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!