Pelicans!

I spent the weekend at the beach! One of my awesome Venezuelan co-wokers invited a couple of us to go with their family -- it was great. I love the beach, and I loved spending the weekend with some Venezuelans! In just 2 days, I learned so many new words, a few more Venezuelan sayings, and had some great food. Arepas! The Venezuelan version of a fat tortilla/pupusa/thing. Mmmmm. Drank a lot of papelon con limon (kind of like lemonade made with molasses.....so good). We also ate fish (pargo, I think it was red snapper), tostones (fried green plantains), and coleslaw on the beach. Then we swam in the ocean a bit, where I learned the word for seaweed (algas). It was heavenly, really tranquil, in this little cove, where the jungly forest backed right up to the beach. Sorry, no picture, my fickle camera decided not to work at that moment.


Luckily, it decided to work at the marina, where we went to buy some fresh fish. One of the primary reasons for going to the marina was to see the pelicans, which our Venezuelan hosts said were the most orderly birds they had ever seen. "They line up and wait in turn for scraps of fish! Every time!" Now, not to be a skeptic, but my experience with pelicans and any other seabird has not been "orderly." So we went to see the pelicans.


As you can see above, they DO line up and wait. It was amazing. However, rather than going one at a time to receive their scrap of fish in breadline fashion, the following takes place:



Maybe you can't see it too well, but as soon as the first piece of fish flies, they all crowd the edge of the marina and start fighting over the scraps. See the one in front taking a nose dive? A couple of them started wacking each other with their bills and chewing on each other's throats, trying to win a scrap.


This led me to think about lines in general, and different concepts of waiting in line. Please brace yourself for vast over-generalizations.


In America, we love lines. Many a time, I have ended up in a spontaneously formed line that didn't actually go anywhere. But we see people standing in line, and assume that we should too. And cutting in line? Tsk tsk tsk. Not to be done. If you're one of the maybe two people in America who has never felt even a twinge of guilt for cutting in line, you have probably at least received over a hundred crusties, and maybe even a few death stares.


How about The Rest Of The World? It strikes me that lines aren't a concept much thought of there. On a work trip last year, in Rome's Fiumicino Airport, I spent a good 10 minutes at the very back of a "line" where I had been there the longest. I honestly couldn't figure out what was going on, until my boss walked up and said "No, you have to do it like this." He shot a few glares, nudged and elbowed a bit, until we were standing at the counter. Who knew?


Anyway, the fact that the pelicans were perceived to be orderly in Venezuela is probably not far from the truth. They waited.....until the fish was thrown, and then it was every pelican for himself. Or herself.