Moving back to Caracas

Moving to Caracas was a bit difficult for me, for more reasons than one. It was sort of a drastic change; I had already gotten used to Switzerland and the idea of moving back to my country after living in what seemed to me like paradise was hard to assimilate.

http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showthread.php?t=1663596&page=16

Caracas

In Zug I was able to make very close friends. It was hard for me to let go of those friendships and make new ones in Venezuela. I was quite bitter about having to move and was very closed off to making new friends. I already knew how tough it was to fit in with the kids from the capital; I had gone through it when I moved to Caracas from the countryside. This time, I was 15 and joining the school halfway through the year, which made the process of adjusting and making friends that much harder.

The adjustment was difficult as well because the school was entirely different to ISZL and to the one I had attended before I moved to Switzerland. Colegio Los Campitos, is a private all girls catholic school. For one, the language of instruction was Spanish and because of the Venezuelan school system, I had missed the first two years of high school. When I joined the new school, my level of reading and writing in Spanish was that of a 6th grader. I had to get used to Spanish again, which made writing essays and reading literary and scholarly books for my IB courses a bit more challenging. I was also required to take a series of Venezuelan history and geography courses, which were hard because I had to do more studying to catch up with the rest of the class. I had very little knowledge of the topics since I had been solely learning about European history in Switzerland.

My school in Caracas was extremely religious because it was an Opus Dei school. Although I am catholic, I am not all that religious because religion has simply not played a very large role in my family. At Campitos, I had to learn a lot and get used to actually practicing my religion. For instance, we were required to pray every morning before class, take a religion course and attend mass every Tuesday at lunchtime. Adjusting to this was not what made the experience at this school more difficult but the judgment I would get from some teachers and instructors. I would be called an atheist for example, because I would not go to church every Sunday or because I still had not done my confirmation. At times it was also difficult not being able to state an opinion on certain topics during religion class. Disagreeing with the priest or asking specific question was often seen as challenging authority or rebellious. I put up with all of it because this school had a great level of education and it was the only one with an IB program in Caracas. I had set the goal of obtaining my IB diploma when I started 9th grade and I was not going to give up simply because I had to move back to Venezuela.

Being a 15 year old and all, I was incredibly dramatic and thought I would never form friendships as great as the ones I had at ISZL. I also thought I would be robbed all the time and I would be absolutely miserable in Caracas. Eventually however, I did make friends and I was only robbed once so my time in Caracas was not as terrible as I thought it would be. I am also grateful to my experiences there during that particular time because they were what lead me to choose International Politics as my major. But more on that in the next blog post.

Friends from Colegio Los Campitos

Friends from Colegio Los Campitos

3 Comments on Moving back to Caracas

  1. gas253
    September 25, 2015 at 11:55 am (9 years ago)

    I have had a slightly similar experience, but I don’t remember all of it because I was only six years old. My parents took me to their native Syria and although I know Arabic, the transition was definitely hard. After staying there for a couple of weeks, however, I remember adjusting and thinking of it like home. Unfortunately, that may be my last experience of Syria, in light of recent events that have literally decimated my parents’ hometowns. Oh well

  2. jxz5288
    September 25, 2015 at 11:43 am (9 years ago)

    I had a similar experience when I was 12 and my father took me to Dominican Republic for a summer baseball program. Although I thought I knew Spanish, it was very hard to communicate with other players because I was not as fluent as them. It’s comforting to know that you had a similar experience.

  3. pyb5160
    September 25, 2015 at 11:36 am (9 years ago)

    It’s interesting to see how the different school systems in different countries work. It’s also really cool that you were able to learn in more than one language in your life. Although I speak fluent Spanish, I have never gone to a school where Spanish was the language we were taught in. What made you decide to choose to come to college in America if you were already used to learning in Spanish?

Leave a Reply