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!

Estoy aprendiendo español...

It's our second day in Montevideo but it feels like we've already been here for weeks!

The plane ride here was enough of an adventure for me...even though I've never had a problem with motion sickness before, I was sick the entire 12-or-so hour plane ride and didn't get much sleep. I felt bad because Lawson sat next to me and he probably slept even worse than I did. Needless to say, we were muy cansado when we finally landed in Montevideo! I loved Uruguay from the moment we stepped off the plane. It was beautiful and warm and there were palm trees everywhere! It was so strange because suddenly everything was in Spanish--I knew it would be, but I didn't fully understand what that would mean until I was in a huge place surrounded by people and I could understand almost nothing. It was overwhelming to go through the line to get my passport stamped and understand nothing that the immigration officer said; all I could really say to her was gracias. Despite all that, it was pretty cool to hear Beyonce playing over the speakers--in Spanish! After surviving our first bit of culture shock, we loaded our luggage onto the bus that would take us home to Casa ACU. On the way we stopped at a beach to stretch our legs and get our first real taste of Uruguay. It was beautiful...I think I'll get used to living here pretty quickly! When we finally got to Casa ACU we met our wonderful cooks, Raquel and Mariella, who had made empanadas for us. They looked so wonderful but I couldn't eat any because I still wasn't feeling so great--hopefully soon I'll get to feeling better so I can actually experience some of their cooking! I did try some Uruguayan strawberries, though. They are so tiny compared to the ones in the U.S.--about the size of your thumb nail--but they are so incredibly sweet and wonderful! All of the fruit here is so fresh and amazing. I wish I could bring some back with me for you to try! Last night we all took cabs to a restaurant called Mercado de la Abundancia for dinner. They even opened early for us...at eight PM! Most Uruguayans don't start thinking about dinner until around 10:00 or so! The cab ride to the restaurant was also quite an experience. Traffic here does not stop for pedestrians and if you walk too close to the edge of the sidewalk you might just get hit by the side mirror of a bus--seriously. Also, there are no lanes or speed limits marked on the roads here in the city, so all the cars just drive as fast as they can and cut each other off all over the place. Even though we definitely thought we were going to die, Rosalinda (our house mom) said that in all the time she's been here, she's never seen a wreck and only very few cars with dents. That's pretty amazing to me. Today we all went to Cieudad Vieja, the Old City.

The Palacio Salvo in Plaza independencia, which was once the tallest building in South America. Isn't Montevideo beautiful?!

We saw a monument built for Jose Artigas, one of Uruguay's biggest heroes, and the guards standing next to his mausoleum were so incredibly still that I wasn't sure at first if they were even awake.

All over the streets and sidewalks of Cieudad Vieja are street vendors with all kinds of amazing things for sale. It's really like a giant, city-wide garage sale or craft fair. I want to go back sometime when I've exchanged some pesos to look at all of the jewelry and things. There was a McDonald's nearby that we went to and I ordered un agua mineral--just a bottle of water--and the sweet cashier lady asked me something in Spanish, so of course all I could say was sí. It turns out she was asking me whether I wanted my water con gas or sin gas--carbonated or uncarbonated--so today I tried carbonated water for the first time. It's not my favorite but maybe I'll end up getting used to it if I don't learn Spanish pretty quickly! Tonight I think we're going to a pizzeria for dinner and tomorrow we have some free time to go to the beach or shopping if we want--I can't wait to go lay out in the middle of January! I hope you all are having a great time too...I love and miss you very much!

¡2 días!

48 hours from now we'll be boarding the plane to Uruguay. Leaving. It's just now hitting me.

This summer my dad, Chaille, and I went kayaking on the Guadalupe River, and on our way down the river we stopped to climb the banks and swing off a rope hanging high over the water. I was so excited as we climbed up the cliff, but once we got to the top I was too afraid to jump. It took almost ten minutes to overcome my fear, and even then I was terrified until I came back up out of the water after taking the plunge. That same fear is what I'm feeling now. It's a mix of adrenaline, the unknown, and finally leaving my comfort zone. After years of longing to travel and get away, it's suddenly happening so fast. I have two days left to completely prepare myself for what will possibly be the biggest adventure of my life.

And I've still got a lot of packing to do.