Airports and other tales.

Foreign airports are scary.
This was the first thought that went through my head when I stepped off the plane in Venezuela. This was the first time I actually realised that I needed to be able to speak Spanish to exist in this society. Not the greatest thing to be thinking as you enter a country where you don't know anybody, can't communicate with most people, and yet intend to be living in for the next 12 months. Thankfully I had no troubles getting through immigration and customs. I found the awesome Rotarians who were hosting me for the night and the we left for home.

On the way home we stopped at a restaurant, so I could eat. Little did I know, I was about to try a national meal, Arepa and Maltin. An Arepa is sort of like a pita pocket, which you can put anything you want inside. It's usually more of a breakfast thing, but they work well at any time of the day or night. And Maltin is a "non-alcoholic malt beverage" according to the label on the can. Both of these were pretty good, and I was starving so I ate quickly and we left the restaurant. This was when I first had a real taste of living in a third world country. The Rotarian I was with made me wait in the restaurant while he went outside to check to see if the street was clear of theives/gangs. This was a new and rather disturbing experience for me, as I was still living in the "Australian" mindset, where there wasn't much risk of robbing/mugging out the front of a restaurant. Anyway, it was all good so we headed home.

The next day I had Arepas again, for breakfast this time, then left for the domestic airport. This was the final leg of my journey, a short 1 hour flight to la Isla de Margarita, my home for the rest of the year.

My host Mum picked me up from the airport, and after picking my host sister up from her ballet lesson, we went to meet the other exchange students staying on the island. The girls are from Germany, France and Brazil, and the boy is from Denmark.

The next day I went to cooking school in the afternoon, where I sat like a stunned mullet through my first lesson in Spanish. To call this just a cooking school isn't exactly true, it's more of a cooking/business school, so we have 2 days of theory lessons a week including accounting, sanitation, law and design, as well as 2 days in the kitchen. I don't understand much of the theory because it's in Spanish, but I'm not complaining because I still get to learn to cook. I only went to cooking school for the rest of this week, because I wasn't enrolled at high school yet.

On the weekend I went to the beach with my sister and her friends. My birthday was on Sunday, and a few people came over but I got sick from some food I ate in the afternoon so I went to bed early. Fortunately I was on such a high just from living that it only affected me physically and not mentally, so I ended my first weekend in Venezuela in high spirits.