Ciao, mi corazon

And now it’s actually coming to an end. Today we’re leaving Montevideo and heading back to the United States. Where has the four months gone? I am not ready to leave—ready to go back and see everyone for a couple of weeks, but not ready to be gone from this place that I’ve come to call home. It is so beautiful here and I don’t want to leave behind the people that I now love. But then of course there are some things that I can’t wait to get back to… it’s been such a mixed bag of emotions these past few days. No matter what, I know it’s going to be strange readjusting to life back in the U.S. when I’ve come to love Uruguayan life so much.

Things I’m excited about coming home to:

1. The food. Even though I’ve just finally adjusted to the bland Uruguayan palate of greasy, way too cheesy pizza, flat hamburgers, pastas with little flavor, and ham and cheese on everything, I can’t wait to get home. I literally can’t remember what a turkey sandwich tastes like anymore. I can’t wait to have a variety of restaurants and different types of food again, rather than just four or five similar choices at every restaurant. Here at the casa we’ve all been talking about what we want as our first meal when we get home. Me? I want Papa John’s veggie pizza with a turkey sandwich from Subway and a Vanilla Sprite from Sonic. It’ll be a full first few days!

2. Family and friends. This one almost goes without saying, but pretty much the only downside of studying abroad has been missing my family and friends and only being able to talk through Skype on the casa’s shaky internet connection. I can’t wait to get back to big, American hugs when you see someone you know, rather than the more reserved Uruguayan kiss on the cheek—which has been cool for sure, but it can never replace hugs.

3. My car. Taking taxis and buses and walking everywhere has been a really cool experience, and it’s been great exercise. I haven’t even really missed my car at all while I’ve been here, actually. I’ve loved figuring out other kinds of transportation, like taking a bus or flying for road trips, but there’s still nothing like the freedom of driving your own car with the windows down while listening to music.

Things I’ll Miss:

1. The food. I know...I included it in things I won’t miss…but in a way, maybe I WILL miss it here. I’ll miss going to the markets on Sunday and buying bags full of fresh vegetables for super cheap, and I’ll DEFINITELY miss Raquel and Mariela’s cooking! We’ve been so spoiled to have such amazing chefs (and wonderful, sweet women) cook for us every day. I think I’ll probably crave their chivitos until the day I die. I’ve been trying to compile a recipe book from them so that we can cook “Raquel food” back in the States and have those memories from here.

2. My friends. There’s Diego, Emanuel, Natalia, Martín, Matías, Andrea, Mikaela, and little Estefania—the Uruguayan friends that I’ve made here, who have taught me everything from Spanish words to what it means to enjoy life. I’ll miss going out to sit by the statue of General Artigas and passing around a mate as we all sit and talk and laugh. The past few nights have been especially bitter sweet as we all started to realize that our amazing friendships are almost over. And then of course there are the wonderful friends that I’ve been blessed to live with. Living in a big community has been one of the coolest experiences of my life, and one of the best parts of studying abroad. I’m not sure how the 4 guys managed to put up with us 16 girls the whole time, but it has been so much fun! I’m going to miss always having someone around to talk to or hang out with, and I might even miss the constantly noisy house, even at 3 AM when I’m trying to sleep!

3. The piropos. For some of the girls here, this may be something they’re looking forward to leaving, but I’ve really gotten a lot of laughs out of it while we’ve been here. The piropos are guys who stand on the streets and have made it an art form to whistle or yell compliments at girls who walk by. They’ll say funny things in English sometimes if they overhear you not speaking Spanish…”You’re beautiful!” or “I like blondes!” They never say a word when I’m out walking with Lawson or any other guy, but if I’m by myself or with a group of girls, we get funny compliments all the time. Sometimes it makes you feel good when you’re just in sweatpants with no makeup on and you know you don’t look pretty but you still get whistled at anyways. I think I’ll miss the piropos.

4. Traveling. Here we’ve been so blessed to be able to travel so many places…I hope that this won’t stop when I get back to the States. I hope I’ll still take weekends to go on roadtrips with friends or go camping or see cool things within the U.S. There’s a lot in this world to see and I hope I don’t forget that once I get back home.

We're about to have chapel as a group for the last time and then we're leaving for the airport. This time tomorrow, I'll be back in the States. I think it'll almost be more culture shock getting home than it was arriving here in Uruguay...I've adjusted to it and come to love it so much that the thought of leaving is really hard. But I can't wait to see you all again, and thanks for reading my blog all semester! I love you all very much!

See you soon!

Y viajo mucho...

By this point, I've been to six new countries in the past couple of months: Uruguay, Argentina, Chile, Peru, Brazil, and Paraguay. I've never traveled so much in my life and it's kind of becoming a part of me now. Back in Abilene, the world seemed so big. I would have never really thought it possible to just take a trip across the U.S., or to Europe, or to anywhere really just for the sake of traveling--in a way I felt closed in. But coming here has changed everything for me and now the world feels so much more accessible and real. I'm finding that every where I go, there are both good people and problems, and when I hear about them on the news I really feel them now. Traveling really changes the way you see the world. "Culture" has always been kind of an enigmatic thing for me; it was something that I was always told was a big part of me, but I never really felt it, and I figured that ultimately, people are pretty much the same everywhere. I'm finding that people do feel the same things all over the world, but their reasons for feeling them are much different--and that is culture. Culture is in every little part of a person and it shapes so much of what you think and do, and when you're in one that's different from your own it stretches you and shapes you and challenges you in so many ways.

Brazil was beautiful and breathtaking. Iguazu Falls was indescribable, but I have a whole 4 gigabyte memory card full of pictures to prove how hard I tried to capture its beauty! Even then, I couldn't capture it completely. My favorite part of the trip was the morning we spent in a Guarani village--the Guarani are indigenous Brazilian people who still live as "Indians" (for lack of a better word) trying to preserve their culture. The chief came out to meet us and took us around the village, telling us about their heritage and showing us things like the jaguar traps that they've built, the plants they use to make medicines, and the school they've built for their children to learn about their culture. It opened my eyes in so many ways because from an American point of view, you look at them and feel bad because they're living in "poverty." But the funny thing is, they don't feel like they are! They have small "modern" houses built for them right next to their huts, but they just hang their laundry to dry in their houses and live in their huts instead! Most of the time they don't even use the modern houses that others have built for them because they prefer their way of life instead. It's amazing. The Guarani are such beautiful people and I was so humbled to be able to visit their village and see life from their point of view.

It's been a couple of weeks since we got back to Montevideo, but I haven't been blogging because I've been trying to really be present here. We only have ten days left in South America, and the thought of that is so sad to me that I'm trying to live every moment that I possibly can doing all of the things here that I love. I've been going out with my Uruguyan friends to drink mate in the plaza at night, visiting the markets during the day, and hanging around the casa with the wonderful people that I live with. Oh, the people here--that will be what I miss most. These past few weeks, Casa ACU has finally become like a family. We've been growing closer and getting to know one another and it's been so much fun. There have been frustrations, as there always will be when you're living in a house with 16 females and 4 males (I don't know how those poor 4 guys have managed to put up with all of us!), but living with my friends has been one of my favorite parts of this whole experience. After this semester, I'll be living in a house of my own and it's sad to think that I'll probably never be able to live in a big community like this again. I love eating all our meals together, watching The Office together, always having someone to talk to, and living with our professors so that if we oversleep in the morning they just come wake us up. As much as I miss everyone back home, I don't even want to think about leaving these people yet.

P.S. I miss you

81 days down and only 30 more to go! I'm actually starting to get a little homesick. We're in Brazil right now on a group trip, and as usual, it is beautiful. We saw Iguazu Falls yesterday--the second largest waterfalls in the world after Victoria Falls in Africa. They were breathtaking and powerful and awe-inspiring, right there in the jungle with roaring water around us. Ever since I was a little girl in elementary school and we first studied the rainforest, I've wanted to be here. Iguazu Falls is home to the largest variety of butterflies in the world and they were everywhere. We saw giant spiders and quati, cute little animals that look like raccoons but are more like mink. We're going into Argentina today to see the other side of the waterfalls and to get closer to them (Iguazu Falls is the junction between Brazil, Argentina and Paraguay. We're going to Paraguay tomorrow).

But even with all of the beauty and the incredible opportunity to travel, which I have always wanted, I'm really starting to miss home. I especially miss my family--most of all my sisters and brother Isaac. It's sad not being there for Chaille's senior year or being there to watch while Isaac's growing up so much and getting excited about things like photography and music. Even though I'm still having the time of my life here, I find myself thinking more and more about the good things that are waiting when we finally get back to the States. I've been planning the garden that I want to plant when I finally get to move into my (very first!) own house in June, and I keep thinking about how I want to take a road trip around the U.S. with my sisters to see all of the beautiful things close to home. The first few months here, I really missed American food and little cultural things. Now those are all starting to blend together as "memories of the United States" in my head and I can't distinctly remember what Papa John's pizza or my dad's grilled vegetables tasted like--I just remember that I loved them. The things that are starting to stick out the most in my head are the people, and I'm finding that I really miss you all a lot. I'm still fully enjoying myself here and cherishing all of the opportunities I'm being given, but the trip is also starting to reach its downhill slope, where all of us are starting to think more about going home again. I really miss you all and love you a lot! I'll write more when we get home from Brazil this weekend.

I've never seen so many llamas in my life!

We got home from spring break in Peru about a week ago, but I've finally had time to sit down and write about it! The trip was amazing but exhausting, and I had to spend all last week catching up on homework and sleep! The flight took a long time--I didn't realize it, but the distance from Montevideo to Cuzco is about the same distance as Miami to Cuzco. One really interesting thing that we've learned here: there's a famous Uruguayan artist from Montevideo named Joaquin Torres Garcia who started this really cool idea of drawing the world upside down. After all, the direction "north" is just relative--if you were looking at the world from space, you'd have no way of saying which way is "up." And since Europeans were the first ones to create world maps, they made their land on top. So every once in awhile here you'll see an upside down world, symbolizing the idea that South America can be just as important and powerful as the European world. Interesting, isn't it?


Anyways, the reason that I've put off writing about Peru for so long is that honestly, I can't think of any words to do it justice. I can't describe what it felt like to be hiking through the Andes mountains; to be standing at one of the New Seven Wonders of the World, seeing a city built by Incan architectural geniuses, a city that was never even discovered by the Spanish conquerors; to be eating dinner with my friends at a restaurant on a cliff overlooking the Pacific Ocean; to be surging through rapids down a river in the mountains. There are no words for it. Peru was absolutely a once-in-a-lifetime experience, and I really hope that everyone who reads this gets to go someday.

I went with Lawson, Ashley, Sam, Sara, and Rachel, and it was so much fun getting closer to all of them through our nine days of traveling together. First we flew through Santiago, Chile, (the first of four national capitols that we would be in during that nine days!) before landing in Lima, Peru, and spending a couple of days there. While in Lima, we stayed in the beautiful and wealthy Miraflores district, where we took a city tour to see the beautiful old Spanish cathedrals and town square. Probably the funnest part of the tour was when we saw the "fertility fountain" in the town square. It's a huge, beautiful old fountain where women go to dip their hands in hopes of healing their infertility. Also, the city of Lima fills the fountain with Pisco Sour (the national drink which is something like lemonade with vodka) once a year and all of the people get to drink from it! We also got to go into the catacombs underneath an old cathedral, where thousands of people were buried a long time ago. It was so creepy, seeing so many real bones and being so far underneath the earth! And it was also so humbling, to realize that each of those skulls was at one time part of a living, breathing person with hopes and dreams, and that my life won't last forever either. Sometimes it's nice to remember that you're not immortal. It makes life a lot sweeter.

A few other things we did in Lima: see the Watchmen movie because movies in Montevideo come about about 3 months later than in the U.S. and Lawson's been dying to see it, get a donut at a Dunkin Donuts in the Lima mall (I don't even really like donuts normally, but we've been so starved of American food that it was like a gift from the gods to find an American restaurant), and went shopping at the artisan markets around town. Seriously, the trip to Peru is worth it if only for the shopping! They have the coolest souvenirs and crafts that I have ever seen at these enormous markets, and they are all so cheap. I bought a beautiful handmade cloth suitcase and completely filled it with amazing souvenirs and crafts for everyone back home (plus Ashley and I got a bunch of things for our house in Abilene that we get to move into in 62 days!) and in total I spent less than $100 on all of it. It was so great.

After staying in Lima we flew to Cuzco for five days, and that was where the real adventure started. Cuzco is up in the Andes mountains, pretty high above sea level, so you have to be really careful to avoid altitude sickness. We drank lots of tea made from coca leaves to help settle our stomachs and keep from getting sick, and luckily we all managed to avoid it except for Lawson who was already sick with a cold almost the whole trip. Cuzco was another world from anything I've ever seen. The people there were tiny and we stuck out as obvious tourists with our white skin and the amazed looks on our faces. The food there was incredible, and people on the streets would come up to you and beg you to eat at their restaurant, and they wouldn't go away until you said yes. Luckily, you could get an entire meal--appetizer, main dish, drink, and dessert--for 10 soles, which is about $3! No matter where you were in the town, you could see the gorgeous Andes mountains in the background. One night while walking back to the hotel after dinner, we got caught in a rainstorm and it was just beautiful, with the cold rain and the smell of mountain air and the six of us running through the cobblestone streets. When we got back to the hotel we were soaking wet so we all changed into pajamas, pushed two of our twin-sized beds together, and cuddled up to watch The Emperor's New Groove--it was perfect since we were in Cuzco! That movie is even funnier when you can actually understand so many of the little Peruvian details. Like llamas. They were everywhere in Peru! When we were at Machu Picchu, they were just grazing around in the ruins, eating grass and enjoying themselves. We toured the city of Cuzco, traveling outside of it a little bit to see some of the other, less famous but still amazing Incan ruins, and saw an enormously gaudy Spanish cathedral whose inside was completely covered in gold, altars, and beautiful paintings. The only thing that wasn't perfect about Cuzco, though, was that there were street children and people in poverty everywhere you looked. Most of them were selling different things--crafts, handmade dolls, or paintings--and they would follow you around, begging you to buy from them. So a lot of times, I did, but it's just not possible to buy something from everyone that asks...especially when after you buy from one, five others rush over to beg you to buy from them too. And that was a little heartbreaking. Peru is such a beautiful place to see, probably my favorite place I've ever been, but it also reminded me of how very fortunate we are to have all of the opportunities that we do--and not only me, but almost anyone who lives in the United States and has plenty to eat and a place to live.

After spending a few days in Cuzco, we took a four-hour train ride to Aguas Calientes, the town outside of which Machu Picchu is located. I took about a million pictures as we sped through the mountains, but not a single one could do justice to the view. Once we were at Machu Picchu, all I could do was be amazed. The architecture, the history, and the beauty of it all was breathtaking. (Literally. At the high altitude, it was really difficult to breath as we had to hike up the mountain for parts!) We had a guide who was a young guy from the area and he spoke English pretty well. There were some pretty entertaining tourists at Machu Picchu--huge groups of older Chinese people, a man in indigenous garb carrying a wooden flute and taking dramatic flute-playing pictures from every angle in Machu Picchu, and middle-aged white women standing at the Incan sun dial with their hands outstretched, trying to capture the "energy" of the place. After our tour, which was honestly too incredible to describe, we decided to hike up into the mountains to try to find the Incan bridge. By then it had rained and most of the tourists had left for the day, so we were able to quietly enjoy the park by ourselves. We took tons of pictures, hiked along part of the Incan trail, and eventually found the Incan bridge just as it was time for us to head back before the park closed. We spent the night in Aguas Calientes and the next day ventured out to find the hot springs for which the town is named. Along the way, we ran across a butterfly garden, a museum full of Machu Picchu artifacts, and a botanical garden, all of which we took the time to visit. We finally arrived at the hot springs in the afternoon and spent hours in the pools there, relaxing in the springs as every once in awhile it would rain, and the combination of cold water falling with the hot spring water we were swimming in was incredible. The next day we took the train back to Cuzco, where we spent a day white water rafting in the rapids of the Utuamba River before flying home through Chile (where we spent five hours sleeping in chairs in the airport) and finally returning to Montevideo.

Wow, this blog turned out to be long. If you've managed to make it this far, I think you deserve this as a "thank you":


So to wrap this all up, Lawson and I celebrated our first anniversary on Sunday! I woke up in the morning to a slideshow of photos of us next to my bed, along with a castle built out of my favorite chocolate bars. He asked me if I wanted to go to a fancy restaurant to celebrate, but all I really wanted was Subway. But once we got there we found out that Subway is closed here on Sundays. We ended up going to a food court instead, since we were tired from walking, but it was wonderful anyways! It's been such a blessing to be able to be here and travel together.

I love and miss you all very much and hope that everything is well back in the U.S.!

La Vida Uruguaya

As much as I love all of the traveling and once-in-a-lifetime things that we're doing, I think my favorite parts of living here in Uruguay are the simple, day to day things. This morning it rained so Raquel and Mariela made tortas fritas for breakfast. It's a tradition here in Montevideo to make them when it rains and I love them; they're kind of like a fried pancake and they're delicious with cinnamon and homemade whipped cream called chantilly. You know it's going to be a good day when you wake up to the smell of tortas fritas cooking in the kitchen.

The other day Ashley and I went to the mall to find a bookstore so that Sam could buy a kid's novel in Spanish. While he was looking for a book, we sat down in the toddler's section next to a little girl who looked two or three years old, about Adah's age. She pulled books off the shelves and wanted us to read them to her, but the funny thing was that she ended up teaching us Spanish! Just like I do with Adah in English, we pointed to pictures and asked her, 'Que es esto?' She'd say 'Un avion!' and point at an airplane or 'Un arbol!' and point at a tree. It was just the cutest thing because we'd repeat what she had said and she would say 'No. Un avi-on' if we had pronounced something incorrectly. Eventually her dad came over and looked at us a little strangely. 'Estamos aprendiendo espanol!' I told him. 'Con ella?' he asked. 'Si.' It was a sweet and also humbling experience to realize that a two year old here knows more than we do. Even with as much as we've learned, we have a long way to go!

I have become an expert in packing. Our flight for Peru leaves tomorrow so I've spent the afternoon trying to get everything ready, and I've managed to pack everything I'll need for the nine day trip into my one hiking backpack. I'm pretty proud of myself--I'm starting to feel like I'm actually a world traveler. It's about time!

I just didn't feel right posting a blog without a picture, so here's one from horseback riding in Rocha the other weekend!

Rocha

This weekend Lawson and I sat on a beautiful beach in La Poloma early in the morning to watch the sun rise over the Atlantic and celebrate a day that doesn't technically exist. Our 11-month-iversary was February 29 but because it's not a leap year, the calendar skipped right over it. We thought that was pretty cool so we celebrated by waking up at 6:30 AM to see the sunrise. We are so, so blessed to be having all of the opportunities that we are. This weekend our whole group took a trip to Rocha, the beautiful eastern coastal part of Uruguay, and it was definitely the most fun trip we've taken so far. We stayed in a town called La Poloma, where our hotel was on the beach and we could open the windows and fall asleep to the sound of the waves at night.

We didn't have classes on Friday so we left that morning and had a four hour bus trip to Rocha. After arriving, we went to the coolest place I've ever been to, called Cabo Polonio. It's on the ocean and it is surrounded by miles of huge sand dunes so hardly any people live there, and the only way to get in is by riding a monster truck or a horse through the dunes. We all piled into a big truck and then spent the day in Cabo Polonio seeing the lighthouse, buying handmade crafts from the few locals, and relaxing on the beach. One of my favorite things there was a little house painted teal and covered in a mural of the ocean with tons of little mirrors to make it glitter in the light. I just kept thinking about how housing associations back in the States would never allow something like that, but it was just so beautiful.

On Saturday we woke up early to go take a boat down a river to visit a forest of Ombu trees. Ombu are amazing--genetically, they are actually classified as grass rather than trees, and they have large holes in the trunks big enough for our entire group to climb inside. Ombu are only found in Uruguay so it was really special to be able to see them. And now I can say that I've been inside of a tree--or a grass. Whichever way you say it, it sounds pretty cool. The boat ride down the river was just beautiful. As far as you could see, there was no "civilization." Along the banks there were palm trees and cows...something you'd only ever see together in Uruguay! We had lunch at an estancia, a small ranch taking care of all kinds of wild birds and animals. They had a one-armed monkey who had been an escaped pet from Montevideo and I got to hold his hand. It was precious. The owners cooked one of their own lambs for us for lunch but I couldn't really eat it because I felt so bad after seeing them!

After lunch we went to Punta del Diablo to see the Fortaleza Santa Teresa, a fort built in 1726 so it's actually 50 years older than the United States! We're learning a lot of South American history here in our classes and it makes me sad to learn some of the terrible and wonderful things that have gone on, yet we are never taught about it in school in the States. There's so much to learn in the world but life is too short to learn it all, I guess.

We spent Sunday riding horses through the countryside and along the beach in La Poloma. I've been so sore and a little sunburnt the past two days because of it, but it was an incredible time. Yesterday I had to carry around a pillow to sit on in my classes because I was so sore! Lawson's horse was a little wild so occasionally he'd get left behind the group and then have to run to catch up. It was funny--he looked like a man from a romance novel, galloping across the field with his hair blowing in the wind. My horse belonged to a twelve-year-old boy who worked at the horse riding place; he had received it just the day before as a gift for working there for two years. That's a long time to work somewhere when you're only twelve years old. But his horse was sweet and I was glad that he was so well-trained since I haven't ridden a horse in years. We got back to Montevideo Sunday night and have spent the past two days catching up on homework and looking forward to another long weekend this week. Next weekend, starting on Friday the 13th, we'll be heading out to Peru for ten days!

The view while boating down the river to the Ombu forest

I have another album of pictures up on facebook from our trip this weekend. If you want to check them out, you can click here.

Chaille turns eighteen tomorrow. I wish I could be there. Happy birthday little sis! I love you!

My friends Zanessa, Carolyn, Sarah, and I on the beach in Punta del Diablo.

No puedo hablar ingles!

It has been a beautifully relaxing week. It's still Carnaval here (Uruguay boasts for having the longest Carnaval in South America) but this was the big week, the final week, when most natives here go out of town to escape the craziness. Some of our teachers had also gone out of town and we got a couple of classes canceled this week, which was a welcome and much-needed break. One problem, though, is that because of Carnaval week the laundry place has also been closed...so right now I'm sitting here in the last pair of clean clothes that I have, some pajamas. This afternoon it'll be open, though, so I'm more excited about the idea of clean laundry than I think anyone should be!

We've really been enjoying our relaxing week here. The other day Ashley, Sam, Ben, and I went walking around town and found a pretty little park by the beach with a small river going through it and some pedal boats for rent. So yesterday we went back with Lawson and Sara also and we spent the afternoon riding pedal boats and enjoying the sunshine. There were little islands in the river with just a ton of bunnies, chickens, and ducks running around--it was the cutest thing! People put lettuce and food on the islands for the animals, so the rabbits were huge and fat...they were actually bigger than the chickens, believe it or not! One thing I love about Montevideo is the parrots. If you go to a park in the U.S., you'll probably see lots of ugly black birds flying around, but here you can see flocks of pretty green parrots! I love the sounds they make and it makes me so happy that here they're flying free and not trapped in a pet store somewhere.

Yesterday was Ash Wednesday so my classmates who are taking the Bible class put together an Ash Wednesday service for everyone in the casa. It was really beautiful, and then I got to walk around with ashes on my forehead for most of the day! The people in the Bible class (which is almost everyone except for me and a couple other people) were encouraged to give up something for Lent, and as crazy as this sounds, most of my friends decided to give up speaking English--Lawson included! So yesterday was a very difficult and at the same time very rewarding day. By Easter forty days from now, we're all going to be so much better at Spanish! My Spanish isn't quite good enough yet that I could entirely give up English, but every day from 7-9 PM I've decided to do it, as well as trying to speak it as often as possible with my friends. Until you've spent an entire day intensively learning another language, I'm pretty sure you don't know what it means to be mentally exhausted. Learning another language takes up so much brain power that by the end of the day I honestly feel like I can't think anymore. It's so much fun, though, and I feel so accomplished when I really learn a new word or when I can carry on a conversation with someone.

Last Friday I got to have dinner with the president of the central Uruguayan bank! The ACU honors program paid for Sara, Ben, and I to go to a really, really nice restaurant that served all kinds of delicious meats to have dinner and talk with this economist, Walter Cancela, and his wife, who is an artist here in Montevideo. Aside from the conversation being very interesting--I learned that Uruguay's economy is actually doing really well right now, even though the rest of the world's isn't. They have the fastest growing economy in South America and the unemployment rate is ridiculously low, something like 3% for heads of household--the food was amazing. I really don't like to eat meat very much, but the waiters kept bringing us samurai swords stacked with every kind of meat I've ever seen! There was tons of steak and asado and even cow tongue (called "sweet meat" in Spanish). So it was really fun to get all dressed up and get to talk with such an interesting person while eating steak off a sword.

Tomorrow we're leaving to go on a group trip to Rocha, which is about five hours north of Montevideo. It's a beautiful, sparsely-populated beach area and I'm really looking forward to going. One of the places that we're going to see, Cabo Polonio, is impossible to get to unless you ride monster trucks or horses because of the enormous sand dunes! Hardly any people actually live there, but there are beautiful beaches, and I'm really looking forward to going there!

America Latina, Mi Amor.

I am in love with South America. I love the people, the history, the slower rhythm of the city, the beauty of the Uruguayan countryside, and the way it feels to relax on the beach after a long day in class. I love the smell of the rain in the courtyard at our casa and the taste of Raquel and Mariela's homemade food. I love the way it seems like there's always at least one person in our house playing guitar or singing and the way it feels to finally know my way around the city. I can't believe we're already a third of the way through our time here. Right now I think I'll never want to leave.

Yesterday we went to a palace! Well, sort of. We went to the Palacio Legislativo, which is where the Uruguayan Congress meets, and it really was like a palace! Uruguay's Palacio Legislativo is the most expensive legislative building in all of South America. It was built in the early 1900's, when Uruguay was incredibly wealthy--even wealthier than the United States (it took two U.S. dollars to equal one Uruguayan peso!). I'm not even exaggerating when I say that all of the walls are made out of marble. There are 53 different kinds of marble making up the walls in one room alone, and all of the stone used was from Uruguay. The whole palace is just absolutely beautiful. We didn't get to spend much time there because we misunderstood the time our tour started and arrived halfway through it but I'd love to go back sometime to look around, and it's only a twenty minute walk from our casa.

Mi Buenos Aires Querido!

I finally have a few minutes to sit down and write so I guess I should tell you all about Argentina! We got back home to Montevideo around midnight Sunday night after spending the past week in Buenos Aires. It was so much fun but now we all have a huge amount of homework to catch up on. Study abroad is probably the most incredibly fun thing I have ever done in my life, but sometimes I forget that "study abroad" actually means studying...so it's a lot of work too. So for now I'll try to just give you an abbreviated version!

In the past week I:

- rode a train for the first time in my life
- used up a new page in my passport
- saw the world’s largest keychain and pencil collections
- walked across the widest street in the world
- saw paintings by Picasso, Rembrant, Monet, and Renoir
- actually went to a capital building that is painted pink!

While we were in Buenos Aires, we took a train to Tigre, a beautiful little town outside of the city with a river and lots of craft markets and pretty things like that. Tigre was a lot of fun but I was actually a little disappointed by the train...I've always thought that all trains were like the ones in Harry Potter, with neat little compartments and a lady coming by to sell Bertie Botts Every Flavor Jelly Beans. It was actually just like a subway--kind of dirty and crowded and it stopped a lot--and on our way there we had to sit in the luggage compartment (where there were no seats) because we got there right before the train left. It was fun though and I really enjoyed Tigre. We took a boat ride down the river there and it was so beautiful and relaxing; the riverbank had some little houses and hostels and I think that the only way to get to them was by boat...it was cool. I also really enjoyed the craft market in Tigre--I bought a hand-painted leather purse for 50 Argentinean pesos, which is less than $15, and spent some time talking to a man who makes wooden instruments. I told him I was a music student in the U.S. and he showed me how he made his wooden saxophone and we even talked for a while in Spanish! I'm really learning a lot here and it's so exciting when I realize that I'm able to communicate with the people I meet.

Some highlights of Buenos Aires:

• Making new friends We spent some time with a youth group in Buenos Aires, just playing futbol and going out for dinner. It's cool to see how much we can have in common even despite all of the language and cultural differences. Also, Lawson and I made friends with a guy on Florida Street who makes beautiful jewelry by hand. He was from Peru and spoke no English, so we got to practice our Spanish with him. We watched him make a silver bracelet for awhile as we talked and he had a wooden flute that he let me play!
  
  
• Spending our free day seeing Casa Rosada and the Buenos Aires Zoo Casa Rosada is the Argentinean equivalent of the White House--except that it's pink! It's where the president does her work and also where Evita Peron did her famous speeches back when her husband was president. We also saw the Zoo on our free day, and even though I've never really liked zoos I had a great time. I saw an albino walabee and a hippo for the first time...I never realized how enormous hippos are!
  
  
• Shopping on Florida Street It's one of the biggest shopping streets in Buenos Aires and the streets are lined with vendors selling all kinds of souvenirs and handmade things. I bought a really awesome hand-knit shirt and of course some cool souvenirs for you guys! (Let me know if there's anything in particular that you want while I'm here and I would love to get it for you!)
  
  
• Seeing a tango show We went to dinner as a group at a really nice restaurant that had a tango show while we ate. Last week at Casa ACU, some instructors came to teach us tango and we had a blast so it was really fun to watch some professionals dancing. I really want to learn how to dance like that while I'm here!

I posted an entire album of pictures from our trip on facebook, so if you're interested you can check them out by clicking here! I love and miss you all very much!

Yemanja, Llamadas, and More Punta del Este!

It's been another adventure-filled week here in South America! We are having such an awesome experience here--I can't believe we've already been here for three weeks! It feels like we've been here forever because we've already grown and learned so much but at the same time, it is already going by so quickly.

One of the most interesting things I got to see this week was a religious celebration called Yemanja. Only about 2% of Uruguay's population follows this religion, but huge crowds of people came down to Montevideo on Tuesday night to celebrate and watch the people celebrating. Yemanja is the name of the "mother of all the gods" in this polytheistic religion and she is represented by the ocean; so thousands of people came down to the Montevideo coast right near our casa to honor her by putting their offerings into the sea. Some of them built small boats and filled them with fruit, flowers, candles and other things to float out into the water and others wore long white dresses and robes and waded out to place their offerings in the sea as well. Some people leave silver jewelry or cakes as well as the fruit and flowers--it was so interesting to watch. I thought that it was really beautiful in its own way, just the idea of honoring the goddess of the sea. However, we went to the beach yesterday after class and it was just disgusting because of all the offerings that had been left in the water a few days ago. So we probably won't be going back to that beach for a few weeks, until all of the trash has been cleaned up.

Carnaval week ended on Friday night with the Llamadas parade. Up until this year, Llamadas has been one extremely long parade starting at about 9 PM and lasting until about 5 AM--but this year, the parade officials decided to split it into two nights (Thursday and Friday) because too many people got too rowdy after drinking all night long and being out in the streets. We got to go to the Thursday night Llamadas parade and it was such a cool experience! I was going to post pictures here for you but then I decided that a video would probably give you a better idea of what it's like...I wish it wasn't so dark and the sound was better quality because there's really nothing quite like actually being there. I wish you all could have seen it!

Yesterday we finally got to go back to Punta del Este for our group trip! It was an absolutely beautiful day--a nice contrast to last weekend when we were there!--and we got to see a lot of really interesting things. A very famous Uruguayan artist named Carlos Paez Vilaro built a home (more like a castle!) on the beach in Punta del Este and named it Casapueblo. Carlos Vilaro is an extremely respected person here by a lot of people because most of his artwork focuses on blacks, poor people, the struggles and life of lower-class society, and women, and he has spent his life traveling the world and experiencing so many different cultures and helping people in need. His home, Casapueblo, is probably the most beautiful and interesting building I've ever seen. He actually sculpted it himself with the help of friends and it looks like an enormous white sandcastle overlooking the ocean. Part of it is open now as a museum for his artwork but we weren't able to go inside of a lot of it because I think it's still his home. If you get a chance, you should look of photos of Casapueblo online...it's a fascinating place. We went to a park for a picnic lunch--it was really ghetto and I think that if I had played there as a kid I would have had nightmares from all the giant, creepy statues of weird animals, but all the kids there seemed to be having a great time. It was pretty funny. Afterwards we went to the beach and spent another day playing in the enormous waves and working on our tans. Almost everyone got extremely sunburnt; I'm pretty sure we just haven't gotten used to the hole-in-the-ozone-over-Uruguay thing yet! After we got home some of us pushed our beds together and stayed up late watching Breakfast at Tiffany's on my laptop. One thing I really love about being here is living with my friends and always having someone close to hang out with and talk to. All of these experiences wouldn't be half as fun without having these people to share it with.

Today we're going to the marketplace and trying to catch up on our loads of homework! On Wednesday we're leaving for Buenos Aires, Argentina for a week! I'm really, really excited about that--we've heard that it's the "Paris of South America" so I can't wait to see it for myself. Ashley, Sam, Lawson and I have finally decided where we're going to go for our ten day spring break next month--we're going to go to Peru to see the Incan ruins in the rainforest at Machu Picchu! We talked to a travel agent and she's able to get us a really good deal so we're going to spend a few days in Lima, a few days in Cuzco, a day and a night at Machu Picchu, and maybe see a few other things in Peru. Sam wants to go back-packing up the Incan trail and I think that sounds like a lot of fun so we're going to try to do that also. I really can't get over how blessed we are to be here.

I love and miss you all so much! I hope things are going well back in the U.S. of A!

La semana pasada

Wow, what an eventful week this has been! I'm sorry that it's taken me so long to update--classes are finally starting to get a little busy and on top of that we've been doing tons of exciting things every day. So get ready because I'm about to try to compress a week's worth of incredible experiences into one blog!

I'll start with something important that's going on in Uruguay: the entire nation has been experiencing a severe drought for months now, and that's really not good considering that this country's economy and a lot of its people are very dependent on agriculture and cattle-raising. Because of the drought, a lot of animals have been dying, a lot of places are under severe water restrictions, and a lot of people have been suffering. So around our casa the past week, we've all been praying for rain in Uruguay. And finally on Thursday night, it started raining! It was wonderful to have all of the windows in the casa open to our courtyard so that we could smell the rain coming down. The people here have really needed the rain.

One problem with the rain, though: we had planned a group trip on Friday to Punta del Este, a beautiful beach town about two hours away. Punta del Este is one of the most famous beach areas in South America, and we had canceled Friday classes and planned to go there to spend the day on an island. Because of the rain, our professors decided to cancel our trip and wait until next weekend so that we could really enjoy it. However, five of my friends and I had booked a room in a hostel in Punta del Este so that we could stay the night there and spend Saturday at the beach also. Since we had reservations already and classes were still canceled for Friday, we decided to sleep in a little on Friday and then go ahead with our trip that afternoon. We took a bus from the central bus station here in Montevideo and the two-and-a-half-hour bus ride only cost us about $7 in U.S. money! I'm really grateful that things are so inexpensive here! The drive through the Uruguayan countryside was absolutely beautiful. I haven't seen anything other than city since I've been here, but I'm realizing now that most of this country is rural--completely the opposite of Montevideo. There were hills and cows and little houses here and there. I loved it. Once we finally got to Punta del Este, we walked a few blocks to find our hostel and it turned out to be just a cute little house in a neighborhood that a couple of surfer guys from Argentina rent out to people for only $25 a night. It was tiny and some things (like the toilet and the bedroom window) were definitely falling apart, but it had a lot of character and it was perfect for my friends and I. We got a six-person room with bunk beds and despite the mosquitoes that flew in through the open doors and windows all night, we really had a lot of fun. The guys who owned the place were very relaxed and very nice--even after our check-out time at 11 AM on Saturday, they told us that we were welcome to stay as long as we wanted and that we could even go out and spend more time on the beach and then come back to the hostel to take showers if we wanted. We spent Friday evening swimming at the beach in the most enormous waves that any of us had ever seen. I don't think I've ever had so much fun swimming as we did that night playing in the enormous waves and letting ourselves get pulled out to sea. It occurred to me that night that in the past year, I've had the opportunity to swim in the Atlantic Ocean on both sides of the Equator--once last spring in New York off of Long Island, and this spring off the coast of Uruguay. I have been incredibly blessed. After going to the beach, we wandered around town until we found (to our amazement) a Burger King! We were all starving after swimming that we didn't really care that we ended up spending close to $7 on a hamburger! It was the best Burger King that I have ever tasted. They use real Uruguayan beef here and season the burgers, so it's a perfect blend of Uruguayan and all-American taste like ketchup and onions. I'm not sure if I'll ever have such a good burger for the rest of my life. We stayed up late into the night talking and laughing and getting eaten by mosquitoes--I've been so blessed with such good friends here--and when we finally got up Saturday morning we decided to head out to see "The Hand." La Mano, a giant sculpture of a hand coming out of the sand on the beach, is a famous landmark in Punta del Este so of course we had to go see it and take pictures. (This picture is Lawson and I next to La Mano.) After seeing it, we all went for lunch at a fantastic pizzeria called El Mundo della Pizza before heading back to Montevideo. It was a wonderful and relaxing weekend and a great change of pace after spending the last couple weeks of our life in the city.

I guess I'm not really going in chronological order here, but another part of our week's plans were also thrown off by the much-needed rain. You may have heard of Carnaval...it's a really big deal here in South America, especially in Brazil, Argentina, and Uruguay. The closest thing in the United States that I can compare it to is Mardi Gras, and even that isn't exactly the same. It started as a tradition among black slaves where they would gather in "tribes" and perform traditional dances and play los tambores (the drums) in groups. Now Carnaval has become an elaborate extension of this tradition, with even more elaborate costumes and dancers called vedettes who really don't wear much clothing at all. The opening parade for Carnaval was supposed to happen this past Thursday and we had front-row seats to see it; sadly, it had to be postponed because of the rain. So we finally got to go last night, on Sunday, after hearing so much about it and listening to lectures about the history of Carnaval for the past week. (We even had an influential local candombe dancer come to our casa to try to teach us how to dance the candombe, which is the traditional dance in the parade. That was definitely an experience--it wasn't easy to learn but we all had a blast trying!) Once we finally got to see the parade, it was really cool! The costumes were so colorful and beautiful, the drummers and dancers were amazing, and all the little kids who went with their families to see the parade were probably the best part. When the candombe groups came along, they would just run into the streets to join them and throw confetti at them. They were adorable. I took so many pictures at the parade--I wish I could post them all up here! This coming Thursday is Llamadas, the closing part of Carnaval. There will be another parade with more candombe and we have tickets to see it also! I'm really excited--I'm loving this part of the Uruguayan culture!

This past Sunday we got to try out another part of the culture with some of the wonderful people at the church here. It's called an asado, and basically it's like a big barbecue. Everyone here does asado, and each family has their own way of cooking the meat, and they will swear that it is the best. Asados are almost always done on the roofs of houses because most people don't have yards here in the city, so we had our asado on the roof of our casa also. I'm not really a fan of meat so the asado wasn't really my favorite, but it smelled amazing and it was so sweet of the church people to do that for us. Afterwards we had a devotional on the roof and sang church songs together. Sometimes we'd sing the same song twice--first they'd sing it in Spanish and then we'd sing it in English. It was so cool to see how a mutual love for God can overcome language and cultural barriers. It was a great conclusion to a wonderful night.

On Tuesday I took my first rock-climbing class at the YMCA. A few other girls and I have paid for memberships here and we got to go to some classes for the first time this week. Pablo is the rock-climbing instructor and he speaks English very well so we had fun making a new friend. He introduced us to all of the people in the class--all mostly guys close to our age--and told us to speak only Spanish with them and let them practice English with us. Pablo showed us how to fasten our harnesses and tie knots in the ropes and we got to climb for the first time! It was such a workout but also such a blast! We're going to start going every Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday night.

I hope you all are having a wonderful and blessed time wherever you are! One thing I've learned from being here: it doesn't matter where you are because if you look at life as an adventure, it will be. I miss and love you all very much! I'll try to be better about updating more often these next few days.

Futbol y Cerro de Montevideo

Today I had my first American food since I've been here and I can't tell you how good it tasted! The food here isn't bad, but it's definitely a lot more bland than the food we're used to. There are basically five things that you can find at every restaurant, and they're about all there is--milanesa, which is a kind of meat without much flavor; chivito, which is difficult to describe but it's pretty much just everything strange you can imagine on a single sandwich; pizza, which is huge and has all kinds of strange toppings like palm hearts or eggs along with the toppings we're used to; hamburgers, which are really cheap but also a little different from our American version; and pasta. Those are the staple foods here and even though they're good, they don't have much flavor. I haven't seen any ethnic or fast food or any other kind of restaurants, so even though the food is good--and Raquel and Mariela's cooking is amazing--I've been craving Mexican food and a turkey sandwich. Of all the things to find in Montevideo, Lawson found a Subway restaurant so we went there today for lunch! I was so excited to finally have a taste of home...it was exactly what I needed. I think I'll be visiting that place a lot in the next few months!

Wednesday night we went to our first futbol game! It didn't even start until 10:45 at night--Uruguayans' sleeping schedules are much different from most Americans'--so we walked through the streets late at night to get to the game. Some of the kids from the youth group here came too, and it was such a blessing to have them with us! We've heard that the futbol fans can get a little crazy, but we had no idea how much so until we were on our way to the stadium and suddenly we were surrounded by hundreds and hundreds of chanting, marching young men in Nacional colors. I honestly thought it was a political protest, the people were so serious and so terrifying. Our new friends from the church were with us and they were genuinely scared, which made us all scared too, and they rushed us to the stadium in front of the crowds so that we didn't get caught up in the middle of it. Once we were at the stadium and sitting in one of the less-populated sections, it was just fun to watch the fans--you can't find such devoted fans anywhere in the U.S. They didn't stop singing their team songs--which were completely in unison--the entire game, and they even had flares and fireworks to shoot off when Nacional scored. They ended up losing to Brazil but from how excited they were, you never would have known.

Also on Wednesday, we got a private bus tour of the city and we saw some absolutely beautiful parts of Montevideo! We got to go to the national cemetary here and I've never seen such a beautiful cemetary in all my life. This was where all of Montevideo's wealthy families and influential people have been buried, and they all had big monuments on their graves and beautiful gravestones. There was also a huge building at the center and an enormous mausoleum wall--it was so peaceful to walk around and see little pieces of this country's history. After that we went to Cerro de Montevideo, which is the large hill over looking the city. There's an old fort on top of the hill and we got a gorgeous view of our new hometown. We even met a couple of soldiers at the fort who were sitting on guard duty and drinking mate, and after we talked to them for awhile they offered to share it with us...it was a lot of fun to sip mate and take pictures with them. Like all the people here, they were very welcoming to us. When we were overlooking the city with the boats in the harbor and groups of precious little children running around the fort, I just can't believe that I'm actually living here--that this is my home for the next four months. I have no idea why I have been so blessed.

On Friday, a woman from the U.S. embassy here came to have lunch with us at Casa ACU and I got a chance to sit at her table and talk with her about her job, and it made me think that it might be kind of fun to be in the state department and get to travel and experience other countries for a living. We'll see, though--I need to learn Spanish first! I joined the YMCA here so that I can take some aerobics classes and hopefully meet some new people and get a chance to practice my Spanish. One awesome thing about the YMCA here--they're working on building the world's largest rock-climbing wall and if you're a member, you have a chance to volunteer with helping build it. Basically you go out to the wall, climb as high as you can, and then attach a new foothold, so you get exercise while you can say that you helped build the world's largest rock wall. Pretty cool stuff. I'm really excited to start doing it!


Lawson and I on Cerro de Montevideo overlooking our beautiful city!

Es tranquilo

I've only had one class today so I just got back from the beach and am getting a chance to relax more this afternoon. Tomorrow night we're going to a championship fútbol game between one of Uruguay's biggest teams, Nacional, and a Brazilian team. Fútbol here is an unbelievably big deal--the two biggest Uruguayan rival teams are Nacional and Peñarol, and people here are serious fans. The other day a man was standing at a bus stop wearing a Peñarol jersey and a man walked up and shot him. At the games, everyone paints their bodies and make all kinds of signs, and at the rival games people can get pretty violent. (Don't worry, mom and dad...the game we're going to isn't Nacional vs. Peñarol, so it'll be really safe!) But we're all really excited that we have tickets to a championship game tomorrow...it'll definitely be a cultural experience.

Speaking of cultural experiences, I tried mate (pronounced mah-tay) for the first time the other day. Mate is a drink sort of like tea...you have ground herbs that you pour into a mate gourd, then you pour hot water over the top and use a special straw with a filter called a bombilla to drink it. It's a social drink, meant to be shared--everyone here does it and it's a part of the culture to sit around with friends and family and pass around a mate and talk for hours. It has a pretty bitter taste so I've been trying to get used to it so that I can carry my mate around everywhere I go, like all of the locals.

I'm finally getting all settled in to Montevideo and I absolutely love it here. I love walking around the city with my friends, hanging out at the beach, meeting Uruguayans, and experiencing this totally different culture. Things here are so much more laid back than in the United States. People aren't rushing everywhere and even though this is the capital city, there's not tons of traffic. Life isn't in a hurry here and the people really have a sense of enjoying life--Uruguayans call it tranquilo. I could definitely get used to it.

Even my classes here are great. My Spanish teacher is a precious Uruguayan lady named Amelia. She was the Spanish teacher for the U.S./Uruguayan ambassador here and now she's teaching my friends and I, so I feel very honored to be learning from her. I've never had a teacher like her--even though she knows English, she speaks to us almost only in Spanish and in less than a week I think I've learned more Spanish than in the whole year that I took of it in high school. She's planning trips for us to go out to places here in the city to practice our Spanish on actual people and she really makes learning this language seem not only fun, but attainable. In my World Literature class, there are only four other people--and living with our professor is a lot of fun. We have class on the couches in our living room and it's definitely a different experience than being in a traditional classroom. I think I'll be spoiled when this semester's over and I have to go back to sitting in desks in a classroom and listening to lectures.

Yerba mate

So yesterday was my first adventure with getting (sort of) lost in South America.

In the morning we all took taxis to this big, open-air market that sold every kind of random thing—all sorts of fresh fruit, clothes and souvenirs—and then had the rest of the day to do whatever we wanted. I went with Lawson, Ashley (my roommate and Alpha Kai sister), and Sam (her boyfriend) to the market and from there we were planning on going to one of the nice beaches here in Montevideo. At the market Lawson and I got split up from Sam and Ashley for a minute but figured that we would find each other soon enough. Wrong. After an hour and a half of looking, we still couldn’t find them (since none of us have our cell phones here), so we finally decided to go to the beach on our own with hopes of meeting up with them there eventually. We had a map of the city and there seemed to be a bus line that would take us directly to the beach. Lucky for me, Lawson’s Spanish is a lot better than mine so after walking for close to an hour and talking to a couple of shop owners, we managed to find the bus stop. I was convinced that it would take us to the beach, but he wanted to make sure so he asked a man sitting next to us. The people at the bus stop looked a little confused and pointed down the street—sure enough, the beach was about three blocks down and you could see it clearly from where we were sitting. I'm so glad we didn't get on that bus! That’s one really wonderful thing about Montevideo…all of the people here are so helpful and friendly. The key phrase is Estoy aprendiendo español (I am learning Spanish) and if you say it they’re more than willing to help you with anything. So we had a short conversation with them and I got to use some of my limited Spanish. Somos de los Estados Unidos and muchas gracias! When we finally got to the beach we ran into some of our friends and spent a few hours swimming and getting tans in the middle of January! It was so wonderful. It was in the upper 90’s and the beach was full of people and things to see. Getting home was another adventure in itself but I don't want to make this blog too long already!

Today we went to church in the morning. Casa ACU's building is connected to a church here called Iglesia de Cristo , both of which used to be an old coffee factory. The building is absolutely beautiful--parts of it are made of Italian marble and there is a clock tower on top that was a gift from the Queen of England. We got a tour of our home yesterday from Ernesto, the pastor of Iglesia de Cristo and even got to go on the roof for a beautiful view of Montevideo! It's a very small congregation but the church members here are so kind. A few of them can speak a little bit of English, so it was fun practicing Spanish with them and just getting to know them. They gave us a pizza lunch and we got to meet the youth there, whom we'll get a lot of chances to do things with. The language barrier makes for some really fun times. When I introduced myself to people today, some of them said, "Oh, Morgan...like Morgan Freeman!" or "Like Captain Morgan?" Close enough.

After lunch we went to the ferria, which is an enormous event that happens here every Sunday. Hundreds and hundreds of vendors come and set up shop in the streets and sell absolutely everything you could imagine. And I mean everything--there was an owl for sale, right in the same cage as a bunch of green parrots, which was right next to a box full of puppies. There were also bootleg copies of movies that aren't even out on DVD yet, rows of antiques, a table full of beautiful old keys, and city blocks full of fresh fruit. I bought a mate gourd and a bombilla, both of which are used in a big part of Uruguayan culture, yerba mate. I'll have to tell you more about mate later though, because it's one in the morning and our first day of class is tomorrow and I should probably get some sleep. I love and miss you all tons!

Some of the fresh fruit that was for sale today at the ferria. I wish I could put the smell of those peaches in this blog because it was so delicious!