Sunday, March 31, 2013

A Happy Week

Things have improved dramatically for me in the past week.  Thanks to many of your prayers and kind words, Friday improved greatly on Thursday's low.  Annika and I spontaneously met up with a few moms at the playground, with whom she played and I commiserated.  Simply sharing a bad week with someone else often helps - but even more helpful is sharing with someone who can identify.  We pledged to head toward the playground more often, and to text each other when we're on the way.

School finished early on Friday, and so the older girls got home in time for lunch.  One of Sophia's classmates invited everyone over to her pool for a small party.  As a side note, small parties in Venezuela still have bouncy castles and hot dog stands.  The hostess spoke nearly no English.  The rest of the moms spoke English, but had very little use for it.  On Thursday afternoon, it would have been dispiriting.  On Friday afternoon, buoyed by the morning's interactions and plenty of prayer, it was pleasant.  I met many of the moms in the class, watched Sophia interact with her classmates, and practiced my Spanish.  Plus, I got a free hot dog and spent the afternoon on a lovely terrace.

And then we embarked upon Santa Semana, or Spring Break.  Schools closed throughout Venezuela, and many offices were closed on Thursday and Friday.  Even shops and restaurants were closed for Good Friday, making the day very quiet.  I enjoyed the company of my three girls all week, and our family enjoyed a four day weekend.  No one is ready for school to begin tomorrow, but I'm at least feeling well rested.

The highlight reel:

We lunched with friends at Tarzilandia, what could easily be called the original rainforest cafe.  We dined with the birds and the turtles, and enjoyed good food, good service and good conversation for a really good price.  Gotta love Venezuela!



We took a family hike on La Avila, something we should have done a long time ago.   The small mountain range crowns Caracas on the north, and separates us from the Caribbean Sea and its humidity and high temperatures.  It also provides a lovely backdrop for most spots in town, including the view from our apartment. 

We found brightly colored birds, rainforest style trees, and a waterfall with plenty of little pools for wading.










And we celebrated Easter in a fun new style, with plenty of hidden eggs, loads of good food...


...good friends, good conversation, and swimming in the backyard pool!  Forget the pretty spring dresses - those are old hat by now.  Easter was spent searching for eggs and swimming with friends.  Its not such a bad life.


Thursday, March 21, 2013

A Sad Week

I looked up Culture Shock on wikipedia, and it seems that I am right on schedule.

The first stage of culture shock is the Honeymoon stage, where everything is new and exciting.  The people are all friendly and warm, the food is all good, the crime is much easier to manage than I expected.  Our house is great, our neighborhood feels safe, we've received all of our stuff and we've got a great housekeeper.  The school is good.  This new place is fabulous.

The second stage is the Negotiation stage, where everything is still new but has become frustratingly strange.  Right on cue, this stage typically hits around 3 months in.
"The most important change in the period is communication: People adjusting to a new culture often feel lonely and homesick because they are not yet used to the new environment and meet people with whom they are not familiar every day. The language barrier may become a major obstacle in creating new relationships: special attention must be paid to one's and others' culture-specific body language signs, linguistic faux pas, conversation tone, linguistic nuances and customs, and false friends."
This has been a hard week.  Right on cue, I'm feeling homesick and lonely.  It is certainly exciting, but also exhausting to meet new people every day.  There's very little comfort in visiting most places which have become familiar, because very few of those places are likely yet to bring forward a friendly face.  The girls' school is a perfect example.  I think the school is fabulous, and especially Lilly is thriving there.  I enjoy going there, because it has a warm environment and parents are welcome.  But 3 months in, I'm beginning to notice that when I go, most people still don't know my name or connect me with my children.  I've joined a parenting class, and I sit alone.  I introduce myself to everyone I meet.  Many of them don't speak English.  Many more of them don't speak English conversationally.

This week, I miss Arlington.  I miss walking to school every afternoon, and chatting with the other moms while the kids blew off steam on the playground.  I miss running to the gym a few days a week, and how the ladies in the nursery would braid Annika's hair.  I miss the teaching in church and the ladies in Bible Study.  I miss being able to gripe to my neighbors, and not have them worry that I'm either depressed or a downer.  Its not the culture part that makes moving difficult - at least not this time.  Its just the new-ness.

I keep reminding myself that this will get better.  That 3 months into life in Arlington, I certainly did not feel at home.  That my feelings are textbook.  These don't provide any comfort - they only make me question our lifestyle.  If being lonely is typical for 3-9 months after moving to a new home, then why do we move every year or two?  I feel like I was just getting things figured out in Arlington, finally feeling fully at home, when we left.

I know I should wrap this up neatly, and on a positive looking-ahead note.  I could do that - my mind knows that this is a normal bump.  But my gut feels crummy this week, and I don't want to pretend otherwise.  I feel lonely and bored.  I'm worried for Annika, who needs friends her age, too.  I was pro-active this week, inviting people to the park, to my house, to coffee shops.  No one.  One gal and her kids called us after we had already reached the playground to say she wasn't coming.  My vision is disintegrating.  I miss Arlington.

Thursday, March 14, 2013

Back in the Music

I grew up with a piano in the house.  And I played it.

My brother began lessons when he was 8 years old.  Being the tag-along style sister that I was, I danced around the piano while he practiced and forced him to explain his books and notes to me.  Together with my mother, he taught me the basics.  And I played.  I played his books and I played my own creations.  Following his lead, I began lessons when I was 8 years old.  And I played even more.

I never quit lessons.  Not until I was halfway through college.  I strongly appreciate but barely understand why my parents allowed me to maintain those lessons, all those years.  Some years I rarely practiced.  Some years I was so focused on school work and debate and church and friends and growing up that I never practiced.  But still, I played.  With small corners of spare time, I would drop at the piano and play whatever was handy.  I would play from memory.  I would play sheet music sitting on the rack.  I would play scales.  The piano sat in the living room, on a wall next to the front window.  While I waited for friends to pick me up on Saturday night, I would play.

When I went away to college, I lived in the dorms without a piano.  Our campus was small, but the fine arts center sat on the opposite side.  The practice rooms had lovely sound, but it took quite an effort to gather my music, cross campus and play.  It became something I needed to schedule.  Still, I played.  Still I took lessons, and this teacher demanded progress.  So, I played.  But I didn't practice often, and I showed little progress.  Every time I needed to perform, I played the same piece - Debussy's Claire de Lune.  But when I sat in the practice rooms, I just played.  I played whatever sat on the top of the pile, or whatever I pulled from the bottom.  I played through the whole stack.  I just played.  Dave has fond memories of listening in, bringing his homework and studying in the corner of the practice room while we dated, and I played.

I had to declare a major at the end of my sophomore year.  I didn't declare music, and so I lost access to piano lessons.  Still I played, sometimes.  But rarely.

We graduated.  We moved to St. Louis.  I began graduate school and we lived in a little apartment.  I kind of forgot about the piano.  I never played anymore.  Sometimes I'd sit on the bench at my parents' house and leaf through a book, but I rarely played for long.

Until Mr. King down the street sold us his piano.  It was an old piano, and had a very nice St. Louis sound.  That is to say, it could have been something Scott Joplin played in some old bar, back in the day.  It sounded old and clunky.  But it was free, and it was a piano.  I could play again.  We gathered a big group of guys and rolled the piano down the street and into our front room.

Never roll a piano down the street.

Our piano lay on its back, onethree metal saw horses until an overbooked piano carpenter had the time to undo any damage wrought on an old piano by rolling it down a St. Louis city street.  We spent $500 on the carpenter, $100 on pizza and beers for our friends to roll it down the street and do the damage, and still considered it a bargain.  Because I could play again.  Lilly was little and Sophia was en utero.  And I had the time to play again.  I played in Becky's wedding, and I practiced.  I played again, and it was lovely.

But within a year, we moved to China.  This piano was not worth moving to China, let alone putting back into storage.  We gave it back to Mr. King, who had missed it while it was gone.  And we didn't have a piano anymore.  We moved every year.  We had no practice rooms.  We had no friends with pianos.  I never played.  The kids grew older, and they hadn't grown up with a piano in the house.

Then, a few weeks ago, we heard about a piano for sale.  A lady associated with our church was selling one for a real steal.  We went to meet her.  She is Venezuelan and lives in a small apartment in a tall high-rise, the kind that looks like any high-rise in any developing country.  Her street corner is all busy streets, but the drive up to her building is private and quiet and green.  Security in Caracas is tight, and it seems this group of apartments has tied themselves off from the street - it felt like the old lanes of Shanghai.

Her apartment was small - one room with a bedroom off to the side.  Inside her main room, she had a beautiful, brown Steinway grand piano.  It was gorgeous.  She was not selling that, and has no plans to.  She was selling the Baldwin Acrosonic pictured above.  She is a music teacher, and taught at the primary school of music for many, many years.  She taught many students who went on to become professional pianists.  She met many interesting people and has so many stories.  And then she became sick with cancer, and she couldn't pay for her last two chemotherapy treatments.  The clinic told her not to worry.  They told her the foundation would cover her treatments.  She hadn't played since she got sick - neither the little Baldwin nor the mighty Steinway.  She hadn't tuned either of them, and she wouldn't be teaching anymore.  So, she sold the Baldwin.  She talked to her tuner - a man she used to fly in from Miami to care for her pianos.  He set the price for her.  Acrosonics are very simple pianos, and very old.  They don't have much value.  She didn't need to make a profit.  She planned on giving every bolivare to the foundation at the clinic.

It arrived this morning.  And now I have a piano again.  Yet another piano with a story even more beautiful than its sound.

Wednesday, March 13, 2013

Just the Facts

I have been censored again by the embassy, again for probably a pretty good reason.  Lots of aspects of diplomatic life are still new to me, and I was unaware that I had shared something that wasn't common knowledge.

Consider me chastened, and prepared to share information better.

Also willing to take my writing more seriously because of today's headline, Venezuela arrests woman for online posts.  This woman was not me.  But as I neither want to see my husband expelled from the country (and his job), nor myself thrown into one of Venezuela's notoriously dangerous prisons, I'm going to try censoring myself better.  We'll see how that goes.

The facts for today.

Our housekeeper, Blancina, never made it to our house this morning.  She lives in a neighborhood called Petare, which shows up in the news quite a bit.  It has frequently been said that Caracas has become two different cities, with our neighborhood staying quiet and neighborhoods like Petare seeing emotion and activity on the streets.  This morning, the metro was not running in her neighborhood.  Todo es un caos, she said.  I don't know what happened, and I'm making no assertions that it was politically motivated.  But she is certainly living in a different neighborhood than I am, and we may well see more differences over the next few weeks (although I hope we will also see more of Blancina!)

School is canceled for Friday.  According to the school, this is in accordance with the government's declaration of a no labor day.  I don't really know what that means, and I couldn't find anything about it in the news, but I have a hunch we won't be seeing Blancina on Friday.  Interestingly, our school is set up for these frequent class cancellations - remember, we had 3 days of mourning last week, and we are expecting cancellations around the elections next month, as well as this newly announced holiday.  The school is taking a Virtual Learning Day.  Kids will come home with work in their backpacks, teachers will post information on their class wikis, and students will work through online math and reading applications.  I'm curious how it will go.

I began Spanish classes again today, after a 3 month gap.  I felt a little lost, but the teacher was very gracious.

We have a piano being delivered tomorrow.  Dave's buying it tonight.  We should be able to amuse ourselves well on our Virtual Learning Day.

Some awfully exciting headlines around Venezuela today, involving the election, the dead president, and the mutual expulsion of diplomats between the U.S. and Venezuela.

Never a dull moment these days!

Tuesday, March 12, 2013

Maggots in the Pantry

Lots of them.  Having a party in a sack of potatoes.

So that's gross.

Monday, March 11, 2013

What We've Been Reading

A few weeks ago, I posted that What We've Been Reading on Venezuela comes primarily from periodicals.  That is even more true these days, as Venezuela makes a new headline every few hours.  Most mornings, I scan google news, reading the top headlines for each category.  On my computer, one of those categories is Caracas, Venezuela.  Lately, after scanning the top headlines for each category, I then read many of the stories under the Caracas headline.  I find myself gravitating toward a few places regularly.  As I'm not posting my own analysis, I thought I'd point you to the reporting and analysis where I'm finding resonance.  And really, their reporting and analysis are much better than mine.

Caracas Chronicles  has been my blog of choice for the past few months.  The two primary authors are both Venezuelans who live abroad and their writing has been reviewed as "razor sharp, informed, witty, scholarly, irreverent and above all intelligent; an invaluable map for a poorly charted land" by Rory Carroll, an expert on the area.  They posted a truly fabulous eulogy when Chavez died.

The Devil's Excrement is one that I only recently added to my reading list.  I believe its the number 2 spot for English language blogging on Venezuela, and takes much the same perspective as Caracas Chronicles.

And here's my current favorite:  Fox News.  I'm usually no fan of Fox News, but their stories have repeatedly drawn me in over the past few weeks.  And furthermore, their reporting has been more on point than anything else I'm reading.  Read the blogs above for analysis.  For the facts, read anything that Fox News posts about Venezuela.  Someone there is on point.  Most recently, All eyes on opposition leader Henrique Capriles as Venezuela prepares to replace Hugo Chavez.



Sunday, March 10, 2013

The Opposition

Caprilles announced his candidacy for president this evening.  He is the opposition candidate against Maduro, and was also the opposition candidate against Chavez last fall.

We heard fireworks in our neighborhood as he made his announcement.

Posting Limitations

When I was posting in China, I used this blog to share my general experience living in such a different country.  I wasn't offering journalistic reporting or analysis of any kind.  I was just sharing my Western perspective on life in an Eastern country.  That being true, it is no surprise that I had very little to say while we lived in the U.S.  My Western perspective on life in northern Virginia is not particularly notable.

I've been writing again since we came to Venezuela, because my life has become more interesting and also because Venezuela is becoming increasingly interesting.

But here's the trouble.  Even though I do not in any way speak for the United State government, I am a member of the embassy community here and my publishing my analysis of the daily or weekly news is dangerous.  Even publishing the facts is an iffy proposition, because many things that I see as fact are points that the Venezuelan government would choose to disagree with.

All that as a preamble to my weekend update.

Everything opened again yesterday, with the possible exception of places primarily serving alcohol.  Remember, this is a completely dry country until Tuesday.  We ran errands and ate at restaurants and the day felt just like any other.  The same is true for today.  The only noticeable different is the many Venezuelan flags which have appeared from front gates and windows, all flying at half mast.

The government has set April 14th as the date for presidential elections.  From what I hear, the elections last fall were a surprisingly quiet affair.  We are hopeful the same will be true this spring.  Many from the opposition complain that Maduro and the current government leaders are violating the constitution and will not offer a truly democratic process on April 14th.  In answer, the government promises not the let the country down.

It is best if I don't offer my opinion, and even better if I don't present my position as fact.  I'm afraid this will make my posting much less interesting for me over the next month or so.  But I have no real interest in raising the attention or the ire of the Venezuelan government, and with the recent expulsion of two American diplomats from the embassy here, I think I'd better take that possibility seriously.

Friday, March 08, 2013

History in the Making

Such a day in the history of Venezuela!

Hugo Chavez was laid to rest today, in an internationally star-studded event.  Attendees included the leaders of both Cuba and Iran, as well as Jesse Jackson Sr. and Sean Penn.  Bus driver cum vice-president Nicolas Maduro was sworn in as president later in the day.  Such a rare, and admittedly impressive rise to power.

Everything was closed today - grocery stores, restaurants, public transportation ran only limited service.

We are in a legal state of Ley Seca, which prohibits the sale, distribution and consumption of alcohol through March 12th.  This makes it easy to arrest public drunks and will no doubt help to keep the peace.  It also means our street is quiet, with none of the standard parties with loud djs blasting through half the night.

Rumors abound on the internet today.  Rumors that although Maduro hopes to have Chavez' body embalmed and on display for all of eternity, Venezuela does not have the ability (and did not show the foresight) to make this happen.  Rumors that the coffin which traveled through the city for thousands of caracenos to pay their respects was actually empty.

Thursday, March 07, 2013

No News

Today was quiet.  So quiet, in fact, that our life continues to go on with no real interruption.  We generally stay on our hill during the week, and this week is proving no different.  We will be cautious this weekend, as we venture off the hill to go to church and to get a few little girls' ears pierced.

The majority of the city is off limits to us on a normal day, because of rampant and extremely dangerous crime.  We will stay away from those neighborhoods, but we always do.

Journalists write about gun-wielding chavistas and anti-American sentiment.  I'm keeping my eyes and ears open, but at this point and in the safe parts of town, life remains calm and essentially the same as before.

Wednesday, March 06, 2013

Reports from the Front

Our part of town has been quiet for the past 24 hours.

When word came out yesterday that Chavez had died, the city stopped.  Stores and restaurants closed down.  Everyone left.  Quickly.  Very quickly.

Many people, like us and most of our neighbors, headed straight home.  Others headed to the military hospital where he died, or to the main square in town, or to a church for prayer.  In certain parts of the city, there have been people flooding the streets in tears.  Some violence, but apparently not much.

This morning, we awoke to uncertainty.  The schools and public offices were closed.  Businesses and the U.S. Embassy were open, although not handing out visas.  The grocery stores were packed with crazed shoppers.  Lines were long, and shelves emptied quickly.  But as the day wore on, we saw very little change.

Maduro has claimed the presidency, even though the president that he was vice- to was never sworn in to the current term.  They say that they will hold elections in 30 days, as called for under the constitution.  They have expelled a total of two U.S. diplomats, naming them as spies.  Both work in the Air Force attache office, in positions which are overtly gathering information on the military.

A few things make me nervous.  I am nervous about the anti-American sentiment the government was attempting to stir up on Tuesday, just before breaking the news of Chavez' death.  I am also nervous about the city slowly descending into chaos.  Although the line of succession is clear, behind the scenes power grabs are clearly happening - and no one in the country has as much charisma, as much political savvy, as many connections or the strong love of their people that Chavez had.  Maduro may be most in line with the systems and politics Chavez put in place, but that does not mean that he will be able to lead this country.  The country may be led in different directions, and it may go without clear leadership.  It certainly could go without good leadership.

We stay close to home these days, but we don't lock ourselves inside.  Dave's at the store right now.  He walked to work today.  We'll be at the park tomorrow.  Life goes on.

Tuesday, March 05, 2013

Lack of Transport

We texted our housekeeper, giving her the choice whether or not to come to work tomorrow.  She wrote back saying thanks, in my neighborhood we currently have no transportation.

Interesting times.

Days of Mourning

Caracas schools are closed for the rest of the week to observe a few days of mourning.  The embassy has texted us with confirmation that Chavez is dead, and advised everyone to remain at home with our ears open.

Our friends in the midwest are enjoying snow days.  Feeling sympatico with them right now.

Breaking News

Hugo Chavez is dead.

And so it begins.