p. s.

We came back to the internet cafe with my room mate in order to find out whether there are any parties happening tonight. No such luck.

What I really manted to say is: Thank you SOOO much for your comments. I am sitting here with tears in my eyes. Literally.

also, I should explain why I eat at subway. Sure, it is not the most traditional Venezuelan place on earth but! it is the healthest food I have found here and my stomache accepts it. All the traditional stuff I´ve tried sofar has been be deep fried. I´m sure you don´t care to know all the details about my stomache problems, you can imagine. Also, I´m on "survival mode" that is I try to make life as easy for myself as possible. I´m sure I´ll have ample opportunity to torture my stomache during one year.

The weekend at the beach was great. And now I have a new goal for my stay in Venezuela: in addition to learning Spanish I also need to learn how to move my ass, in other words to dance salsa. I also got a tan and managed not to burn myslef very much. I´ve got a "polish flag" on my back but nobudy noticed. Of course they were commenting that I am "transparent" (=very white) and tried to teach me to dance. I tried to explain that Finland is the coutry of heavy metal and hard rock. Here people listen to Regeton (?spelling) a lot. That is a kind of dance where you imitate copulation, for those of you who didn´t know. I also tried to explain that Finland is a very puritanist country and that we don´t have Regeton in Finland (apart from the song "Gasolina"). I think my poor dancing skills convinced them.

My Spanish sucks. Instead of being "de puta madre" it is "una putada de mierda". But I learn new words every day. Today I learned that a small sandwich at Subway is a "fifteen" (quinze). The guys at Subway already taught me onion in Spanish and how to say a sandwich "to go" and "I´ll eat here" (para llavar and para comer aqui).

What else...I´ve been told (by many people) that Venezuela is more like a caribean countrey than southamerican. One example of this are the colorful buses. Also the mentality is supposed to be more relaxed but I woudn´t know.

People keep telling me that the people here are very freindly. Sure, why not. But the other day I was in a supermarket looking for washing powder. A guy who worked there came by and asked if he could help. I clasped my hands together and gave him a big smile, signalling "you bet", and you know what he did! He said, "I only have one life" and passed. This would NEVER (knock knock knock) happen in Finland. I just laughed. What else could I do. Of course I planned a million things I would say to the guy if myu spanish would be good enough.

I am still alive.
I just refused a job my boss wanted me to take because we are planning a trip to the beach this (long, monday off) weekend.

I´m living with an old woman, her son, a cat and a Polish girl. We share a room with the polish girl.
For the first two days I was pretty scared, I was put to work right away but nobudy bohtered to tell me where I can buy food etc. But now I know how to get to work and I´ve met some nice people and I feel much better.

What else...4 min internet time to go...

I like the job. I have two groups for now, one woth two students and one with seven. They ahve a vacational, that is a two week course. I am now in Caracas and I am not sure when I´ll be going to maracaibo. In two weeks or in two months I don´t know.

So far I have not been robbed or molested or anything. I feel comfortable on the bus and in the streets, even if I stay in very limited places, that is I do not go anywhere and I try to be supercareful.

It is not too hot here, but everybody says that maracaibo is really hot. The air conditioning is driving me crazy!

gotta go,
kisses

Introduction

On Wednesday, if everything goes according to plan (and sofar nothing seems to have gone according to plan) I'm flying to Venezuela to do a one year traineeship with Aiesec.

I'll be teaching English in Caracas and Maracaibo.

I wanted to write a blog instead of sending mass mail to people and I hope this is going to work out.

Now I have to go and eat some strawberries.