The Last Saturday and Sunday

At the party Saturday night, Dario had said something about Fabricio teaching class on Saturday morning. I had a hard time believing that he would get up and teach after the party, but headed to class anyway... sure enough... the gym was not open. I totally understood, as I was wiped out from being out late, and the party was still going when me left. I spent most of the rest of the day resting and working on packing.

In the evening, Rhonda and I went to Sylvia, Pedro, and Adoracion's house for tea. It was nice to go out to their house and visit. Afterwards, I came home and didn't do much and went to bed a little early. Unfortunately, a couple of the students woke me up about 20 min after I went to sleep... then I couldn't sleep for a couple of hours... I'm not bitter.

Sunday morning after worship, the church had a going way party for us. The party mainly consisted of visiting and them encouraging us to eat more and more food. Martin said some nice things about us, particularly Rhonda and I... I understood some of it. :) I keep thinking that I'm going to be able to understand everything everyone says... but I still can't understand everything, which is too be expected, but is sometimes frustrating. It was sad to have to start saying good-bye to everyone. I started taking pictures of groups of people, then one of the teens took over with my camera. I'll just show you a couple. :)

The church

After church, we headed to Raquel's for a cookout and a worship service with her church. It was nice, but I was getting super sleepy... as in I was having a hard time staying awake sitting outside... so I was really in trouble when the preaching started. It was really nice to get to go to Raquel's house though. Its funny, I hadn't been to anyone's house in the three months I had been here, then I went to two houses two days in a row.

When we got home from Raquel's, I went face down on my bed. I don't generally nap (as I think this was my second or third nap of the semester), but I wasn't going to make it if I didn't get some sleep. After a nice half hour nap, I got up and got ready for evening service. I was excited because Pedro, Sylvia's husband preached. We hadn't heard him preach yet. After church, we said more good-byes (I hate those.)

After church I came back to my apartment to work on packing and cleaning. Caitlin worked on her take home exam on my computer. After we both got stuff done, we went to dinner at Molto Bene... it might be my last Molto Bene meal. I was excited to have our usual waiter. That's one of the fun things here. We go to lots of hole in the wall type places, so we get to know the folks that work there. Its really pretty cool.

Well there you go... that's how I spent my last weekend... I know I'm fascinating.

Party at the Gym

Ok, so I was just saying yesterday that I didn't have anything new and exciting to talk about, then I decided to go to the zoo and last night there was a party at the gym. Both of which I guess can at least qualify as new. Its like when I'm in Abilene and my mom asks me what I've been doing. I often reply nothing. Then she teases me for after saying nothing proceeding to tell half and hour or hour worth of stories. Anyway...

About a month ago when I was paying for my last month at the gym, Fabricio asked when we were leaving. When I told him the 12th, he said, good, that we'd still be here for his party on the 8th. (Although it was later moved to the 7th.) I said I'd come, thinking oh it will be fun to get to meet people from the gym. As the time grew closer however, I realized, wait I don't like parties where I don't know people, then add the fact I can't speak to a lot of them. What was I thinking?

The party day finally arrived. During the 8 o'clock aerobics class you could tell Fabricio was getting excited. The lights and the disco ball were already up, and he turned them on during class, so there we were doing Body Combat under dance lights. It was funny.

About an hour after the party was supposed to start Anne, Kelsey, Caitlin, (the other girls that go to the gym) and I headed over. (Uruguayans are always late so we didn't want to be the first ones there.) When we round the corner there are a bunch of people, mostly guys, we don't recognize standing outside the gym talking. I think the girls walking in front actually stopped for a second. (I almost ran into them.) But we gathered our courage and went on. (Now understand, by this point I'm really think what in the world am I doing here???) When we pass the group to go in the gym I recognize several of the girls, which made me feel a bit better.

When we get in the gym the multi-colored lights are going and people are standing around in groups talking. (Mostly in all male or all female groups... its amazing how people never get past the junior high fear of mixing with the opposite sex.) So we are trying to figure out what to do, so we form our own little group. We start playing the "who are these people" game. Its really funny, because everyone at the gym pretty much sees each other with their hair pulled back, in their grossest clothes, with no make-up. Seeing people dressed up made it a bit of a challenge. So we stand there 10-15 minutes talking trying to figure out what to do next. One of the girls suggests we go find Fabricio and Dario.

So we brave walking to the other side of the gym. (OK... it really wasn't that scary, the middle of the gym was pretty much empty, but at the time we were so lost for what to do, it kind of was. Did I mention that I'm REALLY awkward in these situations???)

Well we find the guys and get to talking to Dario. He is so sweet. He was going on about how he and Fabricio had talked about us and how much they liked having us in class and how much they were going to miss us. At some point we got to talking about the music they used and Dario said that we needed a CD of it. Which we were REALLY excited about, because Kelsey and I had wanted to ask and never got the guts up to ask about it.

After half an hour or so, we eventually let Dario go, and moved into our own little group again, but at least we were further in the gym. It was fun to watch people eye us trying to decide whether or not to come talk to us. (Of course people will probably tell stories about how I was eying them... but I just really like to watch people.) This one group of guys would work their way closer... then move off... then work their way closer, again. It was pretty funny.

Eventually, one guy who was really out-going finally came and talked to us. Since he didn't speak any English (except for "I love you.") People realized that they could talk to us, so more people started to come over. The ones who didn't speak much English talked with Caitlin and Anne a lot, and there were several people who spoke good English who enjoyed practicing on Kelsey and I. (Although we did talk to people in Spanish some too.)

All in all... it turned out to be really fun. I think we all got at least one marriage proposal... of course it was from the same guy... I think Anne and Kelsey may have gotten two proposals. So that was my big Uruguayan party experience. It will be interesting to see people at the gym this week. :)

What to write about...

Now that I'm down to my last few days... I really don't know what to tell you about. We haven't been doing much new and exciting. In fact, I'm pretty much dead set on doing my normal stuff as much as possible, because those are the things that I love about being in Montevideo. The last couple of days have been focused on finishing classes and getting last things done. So other than doing school stuff, I've been going to aerobics, of course, going to church, and finishing souvenir shopping.

I'm very grateful that I'm not a student as they are going through lots of finals week stress. Tensions are running a bit high. I don't know if it is a defense mechanism against having to leave, but they are starting to let little things about each other get on their nerves a bit more. Luckily, as I have more of my own space (and I don't have to take any finals), so I haven't been as effected by this... of course I may be getting on their nerves.

Oh... since I started this blog entry, I did something semi-interesting. Eric came to lunch, and then he joined Caitlin and I on an expedition to the Montevideo zoo. Its really kind of a sad little zoo. On the way there, we ran into one of Eric's friends. When he heard we were going to the zoo, his comment was that he hoped the animals were alive.

There were live animals, so that was good. Not always in the happiest of conditions... but except for one duck, all the animals we saw were alive. Eric picked lots of grass and fed them to the animals. One llama in particular (the one in the picture) really had a thing for Eric. It followed him around. These particular llamas had a gerrymandering cage that went around other pens. So we'd be at other pens, and the llama would show up. It was a gorgeous day so the couple of mile walk to the zoo, wandering around the zoo, and the walk home was really fun. That and Eric and Caitlin are just fun to hang out with.

A Uruguayan Night

Last night, Eric Rama had Caitlin and I over for dinner. He lives in an apartment in the church building, so its just a matter of going out of CasaACU and up through the church building. Its kind of funny to go that way, because his apartment is on the same courtyard as my apartment and Caitlin's room, just up three floors.

Eric did an asada, which what else would an 18 year old guy and a Uruguayan do, but fix meat (and cheese). It was really good. When we got there he was still grilling tons of food. So we hung out on the balcony while he cooked. I think it was the first time I had seen the stars since I had been in the city. While he was cooking he'd give us sausage and cheese straight off the grill.

Once the food was ready we did the obvious thing and ate. Like when we went to the parilla with Eric and Ronnie, we ate and ate meat. It was good.

To make it a throughly Uruguayan night we had to do more than eat meat. After we finished eating, Eric boiled water and prepared the mate. So then we sat around taking turns drinking mate and talking for a couple of hours. Eric was much better at keeping up with whose turn it was than I was.

Yerba mate is a type of herbal tea that you drink out of a gourd, the mate, through a metal straw. The proper way to drink mate with a group is that you share one cup. The mate is filled with yerba mate, then filled with hot water. When it is your turn, you must drink all the mate until you hear the straw make the empty cup slurping noise. Then the mate refilled with hot water and passed on to the next person. People drink mate in Uruguay, Argentina, Paraguay, and Southern Brazil. Although it is the smallest country of the four, more mate is consumed in Uruguay than any of the other three.

Don't worry, if you don't quite understand. I'll let some of you experience this when I get home.

Anyway, it was a really fun mellow night. I'm glad that we've gotten to hang out with Eric more in the last couple of weeks.

Finishing Up

Our time is winding down here... its so hard to believe. (If you are wondering, I will probably mention the fact that I can't believe it is almost time to go home in every blog for the rest of my time here... prepare yourself.) This means though that we are trying to finish up lots of things. Classes are finishing up. Students are stressing over papers and exams. (I'm certainly glad that I'm not a student anymore.) It makes it even tougher that the weather is gorgeous and we have all the tourist things we want to finish up. Most of us also are doing lots of shopping trying to figure out what gifts we still need to get.

OK... most of my finishing up for the weekend was shopping, for the students it was studying. Evil teachers. Wahahahahaha!

Saturday, as usual, Kelsey, Anne and I went to aerobics. It was funny because they were taping the class. I didn't really catch the reason, but it meant Dario went through a real introduction to class and we had to do push-ups at the end. Anne and I got a little giggly because we were slipping because we were so sweaty. (Alright so I bit it on one push up when my knees slipped out from under me... yes I do girl push ups.) Dario gave us the "What are you doing... I'm having this taped" look.

In the afternoon, I headed to Punta Carretas, the fancy mall. I got out of the house partly because I was trying not to pester the students too much since they were trying to do school work. (Nanner Nanner Nanner) It was the first time I had been to the mall since our first week. I could almost believe that it is Christmas time being in the this mall, because there were decorations everywhere. (I still can't get used to December and consistent 80 degree weather.) One weird thing... I think I saw two different Santas in the mall. That will certainly mess with little kids.

When I got home, I started trying to sort out souvenirs and gifts. I think I'm only going to have one suitcase for souvenirs and the other for my clothes that I'm bringing back. :)

Saturday night, several of us went to dinner with Emiliano. He used to work at the restaurant that used to be next to CasaACU, so he got to know some of the students in the past. He came to the English classes and got to know Anne, his tutor well. It was fun... he's one of the people that I've gotten to be comfortable enough to speak Spanish too.

Sunday, I was excited because 9 of our 11 students came to church in the morning. That's the first time that many have been there in awhile. I think that means that they have really built relationships with the members at church, because with only 2 Sundays left, they wanted to be there. After church, I ate a quick lunch with Caitlin in my apartment then I went down the the ferria (market) in Parque Rodo. After I spent all my money, I came back to the house and tried not to pester the poor students. In the evening after church, I went to dinner with Luke and Anne. It was nice to hang out with them.

I spent the rest of the evening goofing off and trying to come up with what to say in chapel today. Being that it was my last chapel I wanted to be meaningful and significant, yada, yada, yada. (Too bad I'm not a deep and meaningful kind of girl.)

What to Bring to Uruguay

I know this post won't apply to most of you, but for my faithful readers who are coming down here, I thought I'd share my advice and I thought the rest of you might find this interesting.

Clothes
OK... No matter what people tell you that folks always or never wear here, you can find an example of the opposite. We live in an older more conservative neighborhood, so you are not going to see many women in shorts, short skirts, or low cut shirts. But you will see some, esp. when you move out of the neighborhood. (Most of the women don't even wear shorts at the gym, but we've given up blending in there anyway. And it is too hot for long pants there now.) Bring a pair or two of longer shorts, because if nothing else you'll need them when you go to Brazil. Most people tend to wear darker clothes, but not always. You mainly see both men and women wear pants, either black pants or blue jeans, but I've been here in late winter and spring, summer and fall might be completely different. One trick is that you'll be here over a couple of seasons, and so you need clothes for all sorts of weather. The other trick is that no matter what the "usual" temperature is... it only matters what it actually is when you are here so it could be unusually hot or cold. So here's a little advice about what to bring:

A week's worth of warm weather and cold weather clothes, a nice jacket for when its cold, some work out clothes because you have to go to Fabricio and Dario's gym, a couple of nicer outfits (I brought too many because I thought I might have to dress like a prof more than I do.) And a swim suit. But basically bring stuff you are going to enjoy wearing. (If you really need something you can probably buy it here anyway.) Oh and bring extra socks... they seem to disappear at the laundry.

Shoes
Bring comfortable shoes, you will walk a lot. The first day we walked a half mile to and from Tres Cruces and that seemed a long way away. (It didn't help that we were exhausted.) That mile round trip is nothing now. And we don't think anything about walking 2 miles to la Ciudad Vieja (the Old City). I mostly wear my black Sketchers that can pass as dressy or casual. I wear my tennis shoes some. Bring some sandals for when it is hot. I brought my hiking boots but have only worn them once or twice. The time I could have used them most on Spring Break, I left them behind because I didn't want to bring giant boots with me.

Toiletries
Don't bring much. You can buy shampoo, conditioner, deodorant, toothpaste, nail polish remover, etc. at the grocery store or at little shops around the corner. I would say bring enough to get you through the first couple weeks until you are comfortable finding and buying stuff, but save the room for other stuff you'll miss.

Medicine
Bring at least some of your own. I successfully bought some cold medicine and cough syrup in Chile, so you can buy it here. But you have to ask at the pharmacy, you can't just go in and pick it up. You can find pretty much everything here, its just figuring out what it is. I or my students have used pretty much everything I brought at some point including cold medicine, allergy medicine, pain killers (Ibuprofen is my best friend), anti-nausea, and anti-diarrhea. The only one that we never opened was Ex-lax, but I'd still bring that too. (I know waaaay too much info.)

Food
If you rely on peanut butter BRING IT! You might bring spices you want like McCormick's spaghetti mix and black pepper. You can actually find taco seasoning in packets in the exotic food section at the Disco (the fancy grocery store.) If you need green bean casserole at some point during the semester, you'll need the onions and cream of mushroom soup from home (although a cream sauce substitutes pretty well.) About the only other thing I kind of missed was Quaker granola bars. You can get them here but they aren't quite the same.

Books
Its tough to find books in English here. So if you want something to read for fun, bring a couple of books. You can always trade with other people in your group. I brought two slow read books so I'm not actually going to finish them before I leave. I haven't read as much as I thought I would this semester.

School supplies
If you are particular about your paper and notebooks bring them. Otherwise you can get everything here. The paper is different sized though and they seem to only put two holes in loose leaf paper. Pens, markers, etc. are no problem. (I'll leave my overhead projector pens, but if you are a teacher and want some you might bring them. While you can get dry erase markers, I couldn't find the Vis-a-Vis erasable overhead pens here.)

Random Stuff
You might want to bring a smaller duffel bag or backpacking backpack for spring break and other short trips. I ended up buying one here. If there are knick-knacks or pictures you will really miss, bring them... you will be gone for 3 and half months or so. Your laptop. USB drive/ pen drive/ whatever you want to call it. Multiple memory cards. A purse with a sturdy strap. Oh and bag for carrying around stuff with you are shopping. I've already written about the mommy bag, but I also like it because it looks beat up so you wouldn't expect a nice camera be in there. I also can put things I buy in there, so I'm not obviously carrying new purchases. DVD's. Febreeze would have come in handy. An iPod/ MP3 player is nice for bus trips. OH... gifts for people you meet here. I wish I had brought some... I've been thinking through the stuff I have that I'm going to give away.

Warning Discussion of Feminine Products is about to Commence
Ok... I could not fully feel like I have prepared you if I didn't talk about this. Sorry, guys if you are still reading, but I did give you a warning. Stop reading now if you are going to be embarrassed/ grossed out when I talk about periods starting in the next sentence. I would advise bringing enough tampons and/ or pads for your whole trip. (In fact I learned the hard way that you might want to plan for one extra time in case your body hates you... mine hates me.) You can buy both here, but we have only been able to find O.B. which don't use applicators. (Ew!... I know... better for the enviroment, less waste... but EW!) So if you want to use an applicator, bring your own tampons. I haven't bought pads here, but apparently they are smaller than the ones in North America. I don't really use them... but that's what Rhonda told me. I hadn't planned on bringing any tampons, but at the last minute I asked Rhonda about it and was glad I did.

Second half of the Brazil trip.

Tuesday - Paraguay

First I noticed we are up to 1000 hits. Wow! I thought I would post more regularly when we were in Brazil, but the internet wasn't what you would call just real reliable in Brazil, so now its time to catch up again.

Tuesday was our free day. Our fantastic escorts Andres, Carlito, and Palanca took most of us across the border into Paraguay. Rhonda, who didn't go with us, referred to this area as Walmart on crack. I could see why. It was fantastic fun. Stalls lined the streets with people selling everything. There were stores that sold electronics of all sorts. Apparently Paraguay is the cheapest place to buy electronics. There were tons of knock offs including the "Orange" brand of iPods, etc. We were offered socks every ten feet. I almost bought some just for the memories. We did find the nicest bathroom in South America, upstairs in the Mona Lisa which was the high class store. They had free toilet paper and it was soft. (Both of these things are very big deals.) After a couple of hours of looking around we headed back to the bus. We had to wait on the men, because they had a lot of shopping they wanted to do. We didn't take pictures until we got to the bus, because none of us wanted to be relieved of our cameras. While the drivers were out of the cockpit, Caitlin and I took advantage. Palanca just laughed and took pictures for us. Here are a few more pictures from Paraguay:

Its just weird to see a nativity scene when its ninety degrees outside.

Some of the stalls.

Instead of taking a regular taxi, you can take a MotoTaxi. You just hop on the back with one of these guys. (They do provide their riders with a helmet. Andres said this is what we should do if we got separated or wanted to stay later... UM... no!)


The bridge between the two countries was crazy with traffic and guys selling random things.

Wednesday

The Bird Park

Wilson joined us again for the day and took us to the Bird Park first. It was originally a hospital for birds who had been harmed by poachers. But people started to come to see the Macaws, Toucans and other birds, so they turned it into a bird zoo. It was great fun. I have 100's of great pictures of amazing birds, if you want to see all the pictures of the pretty birds, you'll have to come see them on my computer... or I have more uploaded on Facebook. Here are a few of my favorites though:

This toucan let us pet it.

This dinosaur looking bird can kill a human by kicking it with his huge feet!


Look... I'm holding a Macaw!


Brazilian Side of the Falls

After seeing the birds, we crossed the street to see the Iguazu Falls from the Brazilian side. As I said in the last post, you climb around the Falls on the Argentinian side and see a better panoramic on the Brazilian side. You also end up getting hit with a lot more spray on the Brazilian side. We at lunch on the other side of Devil's Throat and then hiked along the river to see the falls. We ran into a group of U.S. Congressmen at the very end including Randy Neugebauer. We posed for a picture with him... but unfortunately Andres had some issues with my camera and it didn't end up taking. It was kind of funny to run into Congressmen Neugebauer though. Here are some more pictures:

The Fantastic Andres who took such good care of us.

Luke, Chelsea, Anne, Kelsey, and Kimberly in front of Devil's Throat.

The whole group.

When we got back to the bus... this is how Palanca greeted us.

He then convinced Andres and Wilson to dress up too. The best part was after a couple of seconds, Wilson went on with his talk about the dam like nothing was going on. It was pretty great to hear about hydroelectric power from a Brazilian man wearing a floppy yellow hat.

Itaipu Hydroelectric Dam

After the falls we went up the Parana river to see the dam. It is the biggest dam in terms of power generation. 5% of the power generated from the dam, supplies 90% of Paraguay's energy. The other 95% I think supplies 20% of Brazil's energy.

Thursday - The trip home and Missiones, Argentina

Thursday morning, I wanted to do a little more shopping, so I got up to to go before we left at 11. On the way out of the hotel, I ran into Palanca who was also going out to go shopping, so we went shopping together, which was interesting since I barely understand him. I really only end to understand people who talk really slowly. Anyway, it was fun and a little weird. It was handy that he was there though, since I had left some of my money in the hotel, whoops, and didn't have enough to buy the flip-flops I wanted, but Palanca loaned me the money. At one point he stopped to buy underwear, which was a little weird. I'm pretty sure he did it just to get a reaction out of me.

We headed out around 11. We stopped in Missiones (that's a province), Argentina to see the ruins of a Jesuit Mission and to see the hour of Horacio Quiroga, a short story writer born in Uruguay. The rest of the trip home was pretty uneventful. I didn't sleep much of it. About the most exciting part was when the Uruguayan customs decided to inspect the bus at 3 AM. I think they were bored.

We got home around 9:30 on Friday morning. I, of course, changed quickly and headed to aerobics... because I am clearly insane. After aerobics, Rhonda and I went to the Old City to do some shopping. In the evening I went to aerobics again with Caitlin and Anne. I was ready to drop afterwards. That 4 hours of sleep, 2 aerobics classes, and a 2 mile walk to the Old City wasn't a fantastic idea. But I did get a great nights sleep last night! I'm all ready for my last week and a half here.