First off, Uruguay is NOT in Europe. Nor is it in Central America. It's located in southern South America with Argentina to its left and Brazil to the northeast. The rest is surrounded by water-- either the Rio de Plata or the Atlantic Ocean. I'll be in it´s capital, Montevideo, which is located on the southern coast along the Rio de Plata. The weather is fairly temperate and it´s seasons are reversed from those of North America. Temperatures in July average 52 degrees fahrenheit and 73 degrees in January (which are the peak months of winter and summer). It´s, also, free of natural disasters which my parents will love.
Population: 3.5 million people with a little over a million living in Montevideo (it´s capital).
Language: The official Language is Spanish with English and Portugese being common second languages. Near the border of Brazil a mix of Spanish and Portuguese is used.
Religion: Uruguay is one of the most secular countries in Latin America and there is no official religion. Roman Catholics do prevail, though, only less than half of this denomination attends church regularly. Church and state are strictly separated and religious freedom is guaranteed to all of it´s citizens.
General Attitudes: Uruguayans are very proud of their country and do not like to hear people praise other countries more than Uruguay. They have a motto "Nadie es más importante que nadie"(No one is more important than anyone else) and hate aggressiveness and arrogance. They tend to be pessimistic, opinionated, and individualistic. Punctuality is not a bad thing but it´s okay to be late. However, the more formal the event the more important it is to be on time.
Personal Appearance: Conservative well-tailored clothes. Subdued clothes are more common and makeup and jewelry are not usually worn. So, pretty much they wear jeans and a t-shirt which is standard for a lot of Latin America.
In other news, I finally bought my plane ticket! I will leave on February 25th at 1:50pm from Raleigh, NC. I'm really excited because I will be riding down with two other girls from UNCG going to UM and we'll have some fun connections in New York and Brazil before we reach Montevideo. We got our tickets for a little over $800 roundtrip so that is excellent considering we're leaving in the middle of day with two connections and going completely out of our way.
The coordinator at UM doesn't arrive in her office until January 25th, so we've gotten no packet of information on host families or classes since they've been on summer vacation. Unfortunately that means we bought our tickets without knowing a lot. Our plan is that if we arrive early we'll stay in a hostel for a few days and explore the city. We've already got one picked out and I'm sure we'll try to hit the beach before school starts.
Lastly, classes start tomorrow for UNCG. I'm pretty excited I get to relax for another month before I have to worry about classes even if I'll be in school in June while UNCG is out. Oh, well. But I'm super excited! I finally have a date I can tell people for Uruguay and it´s a little over a month away!
I've been into a lot of George Lopez things lately and really anything Spanish related, so here's a link to a funny video to end my post.
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