Blog Points

So when you are in a place that is very different than the place you are accustomed to, little things can happen that seem very funny to you. These little things may be totally normal for the people who are accustomed to them, but being an outsider these things may be hilarious. For example, when more “cultured” people from up north come to the Supper Club (a redneck bar in Auburn) and see the shot bus, they think it’s comical. (For those that don’t know, the shot bus was the old bus that would give people from the bar a ride home in the seventies if they were too drunk. One day the bus broke down and as a good redneck Alabama bar should, the Supper Club left the bus in the backyard of the bar and converted it into a place where people can now go take shots.) Well people from different places may look at this bus and their jaw will drop open and they make take pictures. This is especially true for people not accustomed to seeing vehicles in yards. Anyway, people from Auburn just know it as the shot bus.

The same is true for my encounters in Venezuela. Seeing how this country couldn’t be more different than what I was used to, my jaw seems to drop open nearly everyday here in Venezuela. Cooper and I have deemed these moments “blog points”. They just happen, and we look at each other and just wish to tell everyone at home about these occurrences. Also included in blog points are things that are funny to Cooper and I and could only happen here. So, I hope to start adding a couple of “blog points” to the end of all of my blogs. But for this one, I’ll just write about several of them.

1. I bought a 2-liter coke the other day from the store in the town. The very nice man, Juan, grabs the coke out of the refrigerator then places it on the counter. He then proceeds to twist the cap only a little bit as to release a bit of gas and show me that it is very fresh. He looks at me as if in need of approval. I nod my head to reassure him and want to say, “yes, this wine is fine.”
2. So obviously I am not good at Spanish yet. The people here are very helpful in trying to teach me because they are very compassionate and because they want to talk to me. Anyway, if you ask a question in Spanish and it is not correct they will help me reword it for the conversation. But sometimes I can ask a question and it’s very incorrect, and they will tell me to just try again, or just look at me and say huh? And then there are silent questions. Silent questions are when I ask a question out loud in a crowd and no one responds. My theory on silent questions and that I am so incorrect in my Spanish that they think I am talking English out loud to myself.
3. Being taller than everyone is nothing but awesome. I feel like my really tall brother pretty much all the time down here. I think I’ve seen like three people taller than me.
4. I’ve noticed it’s real easy to be funny down here as well. All you need to do is be white and make complete sentences.
5. The other day I was on the computer and saw an ad that caught my eye. It was one of those real flashy ads on the side of the screen that in America may say, teenage girls want to talk to you now! But only it said in flashing green letters, “50,000 people will win a lifetime green card to the USA!!!”
6. I think people love mayonnaise down here. The other day I was eating later than everyone else so I was heating up my spaghetti and the sauce when Julianna gave me the mayonnaise jar with no expression on her face. To her, it seemed obvious that I knew what I was supposed to do with the mayonnaise jar. I just stood there aghast, until she laughed and told me to put it on my noodles. I did. I should have been on better guard because a few days earlier I noticed that in this Chinese grocery store, where you can literally buy any grocery you need, half of one of their only ten rows (five aisles) was stocked with mayonnaise. I’ve never seen anything like it. (For those that know JD Lloyd, he probably would have thrown up on the spot.)
7. I got duped by a five year old the other day. You know when you have trash in your hand, and you want to give it to someone else to throw away, so you quickly say “hold on to this,” and then they are stuck with it. Well this kid took his time. I couldn’t understand him, but I could understand he wanted me to straighten my arm. So I did. Then he put trash in the elbow and bent my arm. I was stuck with the trash, and all the older people around laughed. Point being, never trust a five year old Venezuelan, even if you think the child has innocence.
8. A ten year old put on a DVD of a cock fight the other day for me to watch. It was pretty terrible.
9. Apparently being a man and wearing a hot pink poncho villa blanket with your collar popped and wearing ray-bans is in style down here. I forgot to pack mine.
10. I saw an eight-year-old today galloping on a horse down the street. A good trivia question would be, “Was he on a Western or and English saddle?” Neither. All he had was a rope.

Anyhow. Sorry this blog was so long. Expect more blogs very soon! Thanks for reading them!

stew