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.