Hungry Politicians

October 17^th meeting

It was a long and tiring Wednesday as I had just taken my second Organic Chemistry test and in preparation for that, I studied the whole previous night.  I woke up in the morning and studied right before I walked in to my class. Soon after I got done with the test, I felt hurt and hungry.  It was as if a truck hit me on my face. I quickly left to meet Norelly at the Rec Center.  She was waiting for me as usual after her class.  When I walked in to the rec center, the only thing that was on my mind was lunch. I told myself that I could do it and put on a smile as I approached our counter. Sure enough our conversation revolved around food that day.

Norelly smiled and asked me if I had lunch yet.  I could not decipher if she was a face reader or if she was just curious. I told her that I haven’t had my lunch and she smiled again. She smiled so often that it was hard for me to imagine her without her smile. I asked her back if she had lunch and she nodded.  She had a Venezuelan lunch she told me.  So then we took off on our journey of exploring the different food dishes of Venezuela and India. She told me how Soy is used a lot in Venezuelan dishes and that it was a high source of protein. In return, I told her how protein rich ‘Dal’ or lentils in a curry were.  All of this talk did not help settle my hunger at all.  We then spoke for a couple of more minutes on food and then I asked her whether she had always eaten healthy. This started a whole new topic of discussion.

Norelly had been working out for the past week.  When I asked her what motivated her to exercise now, she told me that she thought of herself as a ‘fat person’. She told me that she was really skinny and that she had gained a lot of weight after giving birth to her daughter, Amanda.  She wanted to look like her old self and hence started doing aerobics after her IEP class in the Rec Center. Norelly also told me that her body was hurting her really badly because of her workouts. I laughed and felt sorry for her at the same time.  I told her about how I weighed at 210 lbs when I was in grade 10 and that I went through the exact same pain when I started losing weight.  I reassured her that her body aches will go away in a few days’ time.

We spoke about American politics for a bit but she told me she didn’t have much knowledge on American politics to converse with me about it.  So I switched gears to listening mode and heard her talk about the Venezuelan government; yet again.  After a few minutes, Norelly touched upon an interesting area of Venezuelan politics and the economic system.  She told me about how exchanging currency in Venezuela is such a hard task.  Chavez’s regime did not allow Venezuelans to have dollars with them and hence Norelly found it difficult to give her family a good living here in the United States.  She told me how in the black market, $1 is worth 14 Bolivars, the national currency of Venezuela, while the international exchange rate is only about 4 Bolivars for a dollar. It was disturbing to hear about it from someone who is actually being affected by the system back in Venezuela.

Norelly then told me that she had to be elsewhere pretty soon.  We set up our next meeting time and I stood up and thanked her for her time. She told me that she’ll bring me a Venezuelan chocolate to our next meeting as she wanted me to try it.  I thanked her for her thought and then headed out to finally get lunch.