The Delta

Went to the Orinoco Delta a couple weeks ago (in the eastern part of the country), and got to experience yet another awesome part of Venezuela. I swear, the adventures never end here.

A lot of it reminded me of the Angel Falls area (which is further south -- here it was much more humid). Loved the windy rivers, that the guides know by heart, and every once in awhile they'll pull over to drop a bag of onions or something off at a neighbors. Lots of cool birds (this time, we saw egrets, kingfishers, flycatchers, and turpials). A few mosquitos (well, enough to make our guide cave and ask to borrow some insect repellant), but PLENTY of natural beauty. I swear, if it weren't for the mosquitos, I would pack up and move to a Venezuelan rain forest.

Turpial nests!

Look, I caught a PIRANHA!!!

And yes, we ate what we caught. Waste not, want not. They were actually pretty good, once you found the little bit of meat that was on them.

OK, so as not to leave you with visions of teethy, bony fish, I give you: "Cacao del agua." It looked like a bean pod our guide plucked off a tree, then he slapped it against his leg, and POOF! The coolest flower ever.

R&R

Funny how living in South America makes you wish with all your heart that it snows while you're on vacation.......and it did, in UT! Great place for a little R&R.

You will find little snippets of what I did below (if you read it like you're singing "We Didn't Start the Fire," I think you'll enjoy it more than just reading it like normal).

Cafe Rio, Krispy Kreme, Grandma's Cookies, Walgreens
Jimmer making lots of 3's, shoveling snow.
Apple Beer, Duck Ponds, brother's Cream Cheese Croissants
Heaps of Pizza, JDawgs, and trying to drive slow.


Cousin visits, sledding fast, 3.15 a tank of gas
Homemade food, and a scoop of (mmm) Graham Canyon.
Aunts and Uncles, Grandma too, (hey, sure do miss all of you)
Singing to the radio, and Ethiopian.

OK, that's all the rhymes I can come up with right now, but also want to say that I have the best little brother ever! He let me borrow his car (which is a big deal, considering I didn't exactly take the best care of my rental last time I was in Utah), and he made sure we hit all of my favorite places while I was there (as evidenced by the rhymings above).

Thanks Michael!

(You know, writing this was a lot of fun.......look for a Caracas version soon! I love rhyming!)

Random Thoughts

You know you're getting old(er) when: A) you eat Total, and you like it (Dad says "You're not getting older, they're making Total better now). Thanks Dad. And B) when you'd rather floss your teeth at night than not. I used to think: "eh, I'm not going to floss tonight, I just don't feel like it," and would enjoy going to bed a full 30 seconds earlier. Now.....can't do it, I have to floss. So weird.

Unrelated: I ask pretty much every visa applicant where they are planning to travel, and nearly every single one says either Miami or Orlando. That's cool, I could devote about 100 blog posts to 100 reasons you should visit other places in the U.S., but it's cool, I mean, Florida's close by and all that jazz. Well, I asked one lady today where she was traveling and she said "Exactamente..................a.......................Miami."

So, it was like her saying "To be honest........." or "I'm thinking........Miami." Whoa, no way! It was so funny to me. I didn't really put enough space in her sentence up there, she paused a R E A L L Y long time, and I was expecting her to say "the Badlands" or something random.

Another funny visa moment was a couple of weeks ago -- I was interviewing a family with some university age kids, so I asked them where they were studying........the younger son said "I'm studying at UofWhatever......no, I mean......UofTheother........no, I mean.......UofWhatever.......Argh!" And he kept smacking his head as he was saying this. He was so nervous, he just kept forgetting where he was studying (I think he had just changed schools). Anyway, I tried to keep going with the interview, but I kept thinking of him smacking his head like that, and I kept laughing. I had to stop the interview and say I was sorry, but that I had never seen anyone do that before. I told him not to worry about it, and to stop being nervous. You probably had to be there, but I swear that was one of the funniest things I've seen at the window.

Both of these stories remind me, though, of how nervous people are when they come to apply for a visa, even though they can always reapply, people get really worked up about it. I need to keep that in mind. I never had any nervous customers at the ice cream counter in college, it's a new experience for me :) Though I'm sure some people did smack their heads when we didn't have their favorite flavor.

Everything I've learned about running....

I learned from my Grandpa! My Grandpa Epps is great! He has run over 20 marathons, doing something well into his 80's that I can't even fathom attempting right now. I was going to launch into some good anecdotes, but I don't know how much he would love me bragging about him online......still, I have lots of great stories, if you've ever got a minute!

Anyway, every time I go jogging, I think of what I've learned from Grandpa, good jogging habits and such. And after years of doing this in my head, I finally decided to make him a photo collage with the bits of advice he's given me about running. And of course, not wanting to keep all the knowledge to myself, I thought I'd list these great tidbits on here. So here you have it:

Everything I've learned about running, I learned from my Grandpa:

• Jogging Juice: Equal parts water, vinegar, and apple juice.
• Slow and steady wins the race....and running fast doesn't burn that many more calories anyway.
• It's more important to stretch after your run than before, so if you forget to stretch beforehand, it's OK.
• Your metabolism kicks up a notch the hour after you run, so eat! As much as you want, whatever you want (right Grandpa? Within reason, I guess).
• Only buy Asics.
• You must do knee-ups after running to properly cool down.
• Breathe in through your nose and out through your mouth.
  
• Always give a polite wave to cars if they let you cross, no matter how exhausted you are (like, in the middle of a marathon).

Thanks, Grandpa!

On the 12th day of.....oh, wait....

I was going to do a "12 days of Christmas" post, kind of outlining 12 cool things that I've done in December this year in Venezuela, and I was going to do it today (the 12th), but I haven't quite gotten to twelve bloggable things yet, or at least that I've been keeping track of, and then I remembered that the 12 days of Christmas actually don't start until Christmas......but since I very rarely get it in my head that I should blog about something, I'm going to!

Here are some cool things about December in Venezuela this year, in no particular order:

• I saw fireflies! I didn't know they had them here!
• When I put my keyboard on the electric piano setting and play Christmas songs, it sounds like Mannheim Steamroller! No joke, it's totally wicked! Except of course for the excessively long pauses, and "dissonant" notes that come out of no where.
  
• I've been going to Zumba class (dance aerobics with a salsa flair) a little more consistently, and the other night, I actually got my groove on! Like, got my hips and feet moving to the beat right! It only lasted a few minutes, but it was still fun.
• I get to see the Nutcracker here again this year -- TWICE! I love it, the onstage fireworks are definitely the best part. Besides the music. And the incredible dancing.
  
• It actually feels like Christmas is on it's way this year -- because now I know that it is possible to get in the Christmas spirit when it's 80 degrees! Everyone has their lights up, the poinsettias out, Christmas is in the air.
• And....I'M GOING HOME FOR CHRISTMAS THIS YEAR!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! NOT "IF ONLY IN MY DREAMS"!
  

Machu Picchu!

So.....I went to Machu Picchu for Thanksgiving! With a couple of friends from D.C., we had way too much fun. Here are some snapshots of what we did:

We hiked Waynapicchu, the mountain peak right next to Machu Picchu, so we could get amazing photos like this:


We saw llamas. LOTS of llamas. It was so exciting!


We gave thanks on Thanksgiving by saying "thankful" things all day long, and took our pictures with Turkey hands (you know, elementary school style) during our Mexican restaurant dinner (which in Aguascalientes I guess means making the tortillas like crepes. Weird).

I just love this picture.


We visited a salt mine -- each of those rectangulary-circley things is a "well" of salty water. The water would run down from the mountain, collecting salt, and land in the wells.


I got to live my dream of being a National Geographic photographer.....not that I'm getting published any time soon, but I do think I got some good shots.


OK, let me tell you something, the Incas had things figured out. Below, you will see a circular terrace for their crops. It is 10 degrees Celsius warmer down there than at the top! They could grow all kinds of things on those terraces! They also had a bunch of silos on a hill where the wind would hit just right, it was freezing there! They would store dried fruit, meat, grain, you name it.


I don't have a picture of this, but I think it's hilarious, so I'll tell you anyway (please take all of this with a grain of salt, I haven't had any time to verify its veracity). We went to one Inca ruin that was specifically ceremonial. One part of the ruin was used for dating/courting/marriage ceremonies, whatever you want to call them. Anyway, once a year, all the girls would line up on one side and the boys on the other, with the priest in the middle. Then the girl would point to the boy she wanted (probably they knew each other, fyi), and then the priest would tell them that they had 6 months to decide if that's who they wanted to be with for the rest of their life. (At this point, I'm thinking 'Wow, that's a pretty good deal. The girl gets to do the picking!') . Then our guide tells us that after the 6 months are up, if they decide not to get married, they can both go to the ceremony next year and try again. EXCEPT -- the girl only gets one more shot at it! The boy can keep going back as many times as he wants! And it gets better -- if the girl botches it the second time, she gets sent to a temple to be a Sun virgin, aka get-thee-to-a-nunnery. AND in the temple, all the Sun virgins had to be ready to be a human sacrifice at any time (which apparently wasn't very often, like it happened once every 50 years, but still, it was on their list of convent obligations).

Well, that's that, Peru was a beautiful country, and if my internet were any faster, I'd post ALL my awesome pictures, but then you probably wouldn't have scrolled all the way down to read about the Sun virgins. I'm thinking dating in the modern world isn't that bad.

Christmas in.....October?

So, to answer the first thing you're thinking, yes, Halloween is celebrated here. The embassy does trick-or-treat for the kids (so cute!) and my local church congregation is having their costume party today. But.....

On the 30th day of October, the following things I did see: 1 choir of angels, 4 racks of holiday wrapping paper, 3 strings of lights, 2 Christmas trees, and a partridge in a pear tree. So if you're the kind of person who is totally against ANY type of Christmas decoration or music before Thanksgiving is over, do not come to Venezuela. This is the earliest I've ever seen the Christmas stuff get broken out -- it even beats the Christmas music they played on Oct. 31 in the BYU student center to advertise the annual Christmas concert. HOWEVER, if you're the kind of person who doesn't mind Christmas-y stuff year round (I find it unavoidable, especially when I hit "shuffle" on my iPod, since half of my music is apparently Christmas songs), then you would have loved today. I loved it.

My LDS congregation (ward) went to visit a rest home this morning. I love doing that! That's what we did every day while studying in Mexico, and I miss it. I wasn't sure it was going to be such a success, though -- we all shuffled in and stood there, you know how it goes, and everyone kind of looks at their shoes, and the old people look at you, or at the sky, or at their elbow, or keep humming whatever love song from the 40's they were humming before. And you mumble a "hello, what's your name?" and then back off again when they answer "I don't know why the food here tastes so awful, you go have a word with the cook right now, it's unbearable!" So everyone keeps standing there awkwardly. Which we did today, until one old lady at the back of the room yelled "Hey, I hate it when people come visit, they just stand there and gawk at us like we're animals!"

So we sprang into action. We sang some of the kid songs they learn in church, you know, like Head Shoulders Knees and Toes, and If You're Happy and You Know It. That worked for awhile, but they weren't so much into the action songs. So we started singing Christmas carols. And they sang along! It was sweet. And they already had their Christmas tree up anyway (?). Maybe it was planned all along that we were going to go Christmas caroling, I'm not really sure. But it was nice (though a little bizarre in 80-degree weather in October).

We talked a little bit with all the folks there too. I realized that working at the same rest home every day in Mexico was great, because they would tell us the same stories every day, so by the 4th or 5th retelling, I pretty much understood what was going on. Today, I get the feeling that two of the folks I was talking to both told me really sad things, like "my children abandoned me here," or "I'm dying of cancer," but I couldn't really understand them, so I just patted their hand reassuringly. I hope we can go back, I need another go at those conversations.

It made me think of my Viejitas in Mexico, and I wander how many of them have passed away by now. I learned so much from them, I think we have so much we can learn from the elderly, and so much we can share with them ourselves. They loved having us there today, and even the deeply offended woman who yelled at the beginning came around. Brightening their day was the best thing I've done in a long time. Dear future children of mine: be prepared to be dragged to rest homes on a very consistent basis. You will hate it, and you'll look at your shoes, and mumble some song, and run home as fast as you can, but it will be good for you. And good for the people you bless too (thank you Mom for dragging us to rest homes when we were little, I'm so glad we went).