On the Metro

I take the metro to work and back to the apartment. It's efficient and clean and easy to use, and I'm very impressed with it. It's a 40 minute trip, which gives me plenty of time to people-watch.

One of the first things that I noticed was the fashion. Everyone here wears pants, and there is hardly a skirt or pair of shorts in sight. More specifically, the vast majority of people wear jeans. Whether old, young, men, women, clearly upper-middle-class or clearly blue-collar, everyone wears jeans. There are occassionally black pants and more rarely khakis. I even snuck a look at a classroom building to check -- yep, the professors wear jeans. I don't know whether this is a caraqueño thing or a venezolano thing, but I'll find out when I get to Mérida.

Another thing is that there are lots of overweight people. And no small wonder -- all of the food that I've had so far is excellent, but very little of it has been healthy. Since arrival, I've eaten grilled cheese and ham, arepas (a sort of fried stuffed pita), "chinese" food which consisted of chicken in sweet and sour sauce with french fries and fried crab, a margherita pizza that was heavy on the cheese, and toast and jelly. Today, Sarah and I bought fruit and I ate that and only that for lunch. The fruit was amazing, but I'm doubtful that lunch fruit really compensates for the rest.

I've known that obesity, diabetes, and other diet-related chronic diseases are big issues in the developing world, but it hadn't hit home until these past few days. I know that the US is tackling its own nutritional problems, so the fact that I notice a dramatic change here is telling.