Pennies and Pesos

So, I definitely brought back pieces of Uruguay with me... intentionally and non-intentionally.

1. I have still not exchanged my pesos (argentinian and uruguayan) for dollars. I, also, keep rediscovering two half pesos that live in my wallet and pretend to be nickels. It makes me smile every time I see them though. Edit: I, also, discovered ten brazilian reals in my shorts the other day. When I add up all this money, I'm sure I'll be surprised in how much mulah I have in foreign currency. If I wait long enough, I can add some won to it.

2. Buenos Aires Safety Measurement: I feel like I am invincible just about anywhere in the States now because I survived Buenos Aires. I have a really bad sense of invincibility now. Really bad. For example, I stood under a lone streetlight waiting for the bus at 11pm on a sketchy street corner a week ago and thought nothing of it. Before I would have just stayed at my friends house and had her take me home the next day. Yeaaaah.

3. Preserving my uruguayan accent is so hard without other people speaking it back to me. In fact, I'm in a Spanish Linguistics class and people actually laugh when we go over the voseo and the sheismo that are widely used in Uruguay. So, it becomes an issue of self-consciousness and just naturally losing the accent since I'm no longer exposed to it. Its frustrating and now has me wanting to retire in Argentina instead of Mexico. Sorry, Mexico.

4. A guy briefly presented Uruguay (specifically Montevideo) a few weeks ago at the Spanish club where I work. It had been a few years since he'd been there. So, I schooled him :P. Nah, I just helped him out a little. It made me realize that while I don't think of Uruguay on a daily basis anymore, I still remember it very well.

5. Food items that I became familiar with in Uruguay and later found here in the States: Knorr soups, Cadbury chocolate bars, and Bimbo brand bread. To the best of my knowledge none of these brands are uruguayan although Knorr might be. And, I saw a brand of yerba (for maté) that was sold in Uruguay, but I can't remember the brand for the life of me. I don't know why this food thing matters to me, but I think its cool to find stuff in a foreign place that is sold at home too and vice versa. I think its partially why I loved m&ms, Hershey's Cookie and Cream bar, and snickers so much while I was in Uruguay although in the US I don't really eat them outside of Halloween.

6. This is off topic, but I'm 90% sure I'm going to South Korea when I graduate. I'll probably start a blog about it during the summer and I'll put a link in this blog in case anyone wants to hear more of my ramblings, but about a different part of the world. I don't know Korean at all except that I can say "hi", "kimchi", "thank you", "tiger" and "ski". At least the first three will actually be useful. Also, I'll be going for work *gasp* and not school so it will be very different from my study abroad experience. I'm excited.