I wouldn’t give up this gorgeous scenery quite yet!

That headline is a little cavalier.  While I live and teach in Venezuela, the city I live in is quite small so I am pretty insulated. Today I read on the BBC  that 80 more protesters have been arrested and over the past three months 40 people have been killed.  If I didn’t check the news obsessively on my Feedly reader then I wouldn’t have known the protests were still happening!

In my corner of the country people are still going to work, to school, grocery shopping, and driving around town as usual.  Would I be a little wearier of traveling in Caracas right now? Yes. Am I a little worried that the Human Rights Watch has said that there have been 45 human rights violations in the past three months? Yes. Would I decide against moving here because of this? No

I’m returning to Venezuela at the end of July.  I love the people, the music, the dancing, the beaches, the slower paced way of life, and the many days of sun.  If you are trying to decide if you should take on a teaching contract here or if you really want to visit the tallest waterfall in the world, then you need to do your own risk assessment, but I would vote yes.