Why Uruguay?

This post will kick off my writing marathon of 31 posts in 31 days. Prepare for nonsense and happy October!!

This question always follows the typical conversation of "Where are you from?", "Do you like Uruguay?", and "Are you travelling?" that every extranjero experiences when they meet natives of the country they just happened to arrive in. But my favorite question after "Are you from Chile?" to which I immediately think "did you just inadvertently call me a native Spanish speaker? Why yes, then. I am from Chile." But as my second favorite question, "Why Uruguay" I like it because it reminds me after seven months of catching my first glimpse of Uruguayan fields how I came to be here in Montevideo, Uruguay of all places.

So... Why Uruguay? I am a Spanish major seeking fluency through a year in Spanish, so hence the study abroad in the first place. Now, my heart has been set on Mexico ever since I discovered my passion for Spanish and the lucky people out there that happen to have been born in hispanic America. Unfortunately, the Mexican drug wars occurred right as the final deadline came which made my parents very uneasy and to be honest I was no where near prepared enough mentally to take such a big voyage away from everything I knew for an entire academic year. So, I got to sit on this decision to study abroad for the rest of the semester and during winter break while I got my mind straight and prepared to go somewhere in South America as that was the only way this late in the game that I could still study abroad for two consecutive semesters. (S.A. has reverse seasons compared to N.A. which means the first semester begins in March). The only thing I really knew was that I didn't want to attend a university located in a big and, even worse, touristy city. I remember my supervisor throwing out Uruguay because she had studied in Argentina and our school had a program nearby in Uruguay. (I don't think a program in Argentina was available at the time). I did some research online and decided Uruguay would be perfect.

Now that I'm here I get asked this question all the time by uruguayans who can't believe I would actually chose Uruguay over all the other cities and countries in Latin America. So, as those three months of winter break passed where I was constantly looking up new information on Uruguay and beginning to fall in love with it, my answer morphed into something like this: most students in the states go to either Mexico or Spain. I wanted to do something different and go some place less explored in South America. And can I be anymore different by going to Uruguay? No one I know has ever travelled to Uruguay and I certainly have never met any uruguayans. Plus, it would be a great opportunity to explore a place that is often called the Sweden of South America and educate people about it as I will be giving a presentation about my year abroad at my university when I return.

Despite the fact that Uruguay wasn't my first choice, I don't regret coming to Uruguay one bit. I like what I've gotten out of this experience academically and personally plus my Spanish is 400% better. Mission accomplished with three months to go.

Semana Internacional

The students at la Universidad de Montevideo got to experience the first ever International Week which took place this past Wednesday through Friday. A few of the international students participated by giving presentations on their home countries and universities. Honestly, I had class during both days of presentations so I can't really say too much about them though I was able to see a little bit of the Powerpoint slideshow by our Canadian students before I had to scoot to class. However, I did hear good things about these charlas from the domestic students who attended. I'll take their word for it.

Then on Friday we had everyone come together to eat food and play games from their respective countries. Unfortunately, this day didn't incite much participation and only three countries were represented. I'd like to think it was something about the event taking place in the evening on a Friday, but who knows. The uruguayans loved this day the most though. They were able to build a true mexican piñata thanks to Saira, enjoy an apple and grape strudel made by Nina from Germany, and dive into a marble cake decorated with M&Ms embedded in the frosting, chocolate chips cookies, and sugary sweet tea straight from the southern part of the States thanks to Sunny and me. I admit I only did the tea. My reasoning is this: I can barely cook a decent meal for myself yet alone a savory dish representative of my own country. Plus, the people needed something to drink. So, really I was thinking of the group as a whole with my decision to stick to beverage making. You're welcome.

In other news, more pictures have been added to the Picasa web albums if you haven't checked it out recently. They all still aren't up yet because my USB likes to says its full when its not

A Video

I just happened upon an informative video about Uruguay. By the way, the manner in which he says 'Uruguay', 'Montevideo' and 'Buenos Aires' drove me craazy. :P Disfruten!

Vete, Santa Rosa!

Santa Rosa would be the current rain storm our region of South America has been experiencing for four days now. Today I'm just staying in the apartment because it's just not fun outside. Though a good story did come out of all of this. Analia came in soaked two days ago and I asked her where was her umbrella. She proceeds to curse about how the wind was blowing her umbrella around till she said screw it and got completely soaked walking home from work umbrella-less. Probrecita!

Forunately, staying in yesterday and today has given me time to upload pictures. How exciting! Months after being here I finally am able to post pictures online for all you out there to see. Much organizing and many more pictures need to be added, but to put a better visual to my experience down here I present to you: Casey's Picasa Web Albums.

There are pictures from the Colonia trip a few weeks ago. We mostly just walked around and hung out, but it was a great time. By the way, it was freezing when we went. Don't let the pictures fool you. Then one day I went for a walk and managed to walk ALL the way to the port, from Artigas mind you, and barely catch a sunset. It was kind of foolish for me to do that seeing as how Ciudad Vieja is very dangerous at night, but you'll see I took the rambla route and managed to snap a few more cool pictures. And then, in Spanish class we had a day where an instructor came in and taught us the basic steps of tango and the same day I told Analia about it and she practiced with me in the apartment.

So, there. All about my new online photo albums and unblogged moments in one paragraph. Someone referred to my blogs as novels, so I'm trying to stop being so wordy. Enjoy the albums!

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