I have to be getting back to work. But what to write...Anna, my cousein is coming to Maracaibo tonight. I am looking forward to it and at the same time I am a bit nervous cause I´m afraid she is going to get bored. I mean,
I have to work, and obviously I can´t send her wandering off by herself - out of the question.

I think my cultural adaptation curve is pretty fucked up. At the end of your year abroad you are supposed to feel integrated and like "now my life is here" and "I don´t want to go back". But insead I feel that I am badly integrated and even though I know it will be hard as hell to leave this place (because of the people I´ve met) I don´t feel like I could stay here forever. As I think I´ve said a couple of times before.

I am just so tired of playing the part of a foreigner. People will never stop correcting my Spanish and again and again they start "here in Veenzuela" this and "here in Venzuela" that, as if it would be my first week in Venezuela. All the time I have to listen to comments about my whiteness and I still haven´t learned to move my ass properly. I think part of the problem is that I am happy when peple can understand me and I love dancing. But the people around me want me to speak "correctly" and to move my ass "correctly". Bloody hell, I´ve got less than two months here n Venezuela, let me just reax and enjoy, will you! - I feel like saying.

And I also feel like the pople don´t know me. Of course I can´t blame them, cause they only got to know me now. And naturally they make generalisations and assumptions. Some think I am an angel - what a joke - and others that I never wear make up, that I never get angry, never loose my temper etc. It´s like they don´t think I am human at all.

I think my problem is that I am just a little tired.

Yesterday we started a new book in Spanish, so now I am intermediate instead of beginner. I am intermediate in salsa and Spanish, wow.

Aiesec is a student-run organization. The idea is to make the world into a better place and create leaders in the process. One, or the main, or the most visible, activity is to organize traineeships to students who have just graduated or are in the process of graduating. There are four kinds of traineeships you can apply for: development, educational, IT, and management. I applied for a development traineeship but ended up doing an educational one. Aiesec tries to affect commuities in a positive way and I guess one of those ways is intercultural exchange.

Nivy, the Australian trainee arrived in Mcbo on Sunday. She is living with another trainee, Nneka, from Nigeria. They share a room and live with a family. Does not sound like a dream come true but Nivy is not complaining. Like Kasia and I, Nivy did a two week training in Caracas and loved it. She met some nice people and was not at all happy to leave. But she is being a really good sport and with her bubbling personality I think she´ll have a million new friends in no time.

Last Friday we had a teachers meeting (or teachers and coordination) called "teachers' coffee break") at Ruge. I had a culture choque. We were not really informed beforehand was the meeting was going to be about, we were just told to bring something for everybody to eat (hence the baking). Well, the "coffee break" started when the coordination handed down a booklet to all of us with the new rules of Ruge. Then we read through the rules one by one. Basically the booklet was about our duties as teachers and th duties of the coordination and manintenance (=cleaning lady). Of course there were some questions on the part of the teachers and some criticism. One problem is how to deal with canceling classes. Basically we are not allowed to cancel classes, that is, the teacher can never be absent. Seems fair enough but what about if you are sick? Our favorite coordinator said that she works when she is sick. Sounds kind of like what my room mate said when I had a cold in September: "if you can talk you can work". That´s how I got dengue by the way; my immunity system was low cause I did not rest and take care of that blooy cold I had at the time. At one point she lost her cool and started shouting: why do you work here then if you don´t like it. I felt like I was back at Passford House Hotel in England working as a waitress.

In our contract it says that we work up to 40 hours a week and get paid 900 000 bolivares a month regardless how many hours we work. 40 hours teaching a week is a lot (to say the least), and fortunately I´ve had 40 hours in my schedule only once. But last weeks I had more, I had 40,5. I informed the coorination immediately. The coorination said that they thought we (Kasia and I) work unlimited hours, that is we could work as much as the insitute is open (5x12 plus 4,5). I couldn´t believe it. I guess workers are really treated like shit here.

I know I am kind of whining, but maybe it is good that you know whay I am not extending my stay.

What luxury, I am able to access internet two days in a row!

Our beloved Spanish teacher, Alejandra, quit work at Ruge last Monday. Our classes with her were wonderful, something Kasia and I looked forward to each week. We'd discuss and compare the Venezuelan, Finnish and Polish cultures and the classes were an effective way to cope with culture chock. Alejandra had herself been as Poland as an Aiesec trainee some years ago so she knew what we were going through. But on Monday she quit, and I got a new Spanish teacher - Andrea. This time I have private classes, cause Kasia already has classes with Andrea. Kasia and Andrea have made a deal, Kasia teaches Andrea French and Andrea teaches Kasia Spanish. I'm kind of inspired by the change in teachers. The classes with Alejandra were hilarious, but I think Andrea is going to make me work harder to improve my Spanish (which is a good thing).

Perhaps you are thinking that life in Mcbo must be incredibly boring if Elina has nothing better to write about than baking. Well, in fact I am pround to say that yesterday I went to see the opening film of a European film festival here in Mcbo. How about that.

The festival is being organized by Honza, a Czech trainee here in Mcbo. I guess he is showing movies he likes, that are easily available, and that have Spanish subtitiles or have been dubbed into Spanish. The opening movie was The Full Monty, a great British production I recommend to anyone. Kasia and I walked to la plaza republica, where the movie was to be shown, straight from our salsa class (we start intermediate 2 next Saturday). The movie was scheduled to start at 7 and I think we started watching at 9. The audience was modest, consisting mostly of Aiesecers and Honza's students (and security guards taking a break).

Honza and some guy (I didn't catch his name) opened the event by saying that this film festival is being organized in order to show that films are made outside of Hollywood as well. Another British film (Trainspotting) was scheduled for later the same night, but when we arrived to the restaurant where the movie was to be shown we found that the place was closed - welcome to Venezuela. Today a movie is being shown in another park. I don't remember the name of the movie but I think it's Czech. The film festival is supposed to continue until the middle of July.

Today I baked pulla (Finnish coffee bread). On Friday we're supposed to have a meeting in Ruge, coordinators and teachers disussing work at Ruge, and everybody is supposed to bring somehting to eat. I know that my coworkers would be interested in trying something Finnish. In fact, I think they thought I'd make somehting Finnish for the Cristmas party we had at Ruge, but baking was just too difficult to arrange back then.

I knew that it would not be a piece of cake to bake here. I'd been thinking about baking since Christmas. Once I even went as far as buying flour and butter. I was determined to bake for Christmas even though I could not find any cardemom or yeast at the supermarket, but in the end it turned out that baking for Christmas was a mission impossible in Mcbo. I kind of gave up on the idea until my sister Ulla brought some cardamom and yeast from Finland when she came for a visit in January. And since I have felt for sometime already that the countdown for my departure has begun, and I have to seriously start doing all those things(/all that baking :)) that I want to do before returning to Finland.

So today I bought flour and butter again and started experimenting. I brought the wrong kind of flour, used a brownish sugar that smells different from white, and used powdered milk for baking for the first time in my life but managed to bake. The pulla/coffee bread does (surprise surprise) not taste like the pulla I've baked in Finland, but It's edible and I'm going to serve it to my friends whether they like it or not.