First Week in Uruguay

You can read all you want about study abroad and the country you're going to, but it´s a whole different thing in person! I absolutely love it here and I'm glad I chose Uruguay. It is indeed tranquilo for a major city and I just love being surrounded by all Spanish all of the time.

I wish I could write more blog posts but I still don't have my laptop and the time I do have to get on a computer I am emailing professors, Skype-ing my parents, or looking for housing. My life is so unstable right now with classes beginning Tuesday but I think I found an apartment, so things should be a little less hectic in the upcoming week.

I feel like my Spanish is already improving after a week albeit not as fast as I would like it too. Something that makes learning Spanish harder here is the typical Uruguayan accent to pronounce ´llamo´ like ´shamo´ instead of the typical ´yamo´with emphasis on the 'sh' so I have to re-retrain my ear to listen for that sound. It's an obstacle sometimes especially when I discover a new word with the 'll' or ´y´ sound that is pronounced with the 'sh' sound, but with classes starting on Monday I'm sure I'll get accustomed to it real fast.

Living in hostels has been so much fun and dare I say too much fun? We get to meet travelers from all over the world who are traveling for different reasons with different accents. A lot of them speak English and very little Spanish so we do end up speaking English a lot. Hayley, Kelsey, and me said that we could talk in English as long as we lived in a hostel, but as soon as we moved into a permanent place there would be no more English. We did this mostly because it´s stressful living in a noisy hostel and trying to wake up early and go to orientation, do homework and discover a new city with the added pressure of speaking Spanish all the time. As we get more accustomed to where we are and more confident with our Spanish, we are speaking more in Spanish.

There are about 12 other international students here with the US students being the majority. I was glad at orientation that we finally got to meet them, so we could compare notes and help each other find housing and avoid the mistakes that other people have made since they arrived.

I've discovered so much these past seven days and learned so much about this new culture that this one blog entry can't do it justice. I experienced an asado, had to change my definition of clean several times, learned to trust people way more that I ever have, walked for miles just to see this beauty city, struggled with my American accent to simply order hot dogs and so much more. I wish I could write more but I'm hogging Hayley's computer.

But I'm really glad I came here and I am really excited that for the next ten months I get to call this place home and eventually help new international students explore this little known country.

after our 10 hour flight we made it!