Some Things We Love

Thanks to my mother for urging me to post the link to my recent op-ed piece on Venezuelan responses to our election process and the victory of President-Elect Obama (Sorry, just have to write that as many times as possible). It started as a blog entry...

We have much to tell and will be back soon with more. In the meantime, may I share a few things we are loving (besides the frequent rainbows, right, we saw during the peak rainy season):

Learning new names: Risa has us all whupped in this area, but we all work hard to remember the many people we meet. The challenge is compounded by the fact that Venezuelans are famous for giving their children creative names. I work with two Lenins. Many composite and transliterated names exist that we work hard to remember...

Ice Cream - in addition to the world famous kind mentioned in Anson's blog, great ice cream exists all around town. We have none at home, but head to the ice cream parlor about twice a week.

Gaita - the traditional music of Christmas time in Zulia. Darcie lived in Zulia's capital in the 1980s and loves that the radio one state to the south also plays them.

Great weather all the time!

Arepas - a national bread that originated here in the Andes. We love the corn and wheat varieties, and the house we live in has a great kitchen appliance to make them...the Tostyarepa.

Hot elections for political junkies like us. All regional elections occur on Sunday, November 23. Can you really call someone a dictator when he allows his party to risk losing the election? Can you call an election process clean when the government hands out tons of benefits in the final two months and stamps it all with the ruling party's name? On the other hand, don't you WISH that the ruling party in the U.S. would have created grand accomplishments in the two months before the elections? On the other hand, on the other hand...Venezuela is living one of the most complex political situations I have ever seen, and no U.S. media source covers it in a way that is adequately complex for my tastes.

Coffee - The littlest hole in the wall and the campus snack bar have espresso machines that equal any U.S. coffee shop. I buy the majority of my coffee at the law school cafetin (the roof partially showing on the right of this photo). The food servers behind the counter, charged with taking orders, making coffee, and heating up food in the microwave, greet me as profesora or doctora and remember which coffee I like. As they serve about 500 people a day. Pulling the coffee from a Tupperware tub kept next to the machine, they prepare for me my marroncito grande. I start to salivate in anticipation of yet another fabulous cup, and they pass a clear plastic vessel filled with coffee (about 2oz of coffee and milk, but more coffee than a cafe con leche) over the counter, along with two packs of sugar and a stirrer. That's right, two ounces, a serving that satisfies beyond these embarrassing 300 calorie coffee drinks from Starbucks.

Bananas. Are we obsessed with food? Claro que SI. Our back yard is filled with criollo banana plants that we harvest. Darcie has been making whole wheat banana bread for the kids to take to school as a snack. When it doesn't get eaten at home first. Here's Risa with a bit of the harvest.

On many evenings on the car trip home, the children comment that they miss Iowa. Their family and friends. The familiarity. The comfort. Victor and I do, too. And yet when Anson writes in his notebook at school "A mi me gusta vivir en Venezuela." (I like to live in Venezuela), I know what he means. How lucky we are for a year in this beautiful, fascinating, creative place.

How do you say, ‘Can I play with you?’ in Spanish?

The blog stopped last week for our new schedule of school and sports. Anson started 5th grade and Risa 1st at the Colegio Pequeño Mundo, the small world school. While we are still trying to pull together the complete uniform, with help from some Venezuela friends, the kids have the special pants, with shirts soon to come. By Venezuela standards, the school is small and laid back, with a strong emphasis on art and music and no homework. Risa has about twenty classmates, while Anson is in a combined 5-6 class with 14. This suits us, as the children have studied in combined age classes their entire school years. Their teachers are sisters, and the school is run by a three generation family that is not related to the sisterly teachers.

School meets each day from 8-12:30, with a great deal of this time used for recess and snack. Also, the classes meet two afternoons a week for more drawing, art, and music. Each student studies piano or violin (ours will do piano), as well as recorder. Although I know they will encounter difficult days with language and relationships, the children up to now bound into school each day excited to be there – a joy to see!

Each morning and afternoon class begins with a warm greeting (cheeks together, make a kiss or a hug), and a hello to individual classmates. Anson has our friend, Ale, in his class. A sixth grader, she went to school for four years in the U.S. and helps out with translation. While I am concerned that this will slow down Anson learning Spanish, he keeps a notebook of words he learns or wants to learn in Spanish. Dodge ball, banned at our Des Moines school but a favorite of Anson’s, is an occasional recess game, much to his delight. The kids also love to draw, and pictures are “sold” each day at recess for pretend currency from a little house that also serves as an imaginary ice cream shop. They also wrote a short play the class performed this week.

Risa’s discussions of school revolve around friends and play. Each day, she issues the report on whether or not she “has a friend.” If a child decides not to play with her, Risa describes that the girl “doesn’t want to be my friend anymore.” Even though I know this is not the truest of characterizations, oh how my mother’s heart aches! She wants to be included in the classroom play with blocks, and to tell her story as well as understand those of others. The determination and patience required push her limits, in a way that I hope encourages her language learning as well as growth of that undefined characteristic of “personal fortitude.” This week, she has mastered use of the verb, “jugar,” to play, and practices with me how to say “¿Puedo jugar contigo?” Can I play with you?

Learning from the Radio

In Des Moines, we were pedestrians, especially in the summer. In Mérida, we drive. A lot. Every day. We listen to the same radio station on our trips through the colas, the traffic jams that double our driving time. "Paaaaaatience, much paaaatience, with the traffic jams," the DJ urges us. The emisora that accompanies us is 97.5: Tourism Radio. How perfect!

Run by the government, the programming includes regular, fairly long live broadcasts of Chávez speeches, and the news reports are pro-government. I hear the perspective that is so reviled by many of my university colleagues. I pay attention to how the state frames the news, and I even got to hear Chávez utter his hot new insult, pitiyanqui, from his own lips.

The play format has 100.3 ‘The Bus” (a Des Moines ipod-shuffle radio station) beat by a mile. Want to hear a gaita song, the traditional music from Maracaibo, Venezuela? Check! How about “I kissed a girl?” Presente! What about some 80s Venezuelan pop (the music of my youthful sojourn here)? You got it! And what if I’m in the mood for The Cars? Or salsa? Or “Endless Love”? Check, check, check. It’s called adult contemporary, and when we are willing to sit through the chattiest DJs ever, we reap a station playing range of musical styles, almost all of which fit my tastes. Except maybe the Lionel Riche/Diana Ross duet -- but Risa loved it.

Until yesterday, the ads on noventa y siete punto cinco (97.5) annoyed me to the point of changing the station. To my ears, they are overly repetitive and hyperbolic. Little did I realize, they serve as my secret Spanish teachers. In the past day, Anson and Risa have begun calling out the words and phrases they recognize from the ads as they listen. This morning, they sang along with the merengue-style furniture store ad. They chant the call numbers in time with the announcer. Little sponge-brains are amazing! And, their noticing the sounds and places of Mérida brings Latin America to me with a whole new set of eyes.

Escuela Daze

All of us will be in school this year. Victor will study Spanish at the Venezuela-North American Cultural Center. The University School, CEAPULA, will have two new students as Anson enters 5th grade and Risa 1st. I am working at the University of the Andes, where I will start to co-teach a course on gender and human rights in October and other duties as assigned, dividing time between the school of Juridical and Political Science and the School Of Humanities And Education. All of this has become possible from the generous commitment of time from the director of CEVAM and my university liaison.

I am proud of Risa and Anson for tackling school in Spanish. The first month will be a struggle. The kids will start school knowing numbers in Spanish up to 1000, the letters of the alphabet, greeting questions, the basic school vocabulary (they’ll know when to get their cuadernos out, por lo menos.), and Anson will be able to read. But that's it. I pass on to them the wisdom of another Fulbright mama: by Christmas, they'll be dreaming in Spanish. This will be the end of the primary reason Victor and I have used Spanish in the home to this point: to talk about the kids so they can't understand what we're saying.

The kids both look forward to wearing a school uniform, but for different reasons. Risa appreciates that the clothing requirement involves new shoes, while Anson looks forward to the streamlined elegance and egalitarianism of a single daily uniform. School starts for them - we think - on Risa's birthday.