First Week!

   I have been in Venezuela for a little under a week, but I LOVE it. The temperature is perfect, I wear jeans and a tank top everyday. It does it get a little hot around noon, but cools of after about two, which is the universal lunch break here and everything closes (except the big grocery store called Garzón). My host family is very nice. There are two daughters, the mom, and the dad. Mi mamá is the go to lady at my school for everything you need, which makes living with her very easy. I also live the closest to my school out of all the students, and I am in the middle of most of them, which means I get to share cabs a lot but I am never really alone. I have my own private room and bathroom, which is nice. So far I have not gotten sick (knock on wood), although a few students have. I have class four days a week, then a three day weekend, which is also a big change. Most nights I go out to bars with other students and try to talk to locals. It is exhausting speaking so much Spanish, especially because mine needs a lot of help.
   So far I am very happy with my time here. Yesterday I was able to go paragliding for the first time. That was amazing! Its strangely calming and relaxing. A few students couldn't stomach it, but for the most part most people seemed a little light headed, but relaxed afterwards.
   There are a few cultural differences I have to get used to. I make my bed everyday, which is a HUGE change. Its not so much cultural as polite. It's a habit i'll try to keep.  I also am learning to not slam car doors (Steve, you'll be happy about that). Also, here you have to put toilet paper in the trash, you can't flush it. It's not gross at all, but a few times I have forgotten and thrown in right in the toilet. The architecture of buildings are very different. In many cases there are garages or rooms without roofs, of just have a partial roof. There is no need for air conditioning, unless you are in crowed space. Its so nice to be able to be outside and not have it hurt! Everyone wears their shoes inside and so far I have no seen any carpet. I really like it here.

First Day!!

As of right now I am in a hotel in Miami with three other girls, who are all in my same program. Today has been a little weird. I took two flights to get to Miami, both of which were uneventful. After arriving at the hotel I was going to go out and get dinner and a drink with some other students I am traveling with. However, I turned on my computer only to have my hard drive crash, the day before leaving for South America for four months. So, I had to miss all the activities, pay eighty dollars in cab fare to buy a new hundred and fifty dollar hard drive, and loose all my information from the past four years of owning this computer. Thankfully most of my pictures are safe of a external hard drive, but I did loose a lot of pictures from Colorado last summer :(  I had to say goodbye to all my school work and hundreds of papers. But, on the bright side, I saw downtown Miami and Miami Beach, which I wasn't going to be able to do. Overall I like Miami, it smells like summer.