Newsletter # 7

by Alyse Haldeman

When you hear the words, remodeling, you picture professionals, lots of fancy tools and a generally "clean" job. Well, in Venezuela, you get one out of one out of three. You can hire professionals, unfortunately, everything else depends on what you provide. In my host mother's case, she provided her living room floor to mix all the cement.
So, everyone came over to our house to help Mary Carmen last saturday to lay the bathroom floor. Little did we know, it would be quite the experience. We were under the charge of a man named Daniel, we mixed up cement, carried it to the new bathroom, dumped it, leveled it off, blocked it off and protected it from the cats. All by hand, no machines, only shovels, two tools that I don't know the names of, and elbow grease. The cement was, of course, mixed in our living room. We filled buckets full of dirt and tiny rocks from outside, carried them down steps and dumped it in the middle of the cleared room. We then added sand, cement and water. Lots of water. We got shovels and mixed it. A toss here, a cha-ca, cha-ca there and wa-la, enough cement to cover Miami. Well, our at least our entire living room floor. We filled the buckets previously filled with rocks and dirt with wet cement and carried it to the bathroom. Although the bathroom is only 20 ft. away from the living room, even the boys had trouble getting the buckets there. They were that heavy, Brett said it felt like 300 hundred pounds, mas o menos. We all ended up straddling the buckets and waddling towards the end of the hallway. We eventually made a race out of it. I think we are pretty good about making things fun. When we ran out of cement, (two times), we started the whole process over again. Plu,s when we ran out of dirt and rocks, we had to go down the street and get some more from the mountain of rocks in one lady's court yard and wheel barrow it back to my host mother's, fill the buckets with it, carry it down the steps and unload in the living room, again. I think my real mother would have freaked at the mess.
Mary Carmen and Johanna had lunch ready for us when we finished laying the floor. It was so good. The chicken and rice was AMAZING. I don't know how they make it but I'm sure it involves a lot of grease. With our arms sore and bellies full, we had the pleasure of seeing a nice new, beautifully level bathroom floor.
That day was the start off a very busy week. The Monday afterwards, we started language study, which involves a lot of traveling and many funny moments. We had to get up at 5 in the morning to get on the 30 minute long train ride to Caracas. However, where it ends in Caracas, still involves another hour to hour and 20 minutes of travel. Also, we hardly ever are able to sit, since some Venezuelans believe in running and pushing in front of you, regardless of lines. I guess you can say the same for some Americans though too. After we get off the train into Caracas, we needed to take a short train to the metro station in El Valle, where we can get on another metro that will take us to Plaza Venezuela, which is the central hub-bub of Caracas, where we get on yet another metro to Chacaito and then walk a couple blocks in order to get to our 8:45 class on time. We often feel like we are at the races in Kentucky. As soon as the doors of the metro are open, people race off to get on the their next train, regardless of whether it is leaving in 20 minutes. After all that out-running in front of everyone else and testing strengths by pushing, they are so exhausted, they just want to sit. If you sit and watch in at a metro station, you could probably tell who is not Venezuelan, by who isn't running. I don't have any pictures of the metro or train station because we aren't allowed to take any, or eat, or sit on the floor or run, but they do that anyway.
I think my favorite funny moment was when we were waiting to get on the subway at Plaza Venezuela. An empty train came by, and at that point we knew all bets on lines were off. If you wanted get on, you used any available part of your body to do so. So we were ready...
Apparantly not. We got on the train, only because the momentum behind us pushed us onto it. Which caused several very awkward situations. I felt I was up in everyone's grill around me. I stopped complaining though when I realized I couldn't hold onto anything, so if I fell, I would have a cushion in the people around me. Leave it to me to find the plus side. I am trying to do more and more of that here.
Prayer requests:
-Still for direction, we have ideas for ministry now, but what to do with them
-health and safety as we are traveling so much
Praises:
- We can now walk around with out an escort.
- Our weeks are starting to look full of activites that we are planning, and doing with our group and also with the youth and people from the church
Thanks for your support!