Some More Venezuelan Moments

The other day when I was on campus, I was sitting alone reading waiting for my teammates to come back from getting smoothies. This guy came up to me and asked if I went to Cenfol, (pronounced "sinful" ironically) the church that Vida is partnered with. I told him that I actually go to a different church but I work for Vida. He said he knew this woman who used to be on staff here. Then he asked if I wanted to hear some typical Venezuelan music. I said, "sure." I mean, it would have been rude to say no. So he walks away and then comes back with this little guitar case. He got a stool and sat down in front of the bench I was sitting on. He drew a picture of a banjo on a piece of paper and asked me the word in English so I wrote it down for him. Then he got out his mini-guitar (with 4 strings...I think it was a ukelele) and started playing some songs for me. I enjoyed the music, but it was so awkward cause I didn't know where to look - if I looked away it would be rude, but I couldn't look at his face either. I wanted to laugh out loud so bad, especially when I thought about what Kaitlin & Karlayne would think when they walked back to see this random person serenading me!


All of my roommates have been broke for about a week or two because we paid for a lot of things over spring break, and haven't gotten money transferred in about a month! I haven't had any cash since spring break was here (two weeks ago), so I've had to borrow money from the Powars twice. Now I'm aaalmost at the end of that money too! We finally got money transferred this morning, but Andrew hasn't given it to us yet. Anyway, Crystal asked me to accompany her to the store to get yogurt since she is sick of eating cereal or oatmeal for every meal. She also asked if I would want to go to McDonald's (a better incentive than just asking if I wanted to go to the store...I always want McDonald's!). I didn't have enough money to get anything from McDonald's, but I told her I would go anyway. Then I realized what I had JUST enough money for - Wendy's Lunch! Haha it's a lunch special that's only 11 Bs ($2 for a burger/chicken sandwich and drink). So we went to Wendy's. Crystal got a more expensive special that came with a frosty. The funny thing about Venezuelan Wendy's is that if you get a frosty, they don't give it to you until you're done eating your meal - otherwise it would melt!! (Another problem is that Wendy's NEVER has change so you always pay for your meal and then go back up every 5 minutes to see if they've gotten change yet.) So we got back to the apartment and Crystal looked in her bag and realized they didn't give her her frosty! So sad! They forgot to give it to her, even though we got our food to go, because they aren't used to giving them out with the meal. At least she walked back over there and they gave it to her.


Also, today I gave the talk at Tiempo Libre! I enjoyed it - I talked about friendship. It was kind of crazy/spontaneous because I didn't know who was going to translate for me. Kaitlin thought about doing it, but decided it'd be too stressful since my talk was fairly long. She asked one girl, MC, to do it, so we thought she would do it, but 5 minutes before the talk she backed out because it was getting late and she had to leave to go to class soon. So we quickly asked another guy, Jose Angel to translate. He was caught off guard though and tried to convince Kaitlin to do it. He did a great job, but I could tell he was pretty nervous - I would have been, too, if I didn't even know I was supposed to translate until right before! It wasn't nerve-racking at all for me to give the talk since I had a translator, and it just doesn't matter as much what I say or if I mess up. The real challenge I think is on the part of the translator. Our weekly meeting is so funny because it's so casual. When Jose wouldn't know a word/translation, the people in the audience would just shout it out. It was great for me - I knew I had nothing to be stressed out about because the meeting is just so casual and that's how their culture is.

Oh Venezuela!