Greetings from Venezuela!

I have no idea how this website knows I'm in Latin America, but all of a sudden, Blogger is totally in Spanish. It's a little strange.

I write tonight from "Nemo's Chat," el local de mi cunhado Cesar, in Valencia, Venezuela. The local is a little room with dirty blue walls up a steep flight of stairs, full with 8 computers and a bevy of teenage boys playing games and chatting online for 1000 bolivars. I don't know if this is hourly, but I do know that 1000 bolivars is about 50 cents, USD.

I am staying here outside Valencia in Trigal Norte with my sister, Luisana. Cesar is Luisana's boyfriend, ergo he is my "cunhado" or brother-in-law. Of course, Luisana is not really my sister, not by blood anyway. Many years ago, my dear darling friend Amity lived here in Valencia, with Luisana and her family, as an exchange student. When Amity returned to visit last summer, she brought me along.

For all of the challenges and all of the strangeness, I loved it here from the first moments. And I still do. In fact, I was so happy here, and relatively unhappy in Chicago, that I thought about picking up and leaving yet again, for a sojourn in South America. Amity plans to return here in the fall to teach at a local bilingual school, and I have a home whenever I want it on Calle Acuario with Luisana and her family.

When I started this blog in January, I was pretty well convinced that come summertime, I'd be on my way down here to live. I think I can safely say that this will not come to pass, though not because I don't love the people, and love my Venezuelan family. I have decided to try to put down some roots. Ack.

I needed a vacation so that I could get some perspective on my life. In less than 2 weeks, I will be 27. This has always been a bit of a witching age for me. For some reason, those who have lived fast and died young, as the saying goes, seemed to expire at this age. I'm also definitely on the downward side of my mid-twenties, now. Pretty soon, it's going to be difficult to avoid being in my late 20's. I've been coming around to the idea that adulthood means something different than that which I have been doing, but I think I used to see it as a prison, not as a liberation.

Here's the thing. Getting away from it all, and coming to the place to which I had intended to flee, has been a way of coming full circle. I am staying in Chicago, though I hope to visit Valencia again at some point while Amity is here. If she's here. Mi amiga es una igualita de yo, y todo pueden cambiar.

The other thing that's working nicely in my life, though I know it's all rather too new to bank on too heavily, is Bachelor #3, who I've been seeing only less than a month now. But so far so good. I really like him, I like the dynamic between us, and I think it's worth working on and seeing where it goes.

Overall, I find that from time to time, I need to get away from my life in order to get some perspective on it. In the day to day, I'm too close to it to see the entire picture. And speaking of pictures, I took some gorgeous photos here. I need to get home, edit, and get my act together, but I think I have enough material for shopping around to exhibitions. And I want to write. For my birthday, thanks to this trip, I am making some changes in my life, and improving upon all of the ways in which I know myself, and know what will make me happy, rather than running again.

Okay, time for pizza, or dinner of some sort. More later. Mi hermana linda espera por mi. Chau!