Daily Life

I thought you might be interested to hear some of the details about daily living here in the Caracas barrios, so here's kind of a rundown:

Food
I was a little worried in coming here that I might have to eat eggs (which I HATE), because eggs are a staple food of the world. However, I have thankfully managed to avoid that distressing possibility! Since I've had diarrhea for three fourths of the time I've been here, if I eat breakfast I usually have just some bread. We get bread from the bakery a couple of times a week. Arepas are the most common food here. If you're not familiar, try to imagine the masa from a tamale, but about five inches across and maybe half an inch thick. You either fry it or pan cook it, and then split it and put cheese or ham or something inside. They are pretty tasty, and a big staple. The team leader family here has them for dinner every night. Also here you can get empanadas, which are made from a similar kind of masa, but will have meat or cheese already cooked inside, and those are fried and also very good. We eat plenty of platanos (like a banana), fried or toasted and those are really good. You can get plenty of fruit like mangos, bananas, pineapples, etc., and most of it's pretty good. I've also had chicha once, (which is not the chicha from the jungle, if you know what I mean), and it's sort of like horchata but with condensed milk, and it was delicious! A favorite beverage here is malta, which is fairly similar to rootbeer.

Transportation
To get down the hill from the barrio, we catch a jeep. The jeeps go up and down the hill all day long, and they have two long bench seats in the back where ten people will cram in. Then we might get on the metro, which is actually really nice, and that could take us downtown. It's very inexpensive to take public transportation here. There are also buses and taxis, of course. Most things are at a fixed price. The buses are not as crowded as I experienced in Ecuador where people are just hanging out the side, and they are also cleaner.

Shopping
Shopping is a very tiresome experience here because you have to go to so many different places to get just a few things. You almost never bargain here, which came as a surprise. To get general groceries we take a jeep down the hill and there is a market where we go to different stalls to get produce, coffee, bread, etc. The team knows the people they usually buy from, but I've only gone with them a couple of times so I'm still figuring it out. Last night I took a bus with one of the team members to a drug store, and it was very similar to an American drugstore. It was kind of a relief to be in a clean place with familiar looking items and a familiar way of buying them. They do have malls here, but I haven't been to any yet. We also have little bodegas in the neighborhood, which are like mini-marts attached to someone's home. You can buy basics at the bodega, like eggs, pop, chips, candy, etc. We buy our water at a hardware store in a big jug, and that seems to last us about a week.

Life in the House
To get to the house, you have to go down a couple of dozen stairs, all of which are different and steep. It makes me feel like we're entering a hobbit hole or something. We're under someone else's house, but we can go up to the balcony, which is great. At night with all of the lights it's an amazing view. The water in the shower is very cold, so showers are quick. You can't put any toilet paper down the toilet, so that all goes in the trash. In the kitchen you have to turn on the gas and light the stove with a lighter, but it's pretty efficient. There are lots of little ants in certain places of the house, but as they're so small and not everywhere, it's not too bothersome. We did trap a mouse the other night, after we kept hearing it. I also had seen it one night in the bathroom, and then once it ran down from the sink and across my foot. We set the trap and caught it, which was kind of sad for the mouse, but we sleep better now. We keep all of our dry goods in a big plastic tub so that creatures cannot get to it, and everything else goes in the refrigerator. I'm sleeping on the bottom bunk of a bunk bed and have a little dresser to keep my clothes in. We don't have a washing machine, so we pay a neighbor to wash it in hers, and then she hangs it to dry and we pick it up.

I'll post more soon!