Introduce myself, where I´m from and where I live.

First of all, hello to each and everyone of you! My name is Alejandro, My first lenguage is Spanish but I thought writing my introduction in English would help reaching more people, anyway, I was born in Caracas-Venezuela. You've might heard of Venezuela before, probably many times! Or you probably have no idea where it is, don't worry, let me tell you a little about myself. I´m a 29 years old lawyer, who loves traveling, cook some good barbecue, hanging out with friends, have couple of beers, and of course my wife, well... Probably that´s not in the best order. My beautiful wife´s name is Valentina and she is a
Librarian (I know we are bookworms). I studied English in Sydney-Australia for 2 years (Amazing country). And as you have probably guessed already, this is the first time I post something in a blog (specially in english), but I think I can get use to it.
Here is a picture of my beautiful lady and myself.

Anyway, my wife and I moved over a year and a half to Granada-Spain, due to the serious economic and social difficulties that Venezuela is going through these last years. So we took the difficult decision to emigrate and start a new life (positive attitude), we love Granada it has a lot of diversity and is very rich in culture, there are always many plans to do fun things, we also had the oportunity to travel a little inside Spain and you would be surprised of how beautiful and multicultural each city is, and of course the food in each place we visit is incredible, don´t worry I will elaborate more about our new home, but first, I would like to tell you about our native country. Venezuela:

Let me give you a short summary about Venezuelan history, don´t worry, I will keep it short. Venezuela is a country in northern South America. The official language is Spanish, and its capital is Caracas. And we have one of the largest oil supplies in the world (we think that´s part of our curse). Venezuela's inhabitants are very racially mixed. This comes from the colonial period. When whites (the British, Spaniards, French, etc.) conquered America's territory, they took their black African slaves to America to work. During Venezuela's colonial time and mixed with locals. The Venezuelan people tired of colonials tyranny, started thinking about independence. Which came on July 24, 1823, Venezuela won its independence, led by Simón Bolívar.

Now that we ruled out the boring part, let me tell you a little about Venezuelas Geographically-privileged location, Venezuela is entirely located in the tropics over the Equator to around 12° N. Its climate varies from humid low-elevation plains, where average annual temperatures range as high as 35 °C (95.0 °F), to glaciers and highlands (the páramos) where temperatures can get below 0, depending on what part of the country you are in, but the average temperatures are hot, with yearly averages ranging between 26 and 28 °C (78.8 and 82.4 °F). Adding the Caribbean Sea we have the perfect combination for spectacular beaches that you can visit all year round (Yes, regardless of the season), we have beaches like Los Roques and La Tortuga (see below):

that´s Cayo de agua in Los Roques, and this is La Tortuga

I know, it looks amazing, we have many more beautiful beaches but that would make a very long post. We also have some serius Tropical forest, where you can find one of the highest waterfalls in the world with almost 1 kilometer of height "El Salto Angel", which translates to "Angel´s Falls"

You may recognize it from movies like "Break Point" or "UP".

We are also famous for our beautiful women, who always have a significant role in world beauty contests

And of course, the food, you can never talk about a country and leave the food out (you just don´t), our most famous food is "La arepa". The arepa is a flat, round, and made of ground maize dough or cooked flour flour that can be grilled, baked, fried, boiled or steamed. And it may be stuffed with practically anything, such as cheese, avocado, meat, beans, vegetables or even all together why not? (It is 100% gluten-free, which seems to be in quite popular these days).

But of course we have other mouth watering varieties on the menú.

However, I also need to write about the bad things, to keep things balanced and in perspective. I´ll try to keep it short so I do not turn the post into something focused on negativity. The overflow violence is one of the main reasons people leave Venezuela, violent crime remains an all-pervasive worry, especially in poor slums run by gangs and rife with high caliber weapons. Numerous state security plans and disarmament drives in recent years have failed to curb violence in Venezuela where easy access to arms, police participation in crime, corruption and high levels of impunity have allowed delinquency to flourish. Only Honduras has a worse murder rate than Venezuela, according to the United Nations (nothing to be proud of). The other main reason is the economic crisis that led into to food crisis. You name it, Venezuela is short of it: Meat, fish, fruits, sugar and bread, where citizens don't have enough food to eat. The government just doesn't have enough money to pay for them. The declines in exports of certain food categories are staggering. Venezuela's economy has plunged into a deep recession and the country is fast running out of cash. The key problem behind Venezuela's inability to pay its bills is that the value of its currency, the bolivar, has plummeted dramatically in the last couple of years. That's made paying for food imports prohibitively expensive (and we import around 75% of the goods) leading to an inflation over 700%.

Ok, moving on, now that we have talked about Venezuela, let me talk to you about our new home, Granada.

Granada is located in the autonomous community of Andalusia, Spain. Granada is at the foot of the Sierra Nevada mountains. It sits at an average elevation of 738 metres above sea level, yet is only one hour by car from the Mediterranean coast. One of the most famous tourist places in spain is located in Granada, you may have hear of it, I´m talking about The Alhambra, a Moorish citadel and palace. It is the most renowned building of the Andalusian Islamic historical legacy. It is a beautiful place, especially if you like art or architecture . The Almohad influence on architecture is also preserved in the Granada neighborhood called the Albaicín with its fine examples of Moorish and Morisco construction. let me put a face to it.

The region surrounding what today is Granada has been populated since at least 5500 B.C. and experienced Roman and Visigothic influences. On January 2, 1492, the last Muslim ruler in Iberia, Emir Muhammad XII, known as Boabdil to the Spanish, surrendered complete control of the Emirate of Granada to Fernando V and Isabella I, Los Reyes Católicos ('the Catholic Monarchs'), after the last battle of the Granada War. The 1492 surrender of the Islamic Emirate of Granada to the Catholic Monarchs is one of the most significant events in Granada's history as it marks the completion of the reconquest of Al-Andalus. The terms of the surrender, expressed in the Alhambra Decree treaty, explicitly allowed the city's Muslim inhabitants to continue unmolested in the practice of their faith and customs.
But it is not only the history of the city that attracts tourists, the food is incredible, (I told you allready you can never talk about a country and leave the food out), almost every bar you go to every beer or glass of wine you order, comes with some food, yeah that´s right, Is not that wonderful?

Well everybody, apparently I extended my introduction a little more than I should, thanks very much for reading I´m exited to share many more things, I´m planning on writing about curiosities, awesome great recipes, Traveling, in spanish and english, among other things, any tips you can give me on writing or Steemit are allways welcome, follow me @abaraza Bye!