birthday season ... 3 kinds of cake and Dada made oatmeal rasin cookies, oh my!!! :-)

Hello Everyone,
It seems to be birthday season. Last weekend I had a fantastic trip to Puerto La Cruz and helped celebrate a friend´s birthday party there. Then Wendi´s birthday (my sister-in-law) was this week, and I hope that she got to have a great time with her folks. And today, I went to yet another birthday party. The party today was a joint party for one of the nuns and for one of the little girls who lives with the nun. She is now 10 years old and a wonderful help in practicing my Spanish.
For example, she loves to ride around on my back-shoulders and I get to practice understanding directions and giving directions. :-)

Pureto La Cruz
Pureto La Cruz is the big beach town here in Venezuela. It is currently THE place to go and be and it seems like everyone wants to be there. I noticed that they are building apartments like crazy and I saw a lot of VERY expensive homes, especially the ones on and near the water. Unfortunately, according to my host, there hasn´t been any city planning and so the traffic is abismal and I suspect that eventually the rich people will become sick of spending hours in traffic to drive 10 miles and will either move to the next new fantastic place. Or some additional infrastructure will be added. ... growing pains.
My adventure started off with trying to buy the bus ticket to Puerto La Cruz. It took me three tries, on three different days to actually find the the bus station but I managed to get some help and go and purchase my ticket on Thursday. I got a ticket for 2:45 pm on Friday.
(I had a fantastic Friday morning and I´ll tell you about Friday morning in a little bit.)
Anyway, the bus that goes from Caracas to Puerto La Cruz is a double story tour bus, complete with onboard movies. I was warned that the bus would be freezing cold and I should literally bring a jacket and blanket with me, however this trip wasn´t very cold. When I got on the bus, I realized that I wanted to sit in the very front with the windows, so instead of going to my assigned seat, I went up to the top floor and sat in the front corner. Other people came up and I ended up having to move to the other corner, however they didn´t make me go to my assigned seat. So I had a fantastic view leaving the city and for most of the country side until it got dark. The bus arrived in Puero La Cruz around 8:30 and my friend and her boyfriend picked me up.
We then went to his mother´s house, where I met both Moms and a cousin and where I was fed wonderful Italian lasagna. ... I had said that I wasn´t hungry, but who can say "no" when a plate of fantastic lasagna is put infront of you? My trip to Puerto La Cruz drove home how large the Italian-Venezuelan community is here.
My friend and her boyfriend are renting some rooms in a house very near his mother´s house so we eventually went there and slept.
The next morning I woke up early because I was SO excited to be there and I knew that they´d want to sleep for a while so I went out for a walk. First I walked around the community where they live. It consists of many colorful townhouses that are all very close to the water. (I could walk to the water and the dock.) A number of the houses have a tree or two in their front yard, including one house that had a mango tree with a monkey chained in it. I felt sorry for the monkey because he was obviously going crazy walking back and forth on his chain in the tree waiting for anyone to come out of his house.
While I was watching the monkey, a ripe mango fell out of the tree near me, so I took it home and we had it with breakfast on Monday.
Then I went out and walked by the water and looked at the boats until my friend called me asking where I was. I was only a few minutes away so I walked back to the house and the three of us went out to go shopping for party supplies.
First however, we went to the marina because her boyfriend has a boat there that he needed to take care of.
Then we went by a building that my friend´s boyfriend and his mother are turning into an Italian restaurant. They have a beautiful golden lab that is helping to guard the restaurant building while it is being renovated. I am sure that it will be a very successful restaurant when they are done with the renovations!
Then we stopped at a street vendor and had an empanada for breakfast. (picture and description is at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empanada) and picked up two extra empanadas and drinks to take to the security guards where she and her mom are starting their new business. (Yes, both she and her boyfriend are starting businesses with their Moms. I was very impressed with how the whole family is involved and helps each other.) It was interesting for me to see the town and what the buildings in that area look like, etc...
Then we did some shopping to get supplies for her party that night. We were planning on going to the beach in the afternoon, but as we were leaving the store, it started pouring rain so our beach plans were scrapped.
We also stopped by a fish yard and bought some fresh seafood including jumbo shrimp.
Then we took the food back to the boyfriend´s mother´s house and I hung out while everyone else was in the kitchen, cooking. At one point I was amazed to see a circular metal pan, that was literally at least 3 feet wide. Her boyfriend is apparently a very good cook and he used the pan to make a traditional rice and seafood dish as a main course for the party. It was fantastic.
Later in the afternoon I went with my friend and her little brother to the mall. They had their hair done while I walked around and looked at everything. Her little brother got done before she did, so for a while he kept me company and we explored the mall together. One of the things that they had was a computer kiosk with tourist information. He showed me a bunch of pictures of Venezuela and later on in the evening, he very excitedly told me that we were in one of the places that we´d seen in the pictures.
The birthday party itself was held at a friend´s townhouse house in the marina. It was a very nice house and they had hired a DJ for the party so there was lots of good food, drinks, and lots of new people to meet. It was very much a family affair with aunts, an uncle, cousins, and 4 kids, as well as friends. Everyone had a blast and I really enjoyed meeting her friends and family.
Of course, I learned some new words that evening and unfortunately made the mistake of innocently using one of them in a conversation with my friends mother. ooppss ha ha
We got home at about 4am and then got up sometime between 9 and 10 am to go to the beach. I got to sleep a little extra, they only slept for a few hours and then went and cleaned up from the party. Then we went back to the marina and I suddenly learned that "going to the beach" didn´t actually involve sand. Instead they brought her boyfriend´s boat down and put it in the water for us and we went out and anchored near one of the islands. Yup, living the high life.
We went with a friend of hers who now lives in Miami who was home visiting and her mother, brother in law, and brother in law´s girlfriend. So there were 7 of us in the motor boat which was just perfect for goofing around and playing in the water.
I swam 3 times and forgot to reapply the sunblock so I ended up being a red raccoon. oopps

....
back to Friday morning- One of the people that I´ve been meeting with weekly to practice my Spanish did a really nice thing. Instead of meeting at the University, he asked me to meet him downtown. I warned him that I would have 2 bags with me because I was going to leave town after meeting with him. (One was a duffle bag with a blanket in it.) Anyway, we met up and he took me on a really neat tour of some of the old buildings, the old constitution hall, several museums, and one place that had wonderful little models depicting life and materials from 100 years ago in Caracas. It was absolutely enchanting! And a wonderful way to practice my Spanish!

....
I am going to cut things short for now. Yes, I am still a week behind in my posts, however I am getting tired. I hope that you are all doing well!
Big Hugs
M

My boss just posted a story that I wrote on the website

I really appreciate having a boss that reads what I write and uses it. ... I wrote up a basic story and he put it up on the website the same day I gave it to him. www.priven.org

He also used a revision that I gave him ... but it didn´t have the best formatting and he posted it. I thought that we´d be doing some revisions to it. Anyway, we´ll get the formatting fixed soon. http://www.priven.org/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=7


yes, I plan on posting a blog about my trip to Puerto La Cruz. It was a fantastic weekend and I came back a day late so I´ve been cranking on getting caught up since then. ... I´m feeling very productive in the office, this week. Of course, this is at the expensive of my evenings and studying Spanish. Time for me to go and study!
Hope everyone is well!
Hugs
Mariah

Heading to Puerto La Cruz this weekend

Hello Awesome People,
Guess what, I am about to head out on my first big adventure outside of the capital. I´m going to visit a friend, one of my language partners, in Puerto La Cruz. It is her birthday this weekend so it should be double the fun. I´ll get to meet her mother and brothers too. None of them speak a word of English so it should be a very good weekend for me.
This week has been productive, but I haven´t gotten much language practice. Partly because one of my language partners has been in Puerto La Cruz for the past two weeks, partly because I lost my phone earlier in the week and it is hard to connect with people with a phone that I can send them text messages with. So I am looking forward to several days of Spanish submersion. We´ll see how I do! :-)
One of the guys at the office sat down with me two days ago and said that I really should be spending 6 hours or so a day just working with the books. I´ve explained to him several times that where I am weakest is hearing and speaking the language, but he doesn´t seem to understand that. I can conjugate on paper just fine, but if I´m not hearing the words correctly or pronouncing them correctly, it doesn´t do me much good to be able to conjugate on paper. This is why I am trying to spend at least an hour every day talking with a native speaker.
The woman that I am going to visit has been my main language partner. Originally we were trying to meet 3 times a week, Monday, Wednesday and Friday mornings. I think that she has become too busy to do that for the rest of the summer, but we´ll see what happens when she gets back from vacation.
There are several other people that are also being incredibly helpful with practicing Spanish as well and I usually meet with them once or twice a week.
Recently I put up an add requesting volunteers to help us at the Prout Institute and on Tuesday I met a woman who I think will start volunteering in the office and helping me one evening a week with research for the Institute.
One of the issues that we run into is that most of us in the office are not Venezuelan so we have large learning curves about how things work here. Based on my Peace Corps experience I really want to work on all my projects here with locals. I think that my work will be much more viable and efficient if I work with locals. (I know that I need to tell you folks more about the projects, but I am still figuring out exactly what we have and thinking about what comes next.)
But, back to the volunteers: we can´t pay anyone for their time, however being able to put on their resume that they´ve worked in a bilingual office and I am willing to help them with their English, makes it an attractive volunteer option for some students. (Basically, they get free English lessons in exchange for helping us. But right now I´m only offering it to people who have a pretty good command of the English language already.) I put up flyers at two universities and spent Tuesday morning with a promising volunteer. Our conversation was all in English and then I lost my phone so I wasn´t able to meet up with someone in the afternoon to practice my Spanish. :-(
and without my phone, I wasn´t able to set up a language session for today either. :-( I did have a session Wednesday evening, but it was short and I didn´t get a lot of practice.
However today, the office, well everyone in the office, took the afternoon off and we went to the new art museum here. It was a good excursion. I have a new favorite artist: Arturo Michelena (1863-1898)
The museum just opened and it has some absolutely fantastic art!!! I´ve been to a number of museums in the states and in Europe, seen a number of special exhibitions, and was really impressed with their collection. It isn´t a huge museum, but they have wonderful stuff there.

After I´d looked at everything, I sat down to study and then Dada joined me and a guard came up and started talking to us about the pictures. He gave us a small private tour and told us a lot about the pictures, including my favorite painting in the gallery, Carlota Corday Camino al Cadalos 1889 aka Carlota Corday camino al patíbulo (Charlotte Corday marchant vers l’échafaud)
I am absolutely captivated by painters that are able to achieve 3 dimensional illusions. I wanted to touch the canvas to be sure that he hadn´t just packed a lot of paint on to achieve the 3D illusion - lol I resisted. However, I did look at the picture from just about every angle that I could reach without touching the canvas. :-)
The only bummer was that on the way home, Hans got his back pocket picked on a very full metro. We think we know how it happened because there was a little guy who started getting very agitated and Hans ended up with his hands on both of his shoulders. While Hans was distracted with the guy infront of him, a guy behind him picked his backpocket. Then the little guy got off the metro and a moment later another guy followed him off the metro. Dada noticed it was odd that two people got off at the same time but Hans didn´t realize that he´d been pick pocketed until later. :-(
Dusty was kind enough to show me where to buy my ticket and to catch the private bus to Puerto La Cruz. And, since it is a long drive, my boss was kind enough to give me Friday afternoon off. So I now have a ticket for 2:45 pm and I know how to get to the bus station. I´ve been warned that the bus will be freezing cold so I am supposed to bring a blanket with me on the bus and my sweatshirt. :-)
One of the things that Dusty and I ended up talking about while we were walking around was the exchange rate and how having access to US dollars makes it so much easier for us to travel than for Venezuelans to travel. My advice to him was to do as much as he can now because when the rules about buying oil changes and the dollar is no longer needed, the demand for the dollar will go way down.
Anyway, speaking of traveling and what to bring, I need to go and pack.
I have a language lesson tomorrow morning and then I will go get on the bus.
I hope that you all have a fantastic weekend!
Hugs
Mariah

small care package request - Dr. Brommer's Peppermint Soap

So yes, apparently I am a rare delacy here and the mosquitoes love me. I was given a mosquito net for my bed after I came downstairs one morning with 7 bites, just on my hand, but I can't live under the mosquito net - and so the mosquitoes in the office are enjoying full five course meals on me. (And they can bite through my pants!)
I found citronella oil, but that doesn't seem to help - so if anyone would be willing to send me a small care package with a bottle of Dr. Brommer's Peppermint soap in it, I would be VERY grateful.
(If you do take the time to send me Dr. Brommer's, yes, I am specifically hoping for the pepermint liquid soap. Mosquitoes aren't supposed to like peppermint and the Dr. Brommer's peppermint soap worked very well for me in Africa. So, I am hopefull that it might work here.)
Of course, any other anti- mosquito stuff would be appreicated, as well as some extra freezer strength zip lock bags (all sizes). [I didn't bring as many as I had intended to.] The other thing that would be wonderful to get are printed pictures. I brought a few, but would enjoy having some more to put up in my room. :-)
Please don't worry about sending food as I'm in a big city and thus far have been able to get everything that I had hoped for.

Thanks in advance!
Hugs
Mariah

Mariah Branch
Instituto Venezolano de Investigacion de Prout
Avenida Sanz, Calle Terepaima con Mosen Sol
Final Colegio Maria Santisimo, Quinta Prout #11-20
Adyacente al CEMS, Urbanizacion El Marques, Caracas, Venezuela

(The same address that is on the website: www.priven.org. It usually takes about 6 weeks for mail to reach here.)

pics from the botanical garden at UCV last week

bits and pieces from my first two weeks in Caracas

Monday morning May 4^th I got up at 5:45 and had a yoga class from 6-7 am. The yoga “studio” (covered porch on the third floor) has a beautiful view of the city of Caracas. The yoga class itself is usually pretty easy but I figure that it is a good way to start the day. The next hour is set aside for meditation, however I usually only try to meditate for about 15 minutes. Then I go change, shower etc… and go downstairs for breakfast. We all make our own breakfasts and I usually have fruit and toast. Most of the people here have granola, yogurt, fruit and toast for breakfast.

From 8:30 – 9:00 am is set aside for cleaning. Everyone is supposed to do a chore every day and it really helps to keep the place clean. There is a maid who comes once a week and does the deep cleaning.

She is very nice and enjoys showing me things like what to do so the papaya ripens sweeter. According to her you should take the tip off of both ends, and make shallow incisions (not deep enough to get to the tasty part, but enough to mark the rind) and let it sit in the window sill for a day or two. Juice will leak out of the fruit, and she thinks that it makes it taste better. Not being a papaya expert myself, I’m unable to differentiate between fruit that has been “prepped” and fruit that hasn’t been “prepped.” But she swears that it makes it taste much better. Yesterday (June 3^rd) she brought a desert that she made for us to try. It was made from milk, white corn, sugar and a few other ingredients. We had it cold for desert after lunch. I only had a little because it is milk based, but what I had was very tasty.

Anyway, back to my first day … I was very lucky because there is a volunteer who has been here for almost a year named Spencer. In the morning he was kind enough to help me make posters advertising for language exchange and then after lunch, Monday afternoon, we went out and he helped me purchase a cell phone and then I added my phone number to the posters and we went to the University Central de Venezuela (UCV) and put up my posters all over campus.

After we put up our last sign we asked a woman for directions back to the metro/ subway. (Caracas has a wonderful subway and public transportation system. In a city with 2 million people, it really makes a huge difference in what we are able to do!)

Less than 5 minutes later I get a call on my phone, it is the woman that we just talked to and she is interested in doing a language exchange. She and I decided to meet several times a week, in the mornings before she goes in to work.

Then we headed toward the metro but before we got there, we received a second call from two other girls who were also interested. So we waited for them to come and meet us, but it turned out that they really wanted free English lessons and didn’t even know how to introduce themselves in English, so I didn’t make arrangements to meet them.

Anyway, my posters were a huge success so I ended up with far more potential people to practice with then I actually have time to meet. I try to practice with at least one native speaker every day and I am also trying to put time into studying on my own, but there is so much to do, I am having a hard time juggling everything!

Anyway, I feel like Spencer really helped me get the ball rolling with learning Spanish here!

Eventually he and I took the metro back to our neighborhood and came home. I think that we got home around 6pm and t hen had a quiet evening. I felt like I'd gotten a lot done on my first full day here.

In general, the weekday schedule is:

5-6 am meditation (optional - nope I haven't been going to it.)

6-7 am yoga class (required)

7 - 8 am mediation time (I usually only stay for the first 15 minutes or so.)

8 - 8:30 am breakfast - everyone makes their own breakfast. I usually have fruit and toast.

8:30 - 9:00 am household chores.

9:00 - 1:00 work

1:00 - 2:00 lunch

2:00-6:00 work

6:00pm meditation

Of course, the schedule is very flexible, but it provides a general framework for weekdays at the house.

During my second week in Venezuela I was invited out to the farm, Centro Madre. (You can read about it on www.priven.org.) It is a beautiful farm, but they don’t have internet access, so I was unexpectedly offline for almost a week.

The last day I was there, a group of school children came out to the farm to see what it was like there and I took over 200 pictures of the kids and the farm. It really is a wonderful place!

Anyway, it is late now, so I’m going to stop here. I’ll keep working on filling in all the gaps!

Big Hugs

Mariah

P.S. What do I like the most about Venezuela thus far? I am really enjoying how affectionate people are with each other here! People hug and kiss each other all the time here. A hug and an air kiss to the right side of the head (sometimes your cheeks touch) is the normal greeting and people gently lean on each other often.

The house where I am staying is at the opposite end of the spectrum so I’m experiencing a funny contrast but it is working for me. [The head of the house is a monk who usually doesn’t touch women at all. He will shake hands the first time he meets someone, but as soon as he has an opportunity he will explain that he doesn’t touch women and so his normal greeting is derived from the Indian tradition of putting your hands together and bowing your head. Everyone else follows his lead, thus people in the house rarely touch each other. Luckily, I get lots of hugs from the Venezuelans that I meet so from a hug standpoint I am having a much easier time here than I did in The Gambia.]

visit to Centro Madre, my second week in Venezulea

The second week that I was in Venezuela I was invited to go to Centro Madre in Barlovento. (I copied a description of the project from the priven.org webpage and have pasted it below.) They have built a training garden there and the last day of my visit, a group of school kids came out to Centro Madre for a field trip to see the garden.
I took over 200 pictures while the kids were there and my favorites are posted below.

The first picture is of Didi, the nun who runs Centro Madre, showing the kids the worms in the worm composting that they are doing at the farm. Yes, I really appreciate all soil creation that they are doing at the farm. I still don't really know how to grow food, but I can contribute to the soil making! :-)


The second picture is of Didi describing the medicinal garden to the kids. I think that they did a great job of putting up signs at Centro Madre and I'd like for us to have the same at the Prout institute. (Yes, our gardens are a LOT smaller!)












The farm has a fish pond, but it isn't stocked yet. On my to-do list is to read up on how to make sure that fish ponds don't become polluters. If anyone has a good article or two on fish pond design, please send it my way.












They also have bee hives. Here Didi is getting the pieces ready - they put in starter bees wax. Then later they can pull out these slots and easily harvest the honey from them.













Here are the kids around the compost piles! The farm currently has four fantastic compost piles. The kids were surprised at how hot the compost piles get. giggle!










These are the vegetable beds.












The guy in the organge is another Dada (monk). His name is Dada Atmapranananda and he is from the Philippines. The man is he talking to is an agriculture expert from Cuba who is here advising Venezuelans about how to grow more food. (Chavez and Castro worked out a deal where they are trading oil for expertise. Many of the new health clinics that have been opened are staffed by Cuban doctors and/or Cuban dentists.)











And yes, the farm also has a three legged tortuse. It wanders around and hangs out in the shade. Sometimes it wanders into the house, but it isn't house trained. (I never realized that tortuse poo smelled so bad!)












And the farm has 80 chickens. One of the things that I learned from Dada Atma is that it is good to put fresh leaves and other fresh things in the pen for the chickens to peck at. It keeps them from pecking at each other. So, every morning we'd break off some small leafy branches and weave them into the wire mesh of the wall and the chickens would occupy themselves with consuming all the leaves. The chickens were very excited about all the leaves!


The most exciting thing for me was that the farm had some moringa olifera trees. So I brought back two branches to plant here at the house. http://moringa-plant.com/ I also brought back a lot of leaves which I cleaned and froze for later consumption. (They are an excellent source of iron.) One of the branches is planted already but digging holes in this soil is hard work and we have two papaya seedlings to plant as well, so we have three more big holes to dig.










Starting in February 2009, a very intense effort has been undertaken to develop a self-reliant, integrated farm at Centro Madre in Barlovento, Venezuela. Our goal is both to create a regular source of income from a wide variety of agricultural products and to educate the local community about the principles and practices of small-scale organic agriculture. Dada Atmapranananda supervised the agricultural project from dawn to dusk with his tireless effort. At each step of the way, we were advised and supported by two agronomists from the agricultural institute of the government (CIARA) in preparation for an inspection to evaluate the progress of our 3-hectare farm. In addition to two paid farm workers, many volunteers came from the Prout Research Institute of Venezuela and the Ananda Marga community to lend a hand to this collective effort. Several benefactors gave us financial donations to buy materials. It was astonishing how hard everyone worked, and the results were very impressive.

CIARA recognizes 12 aspects of an ideal integrated small-scale agricultural project. Half of them we already had, and the other half we started during this period: [Click Read more...]

Vegetables
Floriculture (flowers)
Medicinal plants
Fruit trees
Compost
Seed Bank and Nursery
Root crops
Apiculture (bee-keeping)
Pisciculture (fish ponds)
Animal husbandry
Food processing (cottage industry)
Training workshops

Nearly 10 tons of cow manure was brought from nearby farms and combined with compost to create a very rich organic fertilizer, which we used to fill15 vegetable beds, each one 10 meters long and one meter wide. We planted them all with 12 different vegetables and built an irrigation system to water half of them. Very delicious tomatoes are now ripening each day.



We also created a special area for herbs and medicinal plants that now has 15 varieties from aloe vera plants to lemongrass. Nine varieties of fruit trees are flourishing, with over 100 trees in total. Our 22 bee hives are starting to produce honey again. As a cottage industry, we dry and package bananas, mangos and tomatoes for sale in local markets.

We created two ponds: one is 12 by 10 meters, the second is 8 by 10 meters, both are one meter deep. We covered the bottom of each pond with manure to encourage the growth of algae, which will provide food to the fish populations, and then pumped water from a small stream that runs adjacent to the back of the farm

The CIARA inspector came on April 25, 2009 to determine the category of our farm: good, very good or excellent. He rated us as excellent, and said that if there had been a higher category, we would certainly deserve it! In July, he will return to evaluate our progress.

Our project is inspired by the following words of P.R. Sarkar: “Self-reliance is the main objective of our farming projects, hence they should be oriented towards production. They should not be dependent on outside resources. An integrated approach to farming should include such areas as agriculture, horticulture, floriculture, sericulture, lac culture, apiculture, dairy farming, animal husbandry, irrigation, pisciculture, pest control, the proper use of fertilizers, cottage industries, energy production, research centres and water conservation. This approach will help make farming projects self-reliant, and should be adopted.”



The climate of Barlovento is very hot and humid, which means that controlling plant diseases and pests is very challenging. Our gardens will be more productive if we can install shade netting. We also want to invest in the development of our seed bank, extend the irrigation system, and build a laboratory and food processing kitchen. For this, donations will be gratefully appreciated. Please get in touch with the director if you’re interested in helping out.

We invite suggestions and proposals for research and experiments, and volunteers are most welcome.