Im Safe

Just incase there was people that wanted to know. After waking up Monday morning at 1:30 for our flight to Caracas, then getting to spend 6 hours in the Caracas airport and an hour and half bus ride to Mérida, it was long. But the flight to Caracas was the nicest and largest plane I have ever been on. There was in flight movies and every seat had its own screen.  One of the features the screen has was a map of the flight; I watched it the entire time.  We were greeted in Mérida by our host families and with out running water.  Apparently in Merida it is very common for the water to shut off for a couple of days.  Oh well, least everyone else will smell as bad as I do.  

My host family is really nice, they live in an apartment right by a McDonalds (which sells arapas instead of french fries) and its just the two of them. I share a room with Danielle; she hasn’t had Spanish since high school so slowly I have become the translator.  The view out my room is amazing and pretty much all of Merida.  I have never seen mountains like this before.

This morning my host dad walked us to school, he said it was really close but it ended up being a 50 minute walk, half up hill. So Danielle and I decided we would walk in the mornings and take a taxi at nite more just for the safety factor plus a taxi is only $2.My first day at VenUsa was orientation, placement testing and sitting around getting to know the other 36 people. We got to do lunch on our own, so a group of us found a restaurant. It was a pretty nice one inside a medical school. For lunch I had soup, rice, fried yucca (a potato like starch that has been part of the South American diet since the Incas) beef, salad, juice and flan.  Not bad for roughly $4.

After our placement test we went on a tour of the city. The guide told use that Mérida has over 900,000 people.  The city is huge.  The guide took us to some city squares but also to two ice cream shops.  The first one was really good but the second one not so much.  The second one has over 900 flavors of ice cream; some people got ham and cheese or baby corn, I being the adventurous person that I am got lemon.  My stomach is going to hate me in a couple of hours but the first ice cream was totally worth it.

Tomorrow we get to go see waterfalls, I’m really excited. I have internet at my house, so I will be able to skype and everything so if anyone has a skype, let me know!

Oh I forgot, Dad this is more for you.  VenUsa is right next to a Renault store and have a ton of pictures of their F1 cars.  Its not Indy Cars but I was excited.

I miss everyone!

Meaghan