11.15pm, Sunday June 7, at MS's ....such a nice family

MS has a lovely family. The only raised voices I have heard in the house have been directed to a dog. His older nephew helps put groceries away and the younger one give me his cheek for a kiss when he says hello. The older boy is handsome, with sparkly eyes and quite ways, while the younger boy is a charmer.

Young women in Venezuela seem to like their children. Children are well-behaved and I haven't noticed a mother screaming at or hitting her child in public. The kids on the buses have been quiet and the kids in the plazas have been running happily. I haven't witnessed a tantrum or a child crying because she didn't get what she wanted and many mothers hold and caress their children.

MS and I went to Pampatar today. We took a boat ride around some of Margarita's coastline. There are many half-finished and just-started builidngs. A whole little settlement on an overhang is unfinished but looks more like old ruins than new abandonments, glassless houses in various styles thrown together. A grizzled-before-his-time boatman with big stitches in the bottom of his foot, acompanied by a black-skinned handsome muscular man that appears to be retarded, drives our boat. The black man grunts and whoops, salutes and whistles.

We passed boats heaped with netting, one with a string of plastic drink bottles hanging like Christmas lights from poles on either end of the boat. We passed around men fishing off of a pier and young people standing about, looking towards the shore. Margarita is pretty from this distance. The hills are more striking.

I might have taken this photo from the boat

We had to cut the boat tour short because of problems with the engine. As MS and I walked back towards Pampatar we passed people having huge parties at beach kiosks, with plastic tables and chairs and salsa music.

For dinner we went to T's, where C, her boys, MS and I joined T and his wife, their son and his girlfriend and a young man,J, who is living with them. T's wife cooked hamburgers and I observed that this large gathering was much more subdued than what a dinner with my Italian family would be like.