Leader impacts beauty, appeal of Venezuela
Joce DeWitt
Issue date: 2/13/09 Section: Forum
My family and I lived in the States for five years before my parents decided we needed to leave again. They were getting restless, but my brother and I weren't.
Braden and I liked being in the U.S. We liked being around people who looked like us, who spoke our language. We enjoyed our daily class schedules, watching TV and weekly trips to the mall. We suffered the daily "troubles" of American teenagers, like when our favorite TV show was a rerun instead of a new episode. What awful things we had to endure.
My parents got tired of waiting for us to realize we were spoiled, so one night at dinner they brought up the idea of moving.
I was horrified. Move now? Absolutely out the question. I was about to be a freshman in high school and there was no way I was going to miss out.
However, my parents were past the point of caring what I wanted. Before I knew it, we were on the flight to Venezuela, a tropical country that sits at the top of South America on the Caribbean Sea and has the most exquisite pink and purple sunsets in the world - not to mention a high kidnapping rate and a president who has been trying to become a communist dictator since he first got elected in 1998.
The second I stepped off the plane in Caracas, I was displeased. The air was hot and muggy. It didn't take five minutes outside before I started sweating through my shirt. In Oregon, I could take big breaths of fresh, pure air, but in Venezuela, one inhale of heavy, wet atmosphere and that was it. I hated it before I even took a second step.
My bitterness only increased as we drove through the city in a taxi that had lost its front bumper with the back one well on its way.
We moved to Puerto la Cruz, a beach town in Eastern Venezuela. The more I saw of the city, the more depressed I became.
The streets were dirty with garbage along the sidewalks, and the city was filled with "barrios," crowded residential areas where tiny, colorful shacks without plumbing and real floors were piled on top of each other. Each of them housed families of 10 or more. I was disgusted.
Braden and I liked being in the U.S. We liked being around people who looked like us, who spoke our language. We enjoyed our daily class schedules, watching TV and weekly trips to the mall. We suffered the daily "troubles" of American teenagers, like when our favorite TV show was a rerun instead of a new episode. What awful things we had to endure.
My parents got tired of waiting for us to realize we were spoiled, so one night at dinner they brought up the idea of moving.
I was horrified. Move now? Absolutely out the question. I was about to be a freshman in high school and there was no way I was going to miss out.
However, my parents were past the point of caring what I wanted. Before I knew it, we were on the flight to Venezuela, a tropical country that sits at the top of South America on the Caribbean Sea and has the most exquisite pink and purple sunsets in the world - not to mention a high kidnapping rate and a president who has been trying to become a communist dictator since he first got elected in 1998.
The second I stepped off the plane in Caracas, I was displeased. The air was hot and muggy. It didn't take five minutes outside before I started sweating through my shirt. In Oregon, I could take big breaths of fresh, pure air, but in Venezuela, one inhale of heavy, wet atmosphere and that was it. I hated it before I even took a second step.
My bitterness only increased as we drove through the city in a taxi that had lost its front bumper with the back one well on its way.
We moved to Puerto la Cruz, a beach town in Eastern Venezuela. The more I saw of the city, the more depressed I became.
The streets were dirty with garbage along the sidewalks, and the city was filled with "barrios," crowded residential areas where tiny, colorful shacks without plumbing and real floors were piled on top of each other. Each of them housed families of 10 or more. I was disgusted.
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