It's winter break! Party on! Besides one more "virtual" school class, I am free as a bird for a month! Because of the extremely contentious elections coming on Sunday, we had to close school a solid eight days early, so the next few days we teach the kids "virtually" and then next week everyone gets an early vacation. Since I booked my flights home before the change of date, that means I get a whole week and a half to enjoy life, slowly pack up and relax. At first I was bummed that I wasn't heading home earlier. But then, I realized, hey, everyone else will be at work, and I haven't really gotten to prowl around here much during daylight hours, so let's make the best of it!
Today Walli, Jason, Jackie and I officially started prowling, heading down "El Hatillo", an urbanization not far from our Los Samanes neighborhood. El Hatillo is known for still having a very quaint "old town" that surrounds an equally quaint town square, which, like every other square in this country, is named after Simon Bolivar. Our purpose for visiting, besides taking in the quaintness of it all, was to visit a well-known shop called Hannsi, which boasts an enormous selection of Venezuelan artisan gifts from all over the country. I'm not going to lie- this place was kind of awesome. It had all kinds of neat stuff, and many beautiful items similar to the things I have seen in my explorations around the country- jewelry and woodwork from Canaima, baskets from Orinoco, dolls from Tovar etc. It was all there, along with a cafe selling nothing but coffee and chocolate. Yes. What you are thinking is right. I wanted to pitch a tent and live there. And yes, you are all getting chocolate in your stockings, because I bought the place out. To be fair, Venezuela makes some damn good chocolate. We spent about two hours roaming around the store, playing the fun game of "how much would this be in dollars". Turns out, though some items were quite expensive, some were definitely muy barato. I was able to get a lot of great gifts to bring home to my friends and family. I refrained from buying myself a load of stuff, but only because Jackie and I promised ourselves that we would come back and spend lots of money on ourselves after the break. We did, however, buy delicious cafe con chocolates- basically a mocha with way too much whipped creme and syrup on top. Which I promptly burnt myself with, but it was worth it. After we completed our spending spree, we stumbled upon a delicious chocolatier whilst looking for a taxi and got even more chocolate....for ourselves though. Lavender and honey chocolate is definitely not going to make it back to the states.
My prowling will continue tomorrow, with a trip up the Avila for a special mojito night at the bar that is at the top of the teleferico. I'm more excited about the view at night from the top of the Avila than I am the mojitos. Then on Friday, Colleen made friends with a baseball player from the Tiberones baseball team, and he is hooking us up with free tickets for the Leones vs. Tiberones baseball game! I am so excited to see another game. I had so much fun at the last one. The one bummer is that this time there will be no beer showers. Venezuela has a law called leyo seco- around elections, they stop selling booze. I guess they want people to have clear heads when they vote? It's so contentious though, I feel like everyone could use a few just to make it through the weekend. I think the US State Department would agree- they sent out an ominous email this morning advising us to basically lock ourselves in our apartments for the weekend because to the election, which we are apparently flagrantly ignoring. I kind of don't have a choice, because Ivan's sister is getting married on Saturday! Yes, my first Venezuelan wedding! This is going to be a fancy Boda too, so I get to re-wear my pretty dress form the Marine Corps ball. AND I get to go back to my gay salon to get my hair and makeup done again. Yessssss.
Don't think that my fun stops because the weekend does. On Monday, my sweet Ivan is leaving me to go to Spain for three weeks to visit his best friend Ricardo. To deal with the sadness of losing him for so long, I, along with Colleen, Sean, Chris, Tendai and Holly, are treating ourselves to three glorious days in Los Roques! Los Roques is a series of islands that make up a Venezuelan national park--> see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Los_Roques_archipelago. Because it is a park, it is not really commercialized and apparently STUNNINGLY gorgeous. Three days in paradise? Don't mind if I do! We return late Thursday, leaving me Friday to pack up and Saturday it's go time....straight to the RayKoons Christmas party!
So ya, it's winter break and I am going to enjoy every little glorious drop of it. :)
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