The Basketball Adventures Continue...

The weekend after my adventure to the beach I took nine middle school girls along with one other coach back to Maracaibo to play in a basketball tournament. It was a lot of fun and the girls played really hard even though it was unbearably HOT! We arrived on Thursday and headed straight to the school to play two games. In the first game one of the girls went down pretty hard on her ankle and so she and I were off to the clinic for x-rays and to test my Spanish skills. We arrived at the clinic and were immediately whisked in to the main emergency room to find out that we needed to head over to pediatric emergency since she was not yet fifteen. When we got there we were surrounded by crying sick babies. I went to the registration desk to check her in and thought I was so prepared with her passport and insurance policy number of the school, however, I soon found out it would not be so easy. The woman who was helping get her registered kept insisting that I give her the girl's school ID (we do not have school ideas but most Venezuelan Schools do) after about ten minutes of explaining over and over again that we do not have a school ID card the women finally accepted her passport. Then we hit the next problem she has a diplomatic passport so when you renew it they staple the new passport to the old one and they also issue you a new passport number. Of course the insurance was registered under the old number which was once again difficult to explain but I managed to get over that hurtle. After about forty minutes of back and forth we were checked in. They took the x-rays and we determined it was only a bad sprain. We got back to the hotel to find out the girls had lost both games. We got up the next morning and headed off to play the third game of the round robin. We lost that third game and the girls were a bit down but we were off to a water park to cool off from the awful heat. The next morning we headed for our final game. We were the fourth and last place team and we had to play the third place team from the round robin to see who would win third place. We WON with a score of 7 to 4!!!! The girls were so excited. After getting our medal we headed back to the hotel to shower and head to the airport. On the way to the airport I began to feel car sick and I thought that was a bit odd but I thought when we got to the airport the queesy feeling would go away. I checked us all in and immediately headed to the gross airport bathroom. I began throwing up...not much fun in a public place. We finally boarded the plane to head back to Caracas and my vomitting had not stopped. I got on the plane and continued to be sick the whole hour plane ride home. Unfortunately once you get back to Caracas it is still a forty minute ride back to the school and of course I continued to be sick. I continued to throw up until 2am!!!! Needless to say the trip back was quite long and miserable but the girls were really sweet and the other coach helped me so I was able to make it back and start getting better. I think that my stomach does not like Venezuela...At least I hadn't kissed any pigs lately!!!

Labor Day Weekend...Choroni

Well I am finally getting up to date on all of my photos and blogging.  This past weekend was a long weekend because we were celebrating labor day here in Venezuela.  I went with five girlfriends from school to a beach town called Choroni.  While I had been there in October it is always fun to go with locals so that they can show you the ropes and all of the great places.  We left on Thursday right after school.  The trip should have taken us around 4 to 4 and a half hours , however, since traffic in Caracas is soooo bad and unpredictable it took us over an hour to get to the highway.  We made it in about 5 and a half hours to a beautiful posada that was off the beaten path which we found out later would be great since the town would soon be inundated with people ready to celebrate the long weekend.  We decided to heat up some food that night at the posadas kitchen and head to bed kind of early.  The next morning we woke up eat a wonderful breakfast and headed to the largest local beach, which is connected to the town.  We headed all the way to the end of the beach and stay away from the crowds.  We spent the entire day there and even ran into some friends from the international school in Valencia.  We headed back cleaned up and headed to dinner at a place called Mango's.  On the way we decided to stop and get ice for our cooler, however, when we all got back in the car we realized that not all of the lights in the car would turn off.  We proceeded to try and re-close every door but nothing seemed to work.  We decided to head to the restaurant and try and sort it out there.  We got there and still could not figure it out so we decided that we were so hungry that we would disconnect the battery and head in to eat.  The food was great and we had almost the whole restaurant to ourselves which was great.  We were all tired from the beach so we reconnected the battery and headed back to the posada.  We continued to have to disconnect the battery for almost the rest of the trip.  The next morning we woke up and eat another delicious breakfast and then proceeded to get ready to head to another beach.  Most of the beach around require a short but rough boat ride and since we were accompanied by a friend who is 7 months pregnant so we could not take a boat.  So our friend who practically lived in this town for several years told us about a beach we could hike to and it would be about a 15 minute hike.  We decided we would take a cooler and some umbrellas for the day.  Little did we know it would take over an hour hiking to get to this amazing beach.  The beach only had about six other people on it through out the day.  Needless to say we decided to drink and eat everything in the cooler but it was still quite a trek back.  From there we proceeded back to the place where we got ice the night before to get bottles of water and gatorade and it wasn't until then that we realized a switch had gotten flipped and that is why the lights were on that whole time.  From there we went back and showered and ate the most amazing meal I have had in Venezuela.  We had a six course prix fixed meal at a private house that is only open on Saturdays.  My only regret is that I did not take photos of each course.  Over all it was such a great weekend with a great group of friends.  

I recently updated my photos so feel free to check them out.  http://picasaweb.google.com/smt1130

Earthquake

This is just a quick update in case people are worried. There was a 5.4 magnitude earthquake around 4:40am today. While it did scare me quite a bit because I thought that someone was breaking into my house since my balcony doors were banging together, all is OK both at home and school. This was the first earthquake I have ever experienced so at least now I know what to expect in the future. I will update in a few days about my long weekend at the beach.