural rom with frescoes from 1828 with scenes from the new republic.

Well, I'll fill in the rest of the week tomorrow. It's getting late and I need to be up and on the metro early tomorrow morning. I found out this afternoon that Wednesday is another holiday - I'll have to find out more about that.

saludos de Caracas.

I'm Back! or What's been going on?

2006-04-16T15:30:00.000-04:00

No, I didn't fall off the face of the earth, but I don't have any good excuses for not posting anything sooner. I guess I've just been caught up in the minutia of my mundane day-to-day existence. You know, things like the stupid refrigerator (I've had technicos to my apartment at least 7 times now and have spent over $100 on this old fridge and have finally developed a method of dealing with it, even though it is not working properly), figuring out what to do about taxes, playing Sudoku, and reading lots of other people's blogs, especially about Venezuela. Except for this week, which is holy week, I've been working as long hours as possible in the archives. I have two and a half months left in Venezuela, which is just amazing to me. So I'm starting to panic a little that I won't get everything done. But I'm focused and I'm sure I'll get enough information to put together a decent dissertation. The truth is I could be working in the archives here for a couple of years. The end result would certainly be different, but not necessarily better - or so I tell myself. Like I said above, a lot of the time in front of my computer seems to be taken up with either playing Sudoku (I've become addicted) or reading either newspapers or blogs on or about Venezuela. Although this week has been pretty quiet - I guess because it's holy week - there was in the previous weeks lots of stuff going on. So, for all of you who don't keep up with Venezuela - I can't imagine why - here's the highlights.

The viaduct on the way to the airport from Caracas finally fell completely. Here's what it looks like now.

The really sad thing that happened a couple of weeks ago was the discovery of the bodies of three brothers (ages 17, 13, and 12) and their driver. They were kidnapped and had been missing for more than a month. It is really sad to think about what their family has had to go through for the past couple of months. The announcement of this discovery along with the death of an businessman the prior week launched a couple days of demonstrations about security and at one of these demonstrations a journalist was killed. These deaths were covered in various Venezuelan and foreign press articles. El Universal (English), Reuters, and Miami Herald are some of them and they provide at least an understandable picture of what went on.

April 11 was the anniversary of the 2004 overthrow - or coup - which removed Chavez from power for about 2 days. Although he claims that this was a CIA sponsored coup, I'm not aware of any proof to that claim. On the other hand, the US was quick to recognized the new president - who was in power for less than 48 hours. You can read about it in BBC online.

Relations between the US and Venezuela seem to be continuing on their consistently deteriorating course. Last week Ambassador Brownfield was in a poor neighborhood of Caracas distributing baseball equipment for the kids there when his car was attacked by people throwing food and stuff at it. The US, of course, issued a statement that this was unacceptable. Chavez replied that Brownfield had not informed them he was going there, that possibly he had been spying, and that maybe he would just kick Brownfield out of the country. US and British press covered it as well as the Venezuelan press.

Well, I guess that's enough of a news update for now. In case you can't tell, I'm really glad to have learned how to do those links rather than just pasting in the URL. I probably got a little carried away.

One more thing before I close for now, though I'm planning another post this evening with pictures since I've been playing tourist this week. Some of my friends ask me my thoughts about Chavez and the situation in Venezuela. I am trying to learn more so that I can have an intelligent opinion. As I said, I've been reading blogs about Venezuela, and there are quite a few in English. One of the best is Caracas Chronicles. One of the links on the site is titled Hugo Chavez FAQ and I think it's worth looking at if you are at all interested in learning more about him. The Wikipedia entry for Hugo Chavez is also pretty interesting.

OK, well I'm off to visit a friend for a bit and then I promise a post that's more about what I've been doing and less a press coverage report.

Saludos from Caracas.

What does it mean to study Venezuela - or did someone say "Patriot Act?"

2006-03-13T20:42:00.000-04:00

It has been an interesting week to be a scholar studying Venezuela. First I received this forwarded email:

Estimado/as Colegas,

I write to inform you that yesterday during my office hours (Tuesday 2:30 -4:30) I was visited by two agents of the LA County Sherrifs/FBI Joint Task Force on Terrorism (JTFT). The arrived at about 2:40-2:45 pm sat out side my office while attended to a students, and then asked to see me. They had with them a copy of my profile from the Pomona Web page, and other materials I could not see.
After identifying themselves, they proceeded to ask about my relation to Venezuela, the government, the community, my scholarship, my politics. They were especially interested in whether or not I had been approached by anyone in the Venezuelan government or embassy to speak up on Venezuelan related matters. In addition, they raised a whole host of other troubling questions, too long to summarize here.
They also indicated that the visit to my office was part of a larger effort to interview academics in the area. I do not know if this is happening at other schools.
After they departed, the three or four students who were outside my office informed me that these individuals had asked them about my background, my classes, what I taught, my politics and they even wrote down the cartoons that are on my door.
I consider this to be an attempt at intimidation and cast a pall on matters of academic freedom.
I am planning a response, and I am open to your comments.

Saludos

Miguel

The professor who wrote this is at Ponoma College and is a US citizen even though he was born in Venezuela. His web site is here.

Then I received a copy of this email from the president of Ponoma College:

To the Pomona College community:

On Tuesday, March 7, Miguel Tinker Salas, Arango Professor of Latin American History and Chicano Studies, was visited in his Pearsons Hall office by two men from the Los Angeles County Sheriff/FBI Joint Task Force on Terrorism. To avoid rumors, I wanted the Pomona College community to be aware of the facts.

The agents asked Professor Tinker Salas a number of personal questions as well as questions about the Venezuelan government and the Venezuelan community in the U.S. During the meeting, they told him that he was not a subject of investigation. The tone and content of the questioning, however, troubled him deeply. He was also troubled by the fact that the agents reportedly questioned some of the students outside his office while waiting to see him.

Miguel, as all of you know, is a superb Wig Award winning teacher and a fine scholar on Latin American history, politics, and culture who is sometimes asked by the news media to comment on topics related to his research, including Venezuelan politics. The College supports him and his scholarly work without reservation.

I am extremely concerned about the chilling effect this kind of intrusive government interest could have on free scholarly and political discourse.
I am also concerned about the negative message it sends to students who are considering the pursuit of important areas of international study, in which they may now feel exposed to unwarranted official scrutiny.

The College is currently consulting with legal advisors about the most effective way to register a strong official protest about this intrusion into our scholarly and educational activities, and we will take appropriate action as soon as their advice is received. We are also asking for their help in assuring that all members of the College community are fully informed about their rights and their options in such situations.

David Oxtoby
President Pomona College

Evidently the FBI has since issued a statement that it was a misunderstanding and that they certainly didn't mean to create such an uproar. There are a number of news sources that have written about this, though most of them are in Spanish. Reuters had an article.

Gives one pause. It's beginning to feel like Joe McCarthy has risen from the dead.

Saludos de Venezuela.

What's in a flag?

2006-03-13T20:09:00.000-04:00

Yesterday was flag day here in Venezuela and to celebrate the occasion President Chavez introduced a new flag. He made two changes. The Venezuela flag since 1863 has been three stripes - yellow on the top, blue in the middle, and red on the bottom, with seven stars white stars on the blue stripe, and the coat of arms in the upper left corner. Here's the old flag:

What he did was add another star and change the coat of arms. Now the horse, which was looking back over his right shoulder, is now looking to the left. Here's the new one:

Now, lots of people are very upset about this. There were marches yesterday to protest the changes, with some fights breaking out. The star supposedly is to recognize the role of the province of Guyana in the independence movement and to carry out what Simon Bolivar wanted. The horse is now supposed to be looking forward rather than backward. Of course, he is looking left, which some people see as a metaphor for Chavez's left-leaning politics.

Here's what CNN said about it.

What have I been doing?

2006-03-13T16:45:00.000-04:00

That is a good question - what have I been doing? I complain that life is pretty boring down here, but I do manage to stay busy. I've been trying to watch less television, but that translates into spending more time online doing who knows what. During the week I go to the archives, though last week I took a couple of days at home to get more organized. I am beginning to realize that my time here is growing short and I need to try to make sure that I'm focusing on what's most important. It's strange. When I first got here it felt like I would be here forever, and now the time is rushing by. For example, I was amazed when I logged on here and saw that it had been over two weeks since I had posted something. It seems like it was just last week. I'm sure there's some kind of scientific principle that explains this phenomenon - something to do with Einstein I'm sure - but it's real, that's for sure.

Yesterday I went with a couple of friends to see Brokeback Mountain. I really liked the film. The acting was amazing and the story was very moving. My only complaint was the audience - they were obnoxious. I'm sure I would have enjoyed the film more in the US than here, with an apparently homophobic crowd. Saturday I went to see a couple of museums here in Caracas. The Museum of Natural History was disappointing and many of the displays were blatently political. I know that sounds nearly impossible, but nevertheless, true. The Museum of Art (Bellas Artes) was better. We then walked to an area known as La Candelaria, which is known for its Spanish restaurants and had a very nice tapas lunch at a tasca. Then, being absolutely stuffed, we walked all the way back - about 5 metro stops.

The weekend before I went with my friend and her mother to El parque de los chorros (chorros are streams or small water falls). It is a pretty little park at the foot of Avila. From the parking lot you walk down quite a ways (via stairs) to get to the park. There is a waterfall (see picture), though of course, nothing significant here in the land of the world's largest waterfall (Angel Falls - more on that later after I visit there!). But pretty. The stream then continues through the park, rippling over the rocks, etc.

US and Venezuela are at it again

2006-02-24T20:39:00.000-04:00

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

2006-02-22T19:25:00.000-04:00

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

2006-02-05T10:40:00.000-04:00

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

2006-02-05T09:59:00.000-04:00

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

2006-02-01T20:54:00.000-04:00

misc. ramblings

2006-02-01T20:22:00.000-04:00

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.

The March

2006-01-22T22:10:00.000-04:00

Today I had the opportunity to see a political march/demonstration. I do not take sides in the Venezuelan political scene. I don't feel that I should nor do I have a right as a visitor to do that. Neither do I want to have a huge political discussion on the blog about Venezuelan politics, Hugo Chavez, or the opposition. But it is interesting. I see the whole political situation here as very complex even though the press - both Venezuelan and foreign - like to slot all the players into neat little categories. Since I have been back it has been much quieter politically than it was last summer when I was here. I left a couple of weeks before the referendum and during the summer there had been quite a bit of political activity. But since then it has been very calm. Even the elections in December were nearly a non-event. I did have occasion to take a taxi last week and my driver was very anti-Chavez. He tried very hard to get me to say that I thought Chavez was terrible. He did not want to accept my stock reply that I didn't think I should express an opinion either way. Today there were demonstrations planned for both the Chavistas and the opposition and I thought it would be fun to check it out. Since I live in the east side of the city, the demonstration close to home was the opposition - probably the safer one for a gringa. I'm posting a couple of pictures just to show what it was like. The people carrying the red flags are from a political group "Banda Roja" or Red Flag, which is the most left-wing political party in the country - even more so than the Communist Party. I find it to be very interesting that they are marching with the opposition rather than the Chavistas. Make you think about how accurate the portrayal of Chavez as a radical leftist really is.

Being a Tourist

2006-01-22T22:09:00.000-04:00

Saturday I went with my friend and her mom to El Hatillo, which is a little town outside of Caracas that caters to tourists. It is a cute little town with the requisite Plaza Bolivar and brightly painted colonial houses. Surrounding the plaza are lots of shops with crafts and articles made throughout Venezuela (and Latin America) and lots of restaurants. On one end of the village are barrios climbing up the side of the mountain, though not as poor as the ones that you can see driving to the airport. It's pretty amazing how these houses are stacked almost on top of each other, looking like they could slide down the mountain at any time. There is also a new commercial center (shopping mall) which they have decorated in the same theme as the colonial village. So it is rather pretty for a mall, but all the stores are very upscale. It has just opened and there will eventually be a skating rink. Malls are a popular form of entertainment, especially on the weekends. It seems that families like to go to the mall and spend the day. They can park reasonably, they can look around, there are various forms of entertainment - movies, skating rinks, bowling alleys, aquariums, etc. - and they can eat. I think they see malls as being safer than other options.

Ben Franklin revisted, Venezuelan style

2006-01-22T19:20:00.000-04:00

I read that Ben Franklin was born 300 years ago this past Tuesday. While I'm certainly grateful for his many contributions, especially electricity, this past week I was electically challenged this past week. Whereas most of my frustrations regarding life in Caracas had revolved around the phone company, having my phone service disconnected, and my attempts to get internet service at home - a 2-month plus effort, this week I ran into the brick wall known as the electric company. It began on Tuesday when I received a disconnect notice. I was somewhat confused since I had paid every bill that I had received, one per month, and the only unpaid bill had a due date of the 21st. The conserje (custodian) told me I had three days to pay and I told her I would take care of it the next day. The next day I set out to the bank, where I usually pay my bills, to find out that since I had a disconnect notice I had to go somewhere else. So I walked a few blocks down to a shopping center where there was a place to pay the electric bill. After standing in line for a while I was told that I had not paid the bill for December and that I owed 87.000Bs (the only bill I had was for 18.000 Bs). The woman got very insulted when I told her I had paid every bill every month - of course I was wrong then, though I didn't know it yet. Anyway, I paid the bill so that my electricity would not be disconnected, went home to get all my recipts, called a friend to find out the location for another office where I was told I could get an explanation and set out. In my frustration I walked past the first metro station (I had to go about three in all) so I just kept walking the whole way. Found the office and waited in yet another line, and finally got to talk with someone. The problem was she couldn't answer my questions and/or I didn't understand her. So, I called my friend who came to help me out (her Spanish is way better than mine). But that still didn't change the fact that the customer service person couldn't answer what I had paid. So, we took a number and waited for a different person upstairs. Finally about 40 minutes later (and there was only one person in front of us, but it was a young attractive male being helped by two young females) we got to talk to someone else. She was a little more knowledgable, although my friend also found that she could ask the same question twice (or more) and receive different answers from the same person. Anyway, it seems that I had never received a bill that was sent out in December, but that still was not the entire problem. It took the supervisor to finally determine that I had paid the amount for the invoice I had received due Jan. 21st, the amount on the invoice I had not received, and an amount that was owing from before I moved into the apartment. He actually gave me a listing of what I paid and copies of all the invoices. So, all was well I thought. Until I got home to discover that I had no electricity. I set out again to the first office to be told that my power would be restored within 24 hours and there was nothing I could do about it. I was really mad then and I'm sure I reinforced every stereotype of the ugly American. I was rude to an old lady who, in my opinion, tried to cut in front of me in line, and I raised my voice to the ladies behind the counter as I asked them just what could I have done to prevent this when I never received a bill and I paid the bill the very next day after I received the disconnect notice. They basically said, yeah we know, too bad. So I went home and talked with the conserje who told me that three other people in the building had their power cut the same day for the same reason of a missing invoice. So I headed out to the store to buy candles and a bottle of wine (I figured after the day I'd had I deserved that). But when I got back, I had power again. So, in the words of Shakespeare, "All's well that ends well." Of course, I still get to pay the re-connect fee. I have a friend here who thinks this is just a way to get extra income. Who knows.

Escaping the city

2006-01-13T08:43:00.000-04:00

I saw an article today in the New York Times travel section about Caracas that I thought was worth passing on: http://travel2.nytimes.com/2005/11/27/travel/27caracas.html?e
x=1152421200&en=f001ef1d1d1ee23d&ei=5087&mkt=travellink1.

Although it’s not by any means complete, I think it does a good job of describing the city and has some interesting observations. The picture from the cable car is great too.

The article does not mention two of my favorite places for getting away from the noise and congestion of the city: Parque del Este and Centro de Arte La Estancia. These are both easier to get to than riding the cable car to the top of the mountain and closer to the metro than the trails on Avila.

Parque del Este (East Park) is, according to the guide book, 200 acres of paths, gardens, trees, and other attractions like animal displays, a planetarium, and a lake. It is on the grounds of a former coffee hacienda. The picture here is of some people doing tai chi in the park one Saturday morning. I'd love to figure out how to join them even though it looked like a different form than the one I've been studying.

Centro de Arte La Estancia is very close to the park but is private property open to the public. It’s smaller and is also part of a former hacienda. The land is owned by PDVSA, the Venezuelan oil company, who has converted the former house into an exhibition hall with a library. The last exhibit I saw there was a display of various twentieth-century buildings of note throughout the Americas. There are areas where you will see people sitting in the shade reading or visiting. It is a quite pleasant place. There is a great variety of trees and flower gardens there as well as a greenhouse with many different kinds of orchids. The first time I was there I went with my friend Gloria and her mom and we came back with bags full of mangos. You can pick or gather fruit that you find there, but you can’t eat it there! There are lots of banana trees as well as coffee and cacao trees. The strange looking tree is cacao. How could such a wonderful food as chocolate come from such a strange looking tree? I've seen the inside of one of the pods. It still doesn't resemble the food we know and love. I'm not really sure of how cacao is processed but I know it involves a good number of steps. I'm told that Venezuelan chocolate is among the best in the world and that although there aren't a lot of first rate processors here Venezuelan chocolate is used by some of the best processors in Europe.

The gringoization of the world

2006-01-12T08:52:00.000-04:00

I just read an article in the New York Times about a town in Italy where McDonalds was unable to compete with the local foods and closed its doors (http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/12/international/europe/12italy.html). I had to applaud this because I wish there were not so many McDonald's here in Caracas. I get a little tired of (Venezuelan President) Hugo Chavez ranting about American imperialism, but he's certainly right that corporate America and its multi-national conglomerates are very imperialistic. What we are doing, besides making lots of money, is disseminating our unhealthy lifestyle around the world. I'm told that the Venezuelan people are getting larger - i.e. more like North Americans. No great surprise when there is a McDonald's about every six or seven blocks, interspersed with Pizza Hut, Wendy's, Burger King, Domino's Pizza, Subway, and many other fast food places from the U.S. It's not only food. The malls are filled with stores from the U.S. and Europe. I look at the prices and wonder how many people can afford to shop at these stores. Oh well, many call this progress. Fast food restaurants are certainly busy. There is one McDonald's whose drive-through I cut through to walk to the metro station. If I walk by there close to opening time I see a line of people waiting for the doors to open. When it's open it's always busy, even in the middle of the afternoon.

A New Year

2006-01-07T17:02:00.000-04:00

I can't believe that it's already seven days into the new year. I'm already behind in posting to my blog! I can't even claim to be extremely busy - but I am somewhat unmotivated. That's what happens to me when I'm not busy.
Because there's not much going on to report, I guess I'll just record thoughts and impressions. It seems strange to me that I have been living in Caracas for four months now. I remember before I moved here I really couldn't comprehend what it would be like to live in another country. After all, before I moved to Albuquerque I had only lived in one city for my entire life, with the exception of college and I'm not sure that counts. Now, while my life isn't exactly how I would structure it if I were living here long term, it has a routine and familiarity that I hadn't expected. I've never lived in a big city before. Albuquerque at 600,000 (mas o menos) is probably twice the size of Fort Wayne, but not large by anyone's definition. So living in a city of 4.5 million is a new experience. Not having a car makes it a different experience as well, but I wouldn't want to drive here. It's not Mexico City, but it's not Chicago either. The overwhelming sensation for me is noise. It is a very noisy city. And my neighborhood is probably quieter than most. But, as my friends and I were discussing on New Year's Eve, there are a lot of fireworks here. They have diminished this week, but I still hear them at night. At least now I'm not being awakened at 3:00 in the morning with loud bangs. I would just lay there listening for police sirens to no avail. Car alarms constantly, but the police aren't going to bother with fireworks. Occasionally I even get to see some pretty ones, but usually they are just the loud noisy ones. Maybe noise is common to big cities, but some is unique to Caracas. For example, every morning starting at about 6:00 and every evening at dusk I hear the parrots squawking and screeching. At first I thought that a neighbor had birds and that was what I was hearing. Although I maybe do have a bird-loving neighbor, I understand from the guide books that parrots live along the river that is a few blocks south of me, between my neighborhood of El Rosal and Los Mercedes. They leave in the morning to go over to Avila or Parque del Este (big park in the Altamira - more later with pictures) and return in the evening to sleep. Just a little bit of nature here in the city.
Now that it's a new year the government makes the street vendors (buhoneros) pack up and leave so they can clean the streets. I guess they start setting back up again later in January. Sabana Grande is an east-west pedestrian street that more or less parallels the metro line beginning with the Plaza Venezuela metro station, going through the Sabana Grande station and ending at Chacaito. Normally the entire length of this street is full of vendors' stalls on both sides of the street. This week I walked down there and there were no vendors. It was amazing. You could actually see the stores on either side of the street and I even discovered that there is a mall over there. Usually it is so crowded with vendors and shoppers that you can't see anything.
This morning I went to the Chacao market. Chacao is a neighborhood. It is also a municipality and the one in which I live. The market is reminiscent of those I've seen in Mexico, except that the meat is in refrigerated cases like you would see in a meat market and they will actually put the meat in a styrofoam container with plastic wrap if you want.
Even though December is supposed to be the beginning of the dry season, we are still having a lot of rain here. It has raining almost every day this week - a couple of days it rained all day and the sun did not appear at all. Times like those I really miss the New Mexico desert. Several days this week I noticed that the poor nuns living at the school in front of my house were trying to do their laundry, which they hang out on the roof of the building. Their sheets were out there for a couple of days because they kept getting rained on.
In addition to a school across the way I also look out over a nearly vacant lot. At the back of this lot - against one side of the school - is a "structure," actually more like a shack. A man who I guess is the caretaker lives there with his two dogs. This morning he was out there early using some kind of a pipe to break up the concrete on the lot. There had evidently been a house there. You can still see the tiles from the house. Anyway, this guy crouches down and hits at the old concrete, breaking it into little pieces and piling them up. I guess he carts them away sometime because there are not huge piles of debris there. I guess he lives there to provide some security on the property, but his home is really just a shack with electricity. He leaves the door open during the day and it looks like there is just one room. He has a lawn chair out front that he sits on and looks out at the world. It's really pretty strange. I guess just another example of life in Caracas.

Visiting Colombia

2005-12-29T15:47:00.000-04:00

In November I visited my friend and fellow grad student Dave, who is doing research in

Colombia

. I flew from Caracas to Bogotá and from there we went on to visit Villa de Leyva and Barichara. Bogotá is a great city. Very different from Caracas. Although I know more people live in Bogotá, it doesn’t feel as “big city” as Caracas, probably because there’s more room to spread out. There are also more colonial buildings (many have been destroyed in Caracas from earthquakes) so it has a different feeling.
Here are a couple of pictures of Bogotá. One is one side of the main plaza. The plaza is huge and full of pigeons. The other picture is one of the streets in Candelaria, the old area of Bogotá, coming off the plaza.
While we were in Bogotá we went to a number of places, including La quinta Bolívar, which is the home given to Simon Bolívar by the newly independent Gran Colombia. We also rode the cable car to the top of the mountain where there is a church named Montserrat. It is a popular pilgrimage for lots of people on Sundays. They often walk up - we just walked down and got caught in a huge rainstorm. It was fun though. The next two pictures are of Montserrat. You can see there are a lot of people and vendors there.

We also went to the Gold Museum and the Botero Museum. The Gold Museum had lots of displays of pre-Colombian gold pieces from various Andean populations. The Botero Museum is dedicated to the works of Colombian artist Fernando Botero. The picture I've included here not only has a typical Botero woman, but also a self-portrait of the artist.

The first little town we went to is Villa de Leyva. It's a couple of hours from Bogotá and a popular tourist destination for people from the capital city. Here's a picture of the main plaza and one of our hotel, which was an old mill from the 1600s.

The final town we visited was Barichara. It's even smaller and further away from Bogotá, and so not as crowded, but even more picturesque. I must have taken a million pictures. I just kept looking and thinking, "Oh, I have to have a picture of that." So I'll just try to pick a couple to share.
All in all, it was a great and much needed vacation. I found Colombia to be a great country and am really glad to have had the opportunity to visit. I probably would not have gone there on my own because I thought it was too dangerous. I actually felt like Bogota was safer or at least calmer than Caracas, with all the political stuff that goes on here. I had a number of Colombians tell me that it is much safer now than it used to be and that Americans always think it's dangerous until they go there. The flip side of that is that I have lots of caraqueños tell me how dangerous the city is now - but that it didn't used to be. Some also tell me they would never go downtown - which is where I go every day. Though I have heard about people getting hassled by the police for taking pictures downtown, which is why I haven't.

But I still need to travel more in my adopted country of Venezuela. I have some pictures of Caracas that I'll post later, but nothing outside of the city yet. I've been reading about Venezuela and have a long list of places I want to visit.

First Post

2005-12-29T12:39:00.000-04:00

¡Feliz navidad y prospero año nuevo de Caracas!

OK, this is my first post to this new endeavor of blogging. I thought it might be fun to record my thoughts and experiences while I'm here in Caracas and, who knows, maybe even after I return to Albuquerque. For those who know me, most of this post will be repeats of what you have already heard or know about me. I'm a graduate student at the University of New Mexico and I'm in Caracas, thanks to a grant from the Fulbright Commission, to do dissertation research. Although I'm not quite the oldest grad student in the world, I'm probably close. I'm a returning student who got tired of "Corporate America" and decided to do something more fun. I'm a historian and my research topic is on women living within the slave society of Caracas between 1750 and 1854 (the year of emancipation in Venezuela). I spend most of my days reading old handwritten Spanish documents in archives in Caracas.

It's a few days after my first Christmas in Venezuela and all the archives are closed for the holidays. Just about everyone I know here in Caracas is gone - either back to the states, another country, or the beach - so I have time on my hands and not much to do. Hopefully someone will actually read this and respond, either through comments or email, for those of you who have my email address. The picture is a view from my apartment window of Avila - the big mountain on the north side of Caracas. A week or so ago I rode the cable car to the top of the mountain. Unfortunately I didn't have my camera with me, but hopefully the person I was with will email me the pictures she took and then I'll post them. The view of the city was spectacular but the view of the other side was clouds. I had hoped we would be able to see the Caribbean, but no luck that day. I'll have to go back again.