Busy weekend!

This weekend I went to my first concert and first baseball game in Venezuela. One of my local friends took me to a concert with his brothers and some of their friends on Friday night. There were three bands... one kind of punk band (that did a cover of Avril Lavigne's Skater Boy.... it was unexpected and funny but they did a pretty good job, only a few words were a little off) and another that was a rock band. The last band was the main act and they were good! They remind me of other bands that I listen to, like a combo of Maroon 5, Guster, and Muse if you can imagine that haha! It was really fun. After the concert we went to a bar and hung out there for a few hours. It was nice because I haven't found too many bars to just sit and have a drink- most places are clubs with dancing and stuff like that. I prefer just to sit and talk so it was nice to have a night like that!

On Saturday I went to a baseball game with some other teachers from the school. The Zulia Aguilas (Eagles) are the team from Maracaibo. Earlier in the day my friend Marcie and her husband met one of the players in a store when they heard him speaking English. They started talking and he told them to come by the dugout during the game to say hello. So we had to convince three security checkpoints that we had to go to the fence down by the field so we could talk with our American friend, haha. My horrible Spanish skills must have been convincing enough that they let us through! So we talked with him for a little bit during the game and then security guards started surrounding all of us. The player was waving them away and said it was fine but they made us leave anyway. So we didn't get to talk for long but it was still interesting to meet another American so far away. He said that every Venezuelan team is allowed to have 7 US players on their team, which is possible since the baseball season here is just starting. So maybe we will meet them again!

This coming week is going to be Halloween madness at school. My classroom is all decorated and my seven room moms (yes, 7... they all want to help!) are coming on Friday to help me with the class party. There is also a carnival at the school at night with trick or treating so it's going to be a long and sugary week!

Dedicated to the people who asked if I was going to be living in a hut

Here are some pictures of my apartment. Overall you can see I'm living well here! My school pays the rent on my apartment and it came completely furnished. The school rents apartments all over this neighborhood so only one other teaching couple from EBV lives in my building, but we definitely have the nicest apartments so it's worth it even though we live a little farther away from everyone else. I put more pictures on facebook because it uploads faster there for some reason, so look for more pictures there!

My classroom is all decorated for Halloween now. Even though Halloween is not really celebrated here in Venezuela, my school celebrates all American holidays. I think the fact that it's a foreign holiday makes the kids even more excited about it, so the parents are really involved with Halloween stuff at school. Seven moms from my class came to decorate my room one day and they even brought candy so I could have a candy dish for the students this month. I decided to forgo that idea to avoid a two week headache of sugared up students, but their intentions were sweet. :)

The moms are also organizing a Halloween party. They are going to bring in McDonald's Happy Meals for lunch, plus cupcakes and a goodie bag with candy. They wanted to collect about $30 from each student to buy the food and pay for the Halloween decorations and stuff like that (since they were shipped from the US it was probably a little expensive). Still, I can NOT imagine a school in the States that would collect that much money to fund a Halloween party for one classroom! They also wanted to get about $15 from each student to pay for a birthday party and gift for my assistant. Very, very sweet... but still crazy! It's just another example of the population that I work with. They are generous with their time and money and on the whole they are really good people; not stuck up or anything like that.

Here are a few pictures of my classroom, pre-Halloween decorating. I will put some pictures of the Halloween party up after that happens.

Here are some before and after pictures of my classroom: