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.