Eeep! I'm hoping you update us often while you are in Caracas! That sounds troublesome.

I'm somewhat patiently waiting for DH to finish some work so we can catch up on Fringe. I'm done with work today.

I did swim 60 laps. I am a spoiled baby. My rule is when I turn off the house A/C I turn on the pool heater. So worth it! But having both running in the same month would result in an electric bill that would hurt way too much. I've had the A/C off for a couple weeks but only cranked up the heat on the pool a couple days ago. Ahhhh.

Yikes, Raq. I hope your posting goes as well as possible.

Good for you, Laura!

I am starting work now. I'm at the folks' place, while the SO goes hunting. It's with the pastor of one of our supporting churches, one of the members (who owns the cabin and the land), and a guy who works at the major camp where we got our funds the one summer. So it's kinda sorta networking too. But mostly fun.

Anyway, I'm here, and it's nice to see the folks, and I have a metric tonne of stuff to get done by Wednesday.

I dislocated my shoulder this afternoon. (My shoulder has been OK for a while, but I haven't really been doing my physical therapy exercises as often as I should, plus I've been carrying a lot of stuff lately.) It didn't hurt too much at first, but it's hurting a lot now.

Oww, Hil, sorry to hear that.

Ow ow ow.

Three years after my shoulder surgery--for nothing near as dire as actual dislocation--it still get serious twinges.

I plan to stay online as much as I can. It's slow internet, when it's working...the DH has been there for a few weeks and we do google hangouts, but his internet's been down all weekend.

I'm looking forward to being overseas again, but it doesn't sound like they are going to let us travel in country as much as I like to do. And I've discovered that I have a lot of trouble with the Venezuelan accent.

Raq, again if you let me know which city you will be in (Caracas?) I have some friends who have spent a lot of time in Venezuela interacting with trade unions and people the consulate probably does not spend a lot of time with. They can probably give recs for eateries and places to visit. Maybe they will duplicate information you can get elsewhere, but maybe they they will include some places you might otherwise not hear of. Profile addy is good if you want me to ask my friends.

That sucks, Raq. I'm selfishly looking forward to you being on line lots, hoping you'll spend some here (this site loads fast even on slow connections!) but the rest sounds dreadful. I hope there will be some neat people to meet maybe.

The biggest thing with the accent is the cutoff of the esses. And also it's a quick dialect.

I might still have people over there, too, I'd have to check.

No, wait, actually I know I do. Happy to pass along the contact info if you'd like. They're evangelistic missionary types, and pretty conservative, so you may not want the contact info, but they're super nice and could certainly help with basic acclimatization stuff.