Daily Grind

we posted some less dramatic photos of our regular haunts. Our tiny little studio apartment yet somehow to us it is majestic. You should see all the yummy food we keep in our frig. I guess I will take a photo of that later.
a day in our life is like this... We wake around 8am and get slowly get ready for our first 10am Spanish class. Andy usually makes yummy oatmeal or we eat yogurt or cereal. We walk the few blocks to Spanish in a sunny warm climate always in the 8os or 70s. we have had a bit of rain in the evenings here but it rarely cuts into the sunny warm days. one day was partially grey and that is all the grey I have seen in 2 months. The weather channel caught my eye the other day when there was wild snow in southern California and Texas. Then I made the mistake of checking the weather in NY. yikes. Lets just say I curbed the beginning of the anxiety attack by running out of the computer cafe and going to my happy place. Under the sunny skies of Merida. Funny too, because this is suppose to be the cold town in Venezuela, which means a little cool in the evening and theres never humidity. OK, how much more can I say about climate. a lot, because it means so much to me. but I wont. Don't underestimate the power of sun and warmth.

OK, so we go to Spanish until 12. Zarha has had all private lessons and it looks like that will continue. she is doing great. At first her teachers said she didnt talk much and we said that was true in English too. Now her teachers are very impressed with her rapid understanding of Spanish and she is using it. She is even writing a story in Spanish now. They gave her a test! hey, I didn't get a test. She did great and I got to hear how smart she is. smile. Actually its now zarha who wants to stay at the school longer to continue with all the levels of spanish that they offer. We are thinking of going to Colombia for several days, but maybe if we dont do that we will stay in Merida and study Spanish for another week. We have a 4 hour break midday we check Internet, go to the excellent market, it is 3 stories and the photos are not capturing it, we eat lunch and sometimes nap. What a life.
then we have Spanish from 4 to 6pm. Andy and I only have one other student with us in our respective classes. The ratio is excellent and the teachers are really experienced!

Some evenings, I go to a yoga studio across from the school. the official class is during my Spanish so I do yoga on my own. That works better for me, becuase the kind of yoga I found here was not what I wanted to do. I found a gym yesterday and they have spinning and pilates. will check that out next week. They have hour massages there for 5$. what is that about! wow. maybe I read it wrong.

In the evenings we do homework and eat. We are such good eaters, you all would be proud of us. parasites are going around. we are either trying to rid them from us or trying to keep them out. It really only bothered me for one day. Andy's have been lingering and zarha does not seem effected.
we can get remedies here but I think I will wait till I am back in the states and I will do the lemonade cleanse.

today andy went hiking and zarha and I are going on para gliding, ten thousand feet in the mountains! Andy wanted to save the money...yeah right. hahaa.

ok, enough boring details. but there you have it. our routine for the month. we are meeting some interesting people and we got invited by our Venezuelan waitress last night to her thesis defense of Monday. She is a visual media grad student.

I have not been able to get in touch with all the interpreter and deaf contacts here. but I did check out the university of the Andes. It is beautiful. They are starting to teach sign language this semester and asked if I wanted to teach. However, it is not for a degree program here it is only for personal interest.
I will not be here long enough to teach but I will go and find the classes and teachers next week.

hope you all are happy and keeping warm,
love to all

+++More photos

Lots of new photos of weekend adventure. Needless to say my very geeky twelve yr old kid wrote all the captions. sigh. At what age does the geekiness subside?? Hey maybe that is another reason I was crying!

Cable cars, Mules and Jeeps

We had a spontaneous adventure this past weekend in the Andes mountains. We had tickets to ride the Teleferico, the worlds highest cable car, Saturday. The day was a bit cloudy but clouds do tend to hang out around 15 to 18 thousand feet. It was a beautiful ride in a huge cable car that seats about 40 people. The car stops at 4 different landings and you can get out and walk around. when I got to the top, I burst into tears. Its hard to explain. It could be the rapid altitude and lack of oxygen but I think its the awe of such majesty. It is stunning, I was shook to tears.
I have not felt this emotional since election day in Caracas. Also, seeing the local Venezuelans throwing snowballs at 18 thousand feet was very moving. We were only a hands length from pico Bolivar the highest peak in Venezuela maybe south American I am not sure, and it was incredible. Sorry I can not find better descriptive words to help you visual this and the photos can never express the emotion, but I try. Before this the highest I had been was about 13,500 feet when Andy and I hiked in Colorado and that was 14 years ago.
During the day zarha Andy and I had been talking about our adventurous spirits. We were talking about how we all like adventure but how I tend to lead them into adventure by making fast spontaneous decisions. Ironically 5 minutes later we ran into a friend from our Spanish class who was planning on riding mules from the teleferico station at about 13 thousand feet to a small little town tucked into the mountains. Of course I decided that moment we had to do it too! It took 1 second for Zarha to get on board and about 5 minutes to convince Andy. We were not fully prepared for the 4 hour ride up and into and around the mountain, through snow and hail. We had no provisions for sleeping over in the town. I have now had my taste of winter this year for thirty minutes. It was about 40 degrees and my fingers were frozen and numb trying to hold the reins of the mule. We descended to about 8 thousand feet and as we descended the weather warmed up. It was clear, sunny and pristine mountain ranges I thought I would fall off my mule from gazing around in astonishment. I was so impressed not to find a speck of garbage along the way. That alone almost made me cry! we had a guide and we had two mules and zarha rode the horse. This four hour trip with guide and mules cost 20$ for all of us. I couldn't get over how cheap it was and we tipped the guide and he seemed really confused by that. Tipping is not a big part of the culture here, but we were compelled to give him more money. Things can be so cheap that sometimes we feel we should pay more.
We arrived to the village of about 100 people around 5pm. We had not planned on this trip so we did not have enough money for the jeep ride back the next morning (which cost more than the mules, almost double.) like the hotel California you can get in but you can never leave. luckily our friend from the states lent us some money. we slept in a beautiful posada at the top of the town looking at the vista of the mountains. Dinner and Breakfast included for $5 per person! Their were tons of animals at the pasada and they all had babies. A puppy, kittens, bunnies, Chic's, and baby pigs of course Zarha was thrilled and I am trying to work out a forgeign exchange program for her to return there. haha.
The jeep ride back was ripe with material for a sitcom. We had to cram 12 of us into a jeep that seats 8. We rode along small narrow, rocky dirt roads that made the roads on the way to the World Social Forum last year seem well established. The roads only fit one vehicle so it was an exhilarating feeling when the driver had to back up against sheer mountain cliff to let others pass. The deep sighs and anxiety of our female traveling campanions made it all the more nerve wracking. We had a very international mix of folks, Germans, Swiss, US, Venezuelan. Half of the riders had motion sickness and were taking meds to curb the urge to puke. I was amazed not to get puked on! We took amazing photos from the windows and had a great political conversations with the Swiss women.

as we have been saying a lot here, a once in a life time experience, even if we do it again!

oh yeah, I saw an all purple bird. This may excite my friend Wilma, it startled me. What was it??