Madness in Maracaibo

Well, I´m finally in wonderful Venezuela! I´m in the second largest city in the country, Maracaibo, which is located only two hours from the Columbian border. I arrived around midnight on the 27 of June, so I´ve been here for almost two weeks! It´s crazy how the time has flown since I´ve been here! My city has around 3 million people, but it´s very spread out and it doesn´t appear to be that big. I´ll try to post some more often here because I just found out I can use this computer! So I'm going to try to fill you guys in on what all is going on in this wonderful city, with some of my journal excerpts! This next part is straight from my journal [all words captioned like this is what I'm adding now.]


Wednesday [June 27]
I flew out, I flew from Nashville--Houston--Panama-- to finally Maracaibo.  I traveled ALL day long and arrived in Venezuela around 11PM. [It was a long day, but I was extremely excited to see the month long adventure that awaited me in Venezuela. But I definitely did not know what to expect in coming to Maracaibo!]


First full day. Thursday June 28, 2012
Wow! Now I know what exchange students feel like.  The first day is hard! Well, everyone here speaks Spanish, so I'm pretty much immersed in the language.  It's difficult because I didn't understand much because they talk so fast and have their own slang.  We went all over town yesterday and that night. His friends came over and we watched a movie and then went out on the town to go out to eat. And yes, the drivers are CRAZY here. People drive all over the place and when you drive through an intersection that doesn't have a stop sign or light you honk so the other cars will know you're passing.  So anyways we went to the restaurant but it was closed, so we found a small but fancy French restaurant.  It was awesome! I'm getting used to their accents and understanding more of what they say.  I am so excited to see all the crazy, and awesome adventures I'm going to have on this trip!


Friday June 29, 2012
This morning I had AREPAS! They were so good! I'm chilling in Said's house right now, it's nice!  He lives in a gated community and on top of the wall around the houses there's an electric fence to make sure no one can get through. Oh yeah, ...I get almost 100 Bolivares [Venezuelan money] for 10 US dollars. So I can spend more money, and not be actually that much. 


Now just a little bit of the Word and what I've been learning here. 

• Christ is our testimony ----1 Corinthians 1:6
• God is FAITHFUL         ----1 Corinthians 1:9
• As the body of Christ, we are called to act as one. We are not to be broken by small doctoral [I think that's the right word] disputes and big egos. ----1 Corinthians 1:10

For Christ did not send me to baptize, but to preach the

GOSPEL.

-1 Corinthians 1:17