First 24 hours!

Ok so thankfully I made it to Venezuela alive!! And there are several things I learned along the way...

1. Airport workers in the Columbian airports speak NO English. So it's very frustrating and scary when they can't exactly tell you what you need to do.
2. Never take a flight with an 8 hour layover. It is KILLER.
3. Don't fly into Cucuta, Columbia. The airport is the size of my house.
4. Venezuela has VERY winding roads that made me a little car sick.

There were others, but I forgot them.

Anyway, so I flew to Bogota, Columbia and that wasn't hard at all. After landing in Bogota I had to go through Immigration and Customs, and that line was SOOOOO long. Then I had to get my bags and re-check them for my flight to Cucuta. To me that was the most stressful part. Because I had no idea where I was and no one spoke English. After I re-checked my bags I had to ride this bus to the part of the airport where my connection flight was leaving from to wait for my flight. Just to put it into perspective...my plane from Bogota landed at 4:32am, and my plane to Cucuta left at 1:30 PM. I couldn't sleep because I was scared someone was going to steal my stuff. So i just sat in a chair and read off and on and played some games on my iPhone. I thought I was going to die of boredom.

After my plane left to Cucuta I was very excited to finally be arriving, except that when I looked down at where we were landing and it looked like a shanty town. It was like an airport for 3 planes only. Kind of scarey. After I got my bags I realized that the lady at the check-in counter never gave me a sticker to get my bags with and I was sure they were never going to allow me to take my bags out of the airport. Especially since I didn't speak Spanish to explain myself. But thank goodness it all worked out.

After I grabbed my stuff I looked for Sergio. He was NO WHERE. That is when I seriously started to freak out. I just knew that I was going to be all alone in this country with no one who could understand me and that they were going to steal me and stuff me with drugs. Anyway, after waiting outside the airport for about 5 minutes (which felt like an eternity) Sergio finally showed up!

A cousin of his was driving the car, and he used to be a taxi driver, so you can just imagine how thrilling that car ride was back to San Cristobal! I had to watch out the side windows because if I had been watching out the front windows I would have thrown up or screamed. His Grandma also came to pick me up. She spoke about 6 words of English but she tried so hard to speak to me! haha.

At this point in the trip, it's 3:30, and I'm running on 2 hours of off and on sleep and no food since before I got to the Houston Airport. So Sergio made us go to this mall and get something to eat. Then we headed back to his city (San Cristobal).

Columbia (at least the part I was in) was very sad looking and a little scary. It took us about an hour and a half to get back to his city. Then we just hung out at his house and played Wii. He beat me in Mario Kart for the first time ever but I blame it on the lack of sleep and having a headache.

His mom is so nice! She speaks a little English and she was getting mad at me last night because I wasn't hungry and she wanted me to find something in the fridge to cook. haha.

This morning Sergio was supposed to wake me up at 8:30 so that we could eat breakfast and stuff, but he didn't end up getting up and waking me up until 10:30. The maid is here today too. She set the whole breakfast table up and everything. We had some kind of egg and potato soup that Sergio's mom had made. It was pretty good.

Now Sergio is at class until 12:00 and then he'll back. So i'm just here with a maid who speaks NO english! haha.

Oh yeah, and Sergio and his mom live in this huge nice apartment, and their balcony has a view of the mountians. It is SOOO beautiful here. I will try to take some pictures today or tomorrow to post. I just love the view.

So now I am going back to take a nap cause I am still exhausted!