Last of Venezuela

It feels weird to be writing about Venezuela from back home in New York, but I am happy/sad to say that I am officially done working in Venezuela. (Don't worry, the blog will still continue, just from Colombia now)

The last week was hectic, there was a lot to be done. As all teachers know, the end of the school year is always incredibly busy, finishing assessments, planning graduations/parties, writing report cards, hopefully finding time to still teach something, packing up your classroom, and just generally saying good bye. As an international teacher, it's even more stressful. In addition to those things you must find time to pack up your whole life into suitcases in order to move it to another country, hopefully keeping everything under airline weight limits... In addition to all of this, I, personally, also had master's classwork going on. Needless to say, it was a VERY busy week.

Out of this busy week, I can think of two highlights. One, was kindergarten graduation, and the other was spending one last beach day with Dereek. Kindergarten graduation went well. We had some technical difficulties due to just about every computer and pen drive in the school being infected with a virus, but it all worked out okay. I don't have too many pictures, but the kids looked adorable and we had fun.

Walking to the stage

Marcelo talking to the kids

Singing our song "first grade first grade" (It was to the tune of New York New York)

First grade gave advice about what is important when you are a first grader.

Getting diplomas and medals

After graduation, we went and saw the third grade's museum of ancient Rome that they had set up.

The awesome cake that the parents brought.

And then we had a party.

It was lots of fun. 

The next day, we did some tie-dying. We didn't get yearbooks this year, so it was decided to tie-dye shirts and then let the kids sign them. Thursday we did the dying, then on Friday we spent a large portion of the day going around and getting signatures. 

Rubber banding our shirts to tie dye. 

More rubber banding

Getting to dye them.

A little messy, but lots of fun.

Signing shirts the next day.

All my kids wanted them to look like soccer jerseys. So I wrote their names and they chose their number.

One of the last things I did before leaving Venezuela was get in one last beach day with Dereek. We went to Puinare, which was also the first beach I went to when I came to Venezuela. It was a relaxing day where we just hung out, ate food, and swam a little. A group of people a couple "umbrellas" down from us had come with instruments and spent a lot of the day playing music, singing and dancing, which was great fun to watch. The beaches are definitely going to be one of the things I miss the most about living in Venezuela. 

Beach huts on Puinare

Leaving the beach, one last time.

My last view of Puerto La Cruz, at least for a while. Hopefully Dereek and I will be making it back to Venezuela once in a while since we'll only be living one country over.

Perfect end to being in Venezuela, sitting on the beach listening to these guys playing music and having a good time. 

I'm definitely going to miss certain parts of living in Venezuela, the people, the beaches, the music, but I think I'm ready for a change. I definitely will not miss the instability, needing to buy basic goods on the black market, unreliable transportation, rioting and unrest. It's been an adventure, but it's a good time to move onto the next one. 

Starting on July 28th, all posts will be coming from Pereira, Colombia where I will be teaching SECOND grade. (I was going to teach 4th, that got changed a month or so ago). 

 Thanks for a good time Venezuela and all whom I met there!

Boat Party!

Before I get to this past weekend, I just realized I hadn't written about a couple weekends ago when we had went to the beach. It was a pretty typical beach weekend, minus the ride there, so that's the only part I'm going to mention. As we were getting into Puerto, some guards on motorcycles drive up really fast and halt traffic and suddenly make everyone go a different way. We didn't think too much of it at first, but as we were deciding on the best way to go, we see a cop run past with his gun drawn, hear some blasts and see the smoke of some tear guns. Media isn't covering protests, but in certain areas they're definitely still going on. What would usually be an hour drive ended up taking about three hours. We drove all over looking for a detour to no avail. After a while we just told the cab drivers, look, we know where we are, we'll walk the rest of the way, paid them and let them figure out how to get home. The walk was fine and safe, just mildly long. The next day we learned that during the riots some girl had gotten shot in the face (and miraculously lived). We still went out to the beach, and enjoyed an overcast, but good day.

Now, onto this past weekend! We had a far less eventful ride up to the beach house and Dereek, Jay, Shannon and I got in on Friday night. We went out for some dinner, hung out, and went to bed to be ready for our boat ride the next day. The next morning, Morley, Matt, Andreina, Deliana, Shirley, and Camilo met us at the marina. The expats had all decided that since anywhere else in the world where we can't take advantage of a ridiculous exchange we'd never be able to rent a private boat, we'd take advantage of it here. For somewhere around $75-$85 per person (with five of us) we rented a 40 or so ft, multi level boat with captain and two crew men. We had a relaxing ride out to the island where we all just laid back, drank some beer, and enjoyed being in the Caribbean and having our own private boat. It was basically this: (note that the song that is playing is "I'm on a Boat")

When we were approaching the island we saw a whole pod of dolphins in front of us. There were TONS of them and they were all playing in front of our boat. It made for a really great way to come into the island. Note how close our hands are coming to where the dolphins were. They were literally right underneath us. 

Once we got to the island we all had some fun jumping of the boat and into the water. Dereek arranged to have the oyster guys come out to us on their boat to bring us fresh oysters. So we just spent a good amount of time laying in the water with pool noodles, eating fresh oysters that were being handed out of one boat to us, and being thrown beer from one of the crew members on our boat. Really tough day. 

Once it was time to leave that island, we continued onto a little cove where there was no one besides us and we had a bbq. Our boat had both a kitchen and an outdoor bbq so we were treated to salad, potatoes, and bbq-ed meats. After we finished lunch we went to yet another island for a little bit. At this point it was getting slightly overcast, so no one really continued to swim, but we did enjoy just sitting on the front of the boat and watching another pod of dolphins swim under us. 

At about 4:30 we headed back to shore and our boat trip was over, unfortunately. It was really amazing to be able to live so luxuriously, it's likely something I'll never get to do again. We were constantly making jokes about the fact that we literally had a captain, one guy cooking food for us, and another to bring us beer, on our private boat. That's not something most teachers get to do. Shannon, Jay, Matt, Andreina, Dereek and I stayed at the beach house on Saturday night, too and then came back to Anaco and school on Sunday at about lunch time. 

Here are some awesome pictures from the day: 

Our boat for the day

Heading up to the top level.

Captains seat.

The girls hanging out on the front of the boat. 

Inside our boat on the first level.

Island time!

Getting oysters from the oyster boat. 

Drinking beer with noodles in clear Caribbean water.

Morley did step on a sea urchin though, so that was a bummer.

Dereek and Morley with their injured feet.

Cove Entrance 

Dance party on the boat

Lunch getting ready to be served

Grillin on the boat. 

Dereek and I being happy

Part of the gang. Andreina, Morley, Shannon, Dereek, Me and Camilo

MMM Lunch

Dereek and Camilo were pulled in the dinghy by the boat between two islands. 

Dereek was even pulled in the water for a short while

Heading home. Good day, sad it's over.