August Review

Alright, I'm sticking to my two month review thing I have going.

Number one question: How's the Spanish? I don't even know anymore. I speaka the Spanish but there are still moments where I freeze up and stare at people, like right about a two hour class in English, and people have stopped correcting me. I know the latter is a good thing, but I know for a fact that I don't speak perfectly and it's rather ambiguous when people just stop correcting you. Does that mean what I say makes sense or have they learned how to understand my non-perfect Spanish and just don't bother to correct it anymore?

Man, I really hate to admit this, but I just want to go home lately. I'm not going to moan and groan in a post but I'm dealing with things both here in Uruguay and in the States and it's stressing me out. I think a trip to Buenos Aires is in order where I will splurge on McDonalds and Starbucks coffee then visit a mall. And, I must see a Tango show since for some reason I'm on the side of Argentina that says they invented the tango instead of Uruguay. Sorry, Uruguay. You know I still love you.

I finally got the ball rolling on volunteering to teach English. Believe it or not I think my university here might come through with an offer and other language teachers have been looking for positions for me. I'm pretty excited.

UM is really frustrating me lately. I think it's only fair to say that they are still a program in progress and I have been very patient with them until now. Basically, we are three weeks into classes and I'm still dropping and adding classes because the advisors don't know how to deal with international students who want to take classes in different faculties. LE SIGH. Anyone who knows me at all knows I'm much more frustrated than how that reads.

Aaand, my Uruguayan family (Mary, Analía, Pilar, Marie, made and devoured pizza over the weekend together. I had a lot of fun and I hope we do it a lot more often.

Ser Uruguayo

*The post that follows is from my foreigner viewpoint and is very generalized. I'm not spending too much time on this either so if I made a mistake or there is something you wish to add please let me know in the comment section.*

One reason I love Uruguay so much is that they are so much more different than I pictured people from Latin America. I had never heard of Uruguay before my study abroad plans for México fell through and apparently neither has the rest of América from the kinds of questions I got when I told people where I would be living this year. So, I thought I would take a post to explain how uruguayos are so unique from the rest of Latin America.

First off, it's urugua-sh-o. This is not the 'y' sound you learned in school, my fellow Spanish language learners, and I shall warn you of the similar 'll' sound as well. Both of these are pronounced as 'sh'-- the same sound you make to silence someone. Another shocker is the voseo where ¿Dedónde eres? and Tú puedes hacerlo become ¿Dedónde sos? and Vos podés hacerlo. I'm by no means a Spanish teacher, or any kind of language teacher, but I plan to have a blog where I do my best to explain both the accent here and the voseo. *Coming soon*

Secondly, you must use these words in your daily conversations: capaz, tipo, este, dale, che.

Next, if you don't like mate, smoke, think mayonnaise is the best condiment ever made, clap at the end of movies in the movie theater, prefer agua con gas, wrap your scarf around the bottom of your face in winter, use the word tranquilo to describe your country, enjoy beef as your favorite meat, then you deserve to have your citizenship seized and be dumped into the Rio de la Plata.

Fourthly*, you must be laid-back and pessimistic, but have a serious sense of pride in your country despite it's many setbacks and still struggling economy.

Screw porteños (people from Buenos Aires), you won the first World Cup and they are all going to get fat from drinking their mate with sugar and Tang.

I definitely plan on doing a part two and maybe three and four to this one day. I was just reading a lot of blogs about Spain and felt inspired to define (sort of) what it means to be Uruguayan.

La Cumparsita

It's a little after midnight here as I watch an Antonio Banderas movie, Ritmo y Seducción or Take the Lead in English where Antonio's character works with troubled kids through ballroom dancing. So, why do I bring this up? Well, they happen to be doing the tango which originated in Uruguay... or perhaps Argentina. (There's a big debate about it actually.) And what song do they dance to for the big number? La Cumparsita. This is one of the first and most popular tango songs ever written and it came right out of Uruguay. Well, what do you know?

Saturday on a Wednesday

Last night was La Noche de Nostalgia (August 24th), or Nostalgic Night. Did I really need to translate that? I hardly did anything nostalgic though I did hear a Beetles song at some point. I just spent my night hanging out with some friends and we made pizza (from scratch!). Then we ended the night by watching some youtube videos and the girls introduced me to a a great channel of an Argentinean girl which I have been watching since I woke up. She's funny. If you want to know how they talk here, she is a good example.

But my experience of this holiday was actually a little atypical. I imagine most people go out to the club or a bar, which I hear are carísimos in response to the holiday. They play oldies music like the Beetles and Michael Jackson and apparently with this being the closest holiday to Halloween people also dress up in costumes though I hear not many do this. Maybe just the Americans/ foreigners?

So, after partying until the sun comes up and one wakes up in the middle of the afternoon the next day to the wildly celebrated Independence day of Uruguay (August 25th). Oh, wait. Wildly celebrated? What I meant to say was "looked over" since not a single thing is done to celebrate. It's like a Saturday in the middle of the week. Everyone went out last night, no one has to work today. Let us just relax.

By the way, I realized that I never spoke about how within my first couple of days being here that I witnessed the inauguration of the Uruguayan president Pepe Mujica. What an oversight. A post and pics to come shortly. In the meantime enjoy this video:

1950 World Cup Champions

I just read a wikipedia article on the 1950 World Cup win by Uruguay. It's intense. I highly recommend it. Basically Brazil was expected to win and Uruguay shocked the world by coming back towards the end of the game and beating Brazil with 11 minutes on the clock. I only wish they would have commented on if the whole team made it back safely seeing as how they were playing in Río de Janiero...

1950 World Cup: Uruguay v. Brazil

I Speaka the Spanish

Ya empiezan las clases! Todavia estamos en la primera semana de clases y estoy contenta para andar el semestre. Desafortunadamente no he escogido todas mis clases porque la mayoria de ellas no tienen un enfoque de America Latina. Entonces estoy andando con clases que son mas o menos electivas o clases que no quedan en ningunas de mis carerras. Que pena. Pero ya se que mi clase favorita es Sociolinguisitica. La clase es en ingles y el profesor es ingles. Me da risa cuando oi el acento del profe porque americanos les encanta el acento ingles. Y, estoy buscando universidades inglesas en que puedo inscribirme para un masters en TESOL (la ensenanza de english a hablantes de otras idiomas) entonces es por dios que tengo el para ser mi profesor porque puedo hacerle preguntas sobre la linguisitica, inglaterra, y como puedo viajar el mundo como una profesora de ingles/ lengua. que suerte!

Ahora porque estoy andando una clase en ingles? Estoy aca para aprender espanol, cierto? Pues si, pero mi universidad ya no tiene el programa de Linguistica entonces solo una clase en ingles no va a arruniar el espanol que he aprendido. Todo esta bien. Y puedo escuchar el acento ingles dos dias cada semana. Vale la pena.

Sobre mi espanol... necesito hablar mas para mejorarlo. En mi mente tengo todo que necesito para hablar con fluidez en espanol pero no me sale. Creo es porque yo se que estoy capaz de hablar bien espanol pero toma tiempo y solo que oigo es mal espanol entonces no quiero hablar si no es a nivel que quiero. Estoy frustrada con esto pero en serio voy a ser mas involucrada este semestre con voluntariado y pasando mas tiempos con amigos uruguayos. Vamos a ver pero tengo confianza que puede lograrlo porque mi meta numero uno es tener fluidez cuando hablo espanol y no voy a regresar si no es asi.

Ademas los estudiantes internacionales tienen un viaje a Colonia este fin de semana. Ya fui pero estoy emocionada para pasar con tiempo con ellos y es mas o menos gratis con la excepcion que necesitamos pagar para el almuerzo, los museos, los recuerdos, etc.

Bien. Como fue mi espanol? Me di cuenta que hablo de espanol todo el tiempo y estoy en Uruguay pero nunca hablo EN espanol. Entonces aqui esta. Cuando tengo tiempo voy a agregar los acentos porque mi teclado no los tiene. Hasta luego, ches!

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Classes have started! We're approaching the end of the first week of school and I'm pretty excited about this semester. Unfortunately, I still haven't chosen all my classes the majority of them don't focus on Latin America. So, I'm mostly taking electives that have nothing to do with either of my majors. But this also means I get to take one class that I've always wanted to take-- Sociolinguistics. It's actually taught in English by an English professor. I was smiling so big when I first walked in because us Americans love British Accents. Also, I am currently looking up universities in England where I can pursue a Master's degree in TESOL (Teaching English to Speakers of Others Languages), so it's the work of God that I found myself in his class. Now I have to ask about linguistics, England, and how I can travel as an English/ Language teacher.

Now why am I taking a class in English? I'm here to learn Spanish, right? Well, yeah but my university doesn't have a linguistics program any longer and I've taken an interest in linguistics after I took a linguistics class my sophomore year so it's a great opportunity to take a course I wouldn't otherwise be able to take. And, having just one class in English out of the ten I will take here won't hinder me learning Spanish. Plus, it's worth it if I get to hear an English accent two days a week.

About my Spanish... If I want to continue improving I really need to talk more. I think I've hit kind of a wall with my Spanish that I will have to break through by just speaking up more. In my mind I have everything I need to speak fluently in Spanish it just doesn't come out that way. I think it's because I know I'm capable of speaking Spanish well but fluency takes time and a lot of patience which I don't have right now. All I hear is bad Spanish. I feel like what I say comes out all jumbled up and doesn't convey the deeper thought I had intended. It's just hard to hear the bad Spanish and think I can surpass it to where I don't cringe after hearing myself speak. It frustrates me but I'm seriously trying to get past it by becoming more active through volunteering and spend more time with my Uruguayan friends. My number one goal here is to speak Spanish fluently and I refuse to graduate with a Spanish major and not being able to say I'm fluent.

In other news, the international students have a trip to Colonia coming up this weekend. I've already been, but I'm going this time to get to know the other students. Plus, it's free minus things like lunch, museums, souvenirs, etc.

Alright. How was my Spanish? I realized that I talk about Spanish all the time and I'm in Uruguay, but I never speak IN Spanish. So there it is. When I have time I'll go back and add accents since this keyboard doesn't have them. Later, gators!

Puerto Rico, Papi!

I said I would talk about Puerto Rico, so here we go. Puerto Rico is niiiiice. It wasn't so nice and wonderful when I realized I missed my flight-- not my fault-- and that there was no tourism booth to help me find accommodations. But thank God Puerto Rico is indeed a US territory so my cell phone worked. My mom ended up booking me a hotel from thousands of miles away and gave me an address which I relayed to a taxi driver who took me safely to a Holiday Inn where I passed out while watching my first American show without subtitles in months.

Ok, let's back up a little. I like to see where things went wrong (or shall I say right?) So, the whole thing can be adverted in the future. Lesson one: Do NOT assume an hour is enough time to get through customs (especially applies when returning to the US). Thanks to the huge flight it took an hour to get through customs, but by then my flight had already left. The kicker is that it actually left early. Now why would it do that? Because I bought my tickets last minute and had to fly on two different airlines. This means I wasn't checked in for my US Airways flight and they assumed I wasn't going to make it so they gave my spot to someone else. Nice. Lesson two: Check-in for your flight before you leave the house. Lesson three: When in trouble, call your Mommy. She will always be there for you.

After the chaos of missing my flight and during the long hours I spent in the airport trying to insure a flight out the next day (can you tell I was a little traumatized?), I was finally able to slow down for a little and eat some Mcdonalds. This is where I fully realized where I was. Puerto Rico. Where they speak Spanish and 80% speak passable English. Before I studied abroad I was working so hard to find a way to avoid grad school yet continue on my career path, but, folks, I could go write a paper on grad school about Puerto Rico. The bilingualism there is beautiful. I'm talking about the cashier was able to speak perfect English AND Spanish as tourists and Puerto Ricans alike came to order at Mcdonalds. No hesitating, no errors, just perfect.

I know it seems like a huge exaggeration on my part, but I have never experienced personally two languages coming together so fluidly. Can I say it was beautiful one more time? I seriously plan to write a paper about it one day. Maybe even my Ph. D. thesis pa-- OK, that's going too far. Let me just get to grad school first.

I wish I had pictures to post in this blog of my overnight vacation but to be honest I was actually in Puerto Rico, as in not in the airport, long enough to get to my hotel and sleep. I was exhausted after an overnight flight from MVD to Panama then from lugging all my luggage around for hours in the airport. It did remind me a lot of Florida though. Especially Miami.

All I have to show for it are a key chain, a pretty post card of some building I never even saw, and a tiny flag. Even still it was the best place to miss a flight and I will be back. Best believe!

I'm Back

I officially think in Spanish. I returned the sixth and have been speaking almost non-stop Spanish both inside and outside of the apartment. It's nuts. I was wondering how to start this blog post and immediately started thinking of what I wanted to say in Spanish. It was a 'Whoa' moment.

Going home was worth it. I was burned out a little after exams and it was a welcome break. I didn't do much of anything seeing as how we moved and I didn't know the area nor anybody nearby. But I did visit the mall several times in an attempt to experience American culture in the best way I know how. Other than that I just hung out with my family since I missed them like crazy and visited a few friends.

Actually, I had a lot of problems trying to return to the States then again when flying back to Uruguay. My first flight to the US almost had to make an emergency landing because someone fainted, customs was slow in Puerto Rico and I missed my flight thus having to spend the night, had my flight cancelled in Charlotte on the way back to MVD, experienced bad turbulence on a small plane in a thunderstorm... Basically, my faith has not been restored in airplanes at all and I am thankful that I have to fly two more times this year then I'm done. Ugh.

On another note, I met the new international students the same day I arrived and I absolutely love them. There is a good mix of people and the university has really listened to our suggestions by adding uruguayans to the group in the form of volunteers and interns to help them out. I can tell it has made a world of a difference. Though I admit I feel kind of like an outsider because while I'm an international student I don't really need the help of the International Program anymore or to go on tours around the city. So, I'm mostly just doing the same tours and lunches among international students that I did last year, but more with a purpose to get to know the students and help where I can. I've only been around the group as a whole one time, but I can already tell that the group this year seems to be much tighter than the previous one.

I planned on writing a little more, but I'm falling asleep on my keyboard. Look forward to a blog about Puerto Rico. Dare I say, I might retire there one day. It was perfect.