Hello, Buenos Aires! (And Bogota!)

So, as my time here in Venezuela is nearing an end (less than 4 months left, folks), I feel like I've been making a mad dash to try and get the last of my South American trips in -- FUN! Traveling around South America is great, I highly recommend it. Just please register with the Embassy wherever you visit, just in case.

Even though my April trip to Buenos Aires and May trip to Bogota only lasted a few days each, I don't even know where to start with talking about the trip! Food was definitely important. Let's see......

In Buenos Aires, I ate: Proveltta (grilled provolone), submarino hot chocolate (steamed milk with chocolote bars dumped into it), beef (of course), medialunas (croissants), and LOTS of ice cream.

In Bogota, I ate: a Curuba batido (Curuba juice, which I have no idea what kind of fruit that is, mixed with milk, it was AMAZING), a street hot dog with a million things on it, including pineapple (I forwent the Cornish hen egg that could have also gone on top), rhubarb creme brulee (I don't have words to describe its fantastical-ness), pan de bono, several typical Colombian dishes whose names I can't remember, LOTS of hot chocolate, oh -- and hot chocolate with cubes of CHEESE put into it! This is something I've been waiting to try my whole life, since I was 8 years old and would put a hershey bar and a piece of cheese into my mouth at the same time, heaven. Cheese and chocolate are meant to be eaten together. But I digress.

Music is also important, I love when my life has a soundtrack. I loved running around Buenos Aires with songs from Evita in my head. And nearly every restaurant and taxi in Bogota had some great song or another playing, you know, a little Avril Lavigne and Cat Stevens here and there.

Um, I can't get any photos to upload to this post. Let me try creating a new post......hold, please.

25 reasons why I love my mother

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"!