Parabrazentina

It’s a beautiful Good Friday, and we’ve just returned from the Brazil trip, the last hoorah for Latin America Study Abroad-ers. We piled into the bus yesterday at about 11:30 a.m. to start the drive back, and we got in at about 9 this morning. Not the most pleasant of things, a 22-hour bus drive, but I still prefer it to flying.

The week was a non-stop action kind of thing, as we hopped borders back and forth between Brazil, Argentina and Paraguay every day. We had five big activities for the week.

The first was a trip to the Brazilian side of Iguaçu Falls. We stayed in Foz do Iguaçu, the entirely tourism-based town through which you get to the Brazilian National Park and visit the falls. Because of the way boundary lines are drawn between the countries, Brazil controls only something like 30% of the falls, but what they control is still awe-inspiring and beautiful. What you get on the Brazilian side is a panoramic view of the great cataratas. After a morning of lovely picture opportunities (I left my camera in my hotel room the first day! Ack! But my roommates and I woke up fifteen minutes after we were supposed to meet to leave for the falls, so I was more concerned about clothes), a group of us piled into a boat that sped up the river, up into the falls, and got us all completely, totally, thoroughly soaked as it drove straight under one of the waterfalls.

Also as part of that day, we went to the Parque do Aves (The Bird Park, which I had a difficult time enjoying, still soaking wet as I was), where we walked through rain forest enclosures with all the most beautiful kinds of birds that Brazil had to offer. The toucans were especially easy to get close to – they wouldn’t fly away, even if you came up and petted them, although they would most assuredly bite you if you tried.

ACU had sent a photo and video crew to the Casa to follow us, and they came with us for the first part of the Brazil trip, taking some really incredible footage. You can see some of what they took the first day on facebook here: http://www.new.facebook.com/notes.php?id=54606170&drafts#/video/video.php?v=541036716467&comments.

For dinner that night, we went to this huge buffet with a massive grill – as much of any kind of meat you wanted, cooked however you wanted it – and were treated to a show while we ate. The show included traditional dances from all the nearby countries, which was really fun.

The next morning, we crossed back in Argentina to visit their side of the falls, which I much preferred. They had walkways that took you right onto the waterfalls, so the water was rushing past you and the spray was coming up in your face (bad if you want to take pictures, fabulous if you want the waterfall experience). I actually did get some pictures taken that day, but I’m thoroughly disappointed in them. Iguaçu Falls is not something you can really capture within a viewfinder. I’ve never seen anything so beautiful or powerful in my life. Eleanor Roosevelt, when she visited these falls, exclaimed only, “Poor Niagara!”

The third day began with a visit to Itaipu Dam, the largest hydroelectric power plant in the world, which was created through a joint effort between Brazil and Paraguay. The dam, built on the Paraná River that divides the two countries, supplies 75% of Paraguay’s power and 25% of Brazil’s. :-O

We then traveled into Ciudad del Este, Paraguay, the knock-off capital of the Americas, where they sell everything from pirated DVDs to AK-47s to infants. I didn’t really enjoy it all that much, because I’m not in the market for a case of not-quite-legit iPhones or Puma attire. It was mostly just hot, and we wandered through street markets getting embarrassingly cheap American stuff shoved in our faces by pushy vendors for three hours before the group met up and headed back to Brazil again. In future travels, I will probably not be returning to Paraguay.

That night, though, was my favorite part of the trip. We hopped back over to the Argentina side of the falls for a delicious dinner at another nice buffet, and then we got on this little train that goes through the park, and it dropped us off in the middle of the forest for a moonlight hike back to la Garganta del Diablo, the walkway that went right up to the top of the falls. Everything was bleached to black and white by the moonlight, and moths floated like dust motes in the mist rising from the base of the falls. ¡Qué bonita! I’m sorry, but I took no pictures. This never would have transferred; it’s something you have to experience.

The next day was pretty much just a free day, and I slept in and then hung out watching movies in the hotel. What a great rest for mind and body! I needed it. 🙂

As always, I’ll be posting the pictures I took on Facebook, so check ’em out if you want to get a small, small sense of what this place was like.

Peru favors the brave.

Well, now that memories of Peru and Spring Break have faded in my mind like a yellowed photograph, I figured it was time to finally write about them 😉 I’m sorry it’s taken me so long, but days have been crazy since we returned from free travel week. Plus, I was too intimidated to sit down and try to write about all the many, many new and insanely awesome experiences we had on the trip while they were still fresh. Now only the most important things stand out.

The entire trip involved six total flights: Montevideo to Santiago, Chile, Santiago to Lima, then Lima to Cuzco, then the same in reverse. I wish we had gotten to walk around and see some of the fabulousness of Santiago, but it costs something like 150 dollars to leave the airport in Chile, so we spent our layovers scoping the airport out for Starbucks and cheap souvenirs instead. If you’ve read this blog from the beginning, you know I hate to fly; this trip was no exception. The flights were miserable – no more details.

While in Lima, we stayed in a very nice hotel called the Leon de Oro (Gold Lion) in the Miraflores region of the city, the pretty, garden-filled, affluent part of town. Lima was fun, modern, and very Americanized. We ate KFC and had Domino’s pizza delivered to our hotel, we went to the three-story mall and saw Watchmen at the nice theater there, and everyone – everyone – spoke English in some form or fashion. My Spanish got really rusty over free travel week.

Cuzco was a different thing entirely. According the “Latin America on a Shoestring” book, it’s the city that has been consistently inhabited for the longest of any city in the Americas. It’s nestled in these green mountains, with houses climbing up the slopes everywhere, and big words and pictures carved into the mountainsides. Everywhere, walking through the streets, there are women in traditional clothing (long skirts, button-down shirts and jackets, top hats, and brightly colored blankets tied around their backs to hold either a baby or their wares), occasionally leading llamas. You can take pictures with them, but they expect a good tip for it.

Interesting foods we attempted in Peru: Ceviche, a raw fish that’s cooked only with the acid of lemon juice. It’s got a strong flavor, and it kind of explodes in your mouth, but the texture is exceptionally unpleasant to me. Not my fave. We also tried alpaca (llama’s brother), which was good, like steak but a little more flavorful. One thing we did not try was cuy, also known as guinea pig, in the states. We’re talking guinea pigs the size of cats, here. I lost my nerve to try one of those when one of our tour guides felt the need to remind us that guinea pigs do not have tails, so if we were served an animal with a long tail on it, it was not guinea pig. *Shudder*

In the middle of the week sometime (it was hard to keep track of the days) we took a four-hour train ride to Machu Picchu, probably the most beautiful place I have ever been or ever will be. My pictures on Facebook are such a poor, poor representation of what it was really like. I was breathless the entire time, both because there was a lot of high-altitude hiking involved and because the views in whichever direction you looked were absolutely breathtaking. There was a point, actually, on the bus ride up the mountain to the ruins (aside to my family: Remember how scary it was in the van in the mountains of Oregon? Well, Peruvians drive with much less fear, and with much less room for error), when we came around one of the switchbacks and the trees cleared, and everyone in the bus just gasped. It was unbelievably, life-changingly gorgeous.

We spent the morning touring the ruins with this really awesome tour guide, then broke for lunch, which consisted of all the fragments of snack food we all had stashed in our bags, compiled in one big pile on the table, because we could not afford the worse-than-an-amusement-park prices for food there on the mountain. I think we had one crumbly pop tart, a tin of honey roasted peanuts, an apple and a couple of oranges, and some cheesy Ritz crackers. Not a lot for six people.

It had sprinkled a lot during our tour and finally started really raining during lunch, so the majority of tourists cleared out at that point. For this reason, when we decided to hike back up into the ruins (the tickets are all-day passes) and find the Inca bridge, the place was pretty much empty. That’s when we took all the best pictures. It felt like we had the place pretty much to ourselves, and the weather was fabulously cool and overcast, but not rainy.

The Inca bridge was a long hike along this little path with a rock wall dripping rain forest greenery on one side and a pretty sheer drop-off, sometimes, on the other side, and the views there were almost better than the ones over the main part of the “city” of Machu Picchu. We eventually came to the top of this ridge and could see straight across to the bridge (which wasn’t all that much to look at, really), but that wasn’t good enough for the photographers in our group. They wanted to hike down the rest of the trail, past the sign that said, “Prohibo El Paso,” with a little skull and crossbones next to it, clinging to the rope that had been rigged up along the wall for only half the distance to the bottom, and then lean out over the safety fence to take pictures of the bridge. Seems like a pretty good idea, right?

But in Peru, nobody worries too much about safety and liability, like they do in the States because everyone’s so terrified of being sued. When we went white-water rafting – and absolutely amazing experience, the most fun part of the trip for me, for sure – we were halfway through our rapids adventure, when our guide said, hey, you guys want to jump off a bridge? And of course, we all said yes. We steered the boat over to the side of the river while the second team in the other boat went to the other side, tied up, and clambered barefoot up these rocks to this rickety wooden bridge spanning the rapids. When I say rickety, I am not exaggerating; we had to go out on the bridge only two at a time, because our guide said that if more went, the whole thing would collapse. Not a confidence building statement.

One by one, while the guide of the other boat stood on the banks with a camera to catch us in mid-air, we ducked under the waist-high support wire for the bridge, leaned out over the water, counted to three, and jumped. We jumped right into the current, so it was some hard swimming against the stream to get back over to the bank. Definitely something I would do again, though, if given the choice. I’m turning into a bit of an adrenaline junkie! 😛

Anyway, the trip was great, the picture opportunities were great, the shopping was great (I bought more souvenirs than any one person strictly needs, but the stuff in Peru is so cool!), and then I was ready to be back at the Casa.

It’s a very good thing I finally got this blog entry out, because on Friday we leave for Iguacu, Brazil, for a week, during which time we will tour some gorgeous parts of Brazil, visit Ciudad del Este in Paraguay, the knock-off capital of the Americas, and also stop in one of the poorer parts of Argentina. I have a feeling I’ll have plenty of stories to tell when I get back.

Caras de las calles

This week has been a very intense one for me and eight other students because Bio, our Brazilian teacher for the Missions in Latin America class arrived on Sunday and taught class Monday through Sunday, all day long. We had to get 3 credit hours-worth of class in in one week, and I also had two Intermediate Spanish classes at la Universidad Catolica, Travel as Narrative, and Latin America and the Arts. It’s been insane, but totally worth it. Bio’s class has been an amazing learning experience, that culminated today in a hands-on approach to missions – going out in pairs and just talking to the homeless people that populate the streets.

I paired up with Zanessa, a gorgeous woman of God with a heart for people, especially the poor. Although the class had been given a list of questions to ask the homeless people we encountered, she and I set out with the intention of just talking to them. As soon as we left the Casa, we started to pray that God would put the right people in our path. We went only a few blocks before we found Pablo, a young man sitting against a wall outside a store, begging. He talked to us first, asking us for coins, but when we told him we had none and offered him the Brazilian caramel candies we had in our pockets instead, a conversation opened up. He’s had the same candy when he was a little boy, he said, except in a different wrapper. He welcomed us to sit with him and talk.

We talked about everything, from what foods we liked most in Uruguay to the job situation in the nation’s economy. Pablo told us that he had worked as a metal-worker until recently, but that the economy was such that there were just not enough job opportunities for everyone to be able to work. It was Zanessa that brought up God, easing into it by noting that Pablo’s name was a common name in her favorite book: the Bible.

“Oh, no me gusta mucho,” Pablo had said, shaking his head. He doesn’t believe in God, and doesn’t care much for church, either. The people there are nice, and they won’t kick you out if you want to go sit at the back of a church and get out of the elements, but they can’t help you, not really. It was strange to me that he seemed to have so much hope for the future, because he had no hope in God at all. When we asked him what he did believe in, he said he believed in himself. He said that was all he could depend on. When we told him how much we were learning here in Montevideo, he said that he tried to learn something new every day, so that someday he would know enough to get off the streets.

I was touched by how much love he showed Zanessa and me, despite the fact that he was not a Christian. He genuinely cared about our well-being. He asked us if we walked around at night often, and if we often sat and talked with homeless people; he begged us to be careful, because not everyone would be nice, and since we were women, we would be robbed or worse. He reminded us several times throughout our conversation to be careful, keep our eyes open.

The other person that Zanessa and I encountered was a much older man named Raul. He was wrinkled and his hands shook as he rolled his own cigarettes, his voice rasping out of his throat in between hacking coughs, but he spoke with conviction and clarity. Although Raul did believe in God, and said that he respected him very much, he had no more faith in the church than Pablo did. “Las personas son amables,” he said, “pero dicen mucho y hacen nada.” (They’re nice, but they say a lot and do nothing).

In fact, Raul had very little faith in anything. He viewed the situation in Uruguay as pretty hopeless. When we asked him if the government helped people, he told us that they treated the symptoms, but not the disease. He said that at the core of everything was the need for jobs, not for more temporary shelters or soup kitchens or t-shirt handouts. But he said that he didn’t think Uruguay could ever grow beyond where it is now because it is a poor in the resources that make nations rich. There is no oil here, he said over and over, stressing that this was what made nations powerful on the world market. He said something that I found especially poignant: “South America is the farmer of the world.” He went on to explain that, although everyone depends on the Latin American nations for the raw materials, the foods that they all import, those same nations are taken advantage of by the world market. He said especially that Uruguay had a hard time because it produces all the same products as its larger neighbors, and so gets overlooked.

All in all, the conversations were enlightening and enjoyable, and I wondered why I have always been so nervous and hesitant about talking to homeless people. It’s been a problem of mine, this inability to talk to someone that I perceive as very different from myself; now, with this understanding that these people have important insights to share with me, powerful things to teach me, I will be more willing to stretch my comfort zone to include those who have less than I do. Maybe I’ll accompany Zanessa on more of her walks through the neighborhood, where she seeks to talk to anyone and everyone with a story to tell 🙂

Next weekend brings Spring Break, and Peru! Prayers for good preparation and safe travels would be appreciated. 🙂

Ah, Rocha, my love…

Mondays are always hard, but especially difficult are those that follow an exceptionally beautiful weekend. Our group traveled together to Rocha, a province of Uruguay east of Montevideo, along the coast. We stayed in a beachfront hotel, Hotel Palma de Mallorca, in La Paloma, a small city in that area. It was pretty, all white with open spaces everywhere and gauzy curtains blowing in the breeze. It had a pool, although I can’t imagine why, when you can just walk out the back door and step onto the soft sand of the beach, the waves lapping up on shore twenty feet from where the hotel property ends.

We had a really incredible impromptu worship service on the beach the first night we were there. It was amazing…a group of us went outside at 11:30 or so to look at the stars, and we were so in awe that we just stood together and sang praises to God while the waves kept time in the background. 🙂 A beautiful night.

We left for Rocha early Friday morning and got there in time for lunch, which was simple burgers at the hotel. Aftwerward, we bussed to Cabo Polonio, a place so remote that we actually had to get out of the bus a few miles out and pile into big 4×4 trucks with frames rigged over the beds so that people could sit in several layers, swaying against each other as the vehicles bumped and thudded over rough terrain and through huge puddles of muddy water. When we finally broke through what seemed like an endless wilderness and found ourselves on the sands of another beach, untouched except for the tire tracks left by these trucks, the sight was breathtaking: blue, blue water crested with white foam, laying itself out on grey sand as an even brighter blue sky watched it all, white-hot sun illuminating it all.

The actual town of Cabo Polonio was just a bunch of unconnected shacks and shanties, brightly painted, with no fences or boundary lines to mark property, just big expanses of grass and sand between. People were selling handmade clothes and jewelry and hammocks and wind chimes from under little tents of breathable fabric, and everyone walked barefoot in beach attire through the streets. Such a peaceful place. The beach was lovely (and I got totally, totally sunburned, thanks to the cool water and refreshing breeze that never allowed me to feel the fiercely searing sun) and we had a great time dancing around in the waves and the clear water, searching for shells.

Dinner that night was on our own at 11:30 that night (people eat late here in South America), and I had a hamburger. In fact, I don’t think I ate anything but hamburgers in the meals we ate on our own. They’re cheap here, and decent. Side note: It’s impossible to eat a meal here without meat in it. That’s just silly. Why wouldn’t you want meat with that? Why on earth would you want vegetables? Here, have another slab of beef and a piece of bread.

Saturday morning was spent on a tour of the Ombú forest. This is an extremely interesting place. First of all, we had to boat down to the forest through this place that reminded me a lot of Louisiana. It had that deep bayou feel, with the kids chasing each other with fishing poles and throwing crabs into the water with cries of “¡Estás libre!” while adults dragged canoes full to the brim with freshly caught shrimp through the shallows along the edges. The tour guide on the boat gave all sorts of really amazing facts about the water, which is directly connected to the ocean so that, depending on the tides, it is sometimes salt water and sometimes fresh water, and you can fish in the same place at different times and catch different kind of fish there. Unfortunately, I don’t remember much of what he was saying; I was too busy thoroughly enjoying the wind in my face and the sight of free-roaming cows wading through the water.

Ombú trees, though, are an incredible phenomenon. Everywhere else in the world that they grow (and they only really grow in the Río de la Plata region, I think), they are solitary trees, because cows graze on the young trees and do not give them a chance to grow. Because of this, people have always assumed that they are solitary plants. In their ideal state, though, they grow in forests. This place, this ombú forest that we visited, is the only one of its kind, and so it is of vital importance that it stays the way it is, unmolested by humanity. It is the only place that the trees can be studied in their truly natural habitat. Here, the trees have been protected from cows by helpful thorny plants that surround them while they are young.

And I’ve said trees, but these plants are really not trees. They look like trees, but they do not grow in rings with bark like trees do. The guide said that they are actually genetically closest to grass – huge, towering grass! They actually grow kind of gelatinously, so that they look like they were poured into the shape they are, not grown into it. The weird thing is the way that the tree will mold to itself. It may grow a branch, but then three feet later, when that branch touches another, they grow back together, forming one bigger branch, all smoothly connected.

Also weird are the trees’ signature holes. Because they do not have tough, impenetrable bark like trees do, they absorb a lot of the water from humid air, and this causes holes to form in the trees, sometimes big holes – big enough to fit our entire Study Abroad group! The guide said that if the trees are genetically strong, they reinforce the walls of the lower part of the tree so that they can stand under their own weight even with the holes. If not, then they fall. Here’s the amazing thing, though. Their fall doesn’t mean their death. From the remains of what the tree was, it will grow upward again, this time with its old self as a stonger, more solid base, and it will thrive in this new form.

I thought, what a great metaphor for people in life these trees are! They grow best in a community, near others but with their own room to breathe. They are almost fluid, changing their shape according to circumstances, wearing only the thorns of neighboring plants as armor to protect them against predators. And because they are not impervious to life, things affect them, punching holes in their foundation, and if they fall, they regenerate with their failure as a lesson and an opportunity for a stronger foundation on which to build again.

Anyway, that was how the morning was spent. For lunch, we drove to Estancia El Paraíso where we ate lunch while peacocks and ducks and chickens wandered between our feet (we tried not to think about the fact that the meat we were cutting up on our plates probably looked not so long ago like the chicken that was pecking at our toes under the table).

That afternoon, we went to Punta del Diablo, which was also a very nice beach, but I was already sunburned and pretty tired of ocean, so I just slathered myself with sunscreen and hunkered down on my beach towel, writing in my notebook for the couple of hours we spent there.

Sunday, I slept in, which was fantastic. In the afternoon, a big group of us went horseback riding for a couple of hours. It was fun, and I had a feisty but really sweet-tempered horse, which was excellent, but I ended up very, very sore. I hurt today, from the sunburn and the saddle-soreness. Still, definitely a weekend to relax and let some of my worries and fears and doubts and stresses be calmed.

p. s. I will live in Rocha someday. No ifs, ands or buts.

Un día fácil y difícil

Today has been both a hard day and an easy one.

Easy:

Nothing began until the Ash Wednesday service downstairs in the Casa at 11 a.m., so we call got a little bit of a sleep-in. It was lovely.

Hard:

Once the Ash Wednesday service was over, Lent had begun. For forty-six days, Spanish will rule my tongue and my life. Already, it has been so hard. The whole group of us constantly slips up, forgetting for moments that we’re supposed to be speaking Spanish, so that we exclaim things in English. It’s also hard because so many people in the Casa are not giving up English for Lent, and it’s hard to hear one language all around you and answer in a different one. It’s such a struggle to communicate! But I think it will get better, slowly, as we learn how to speak more quickly and, eventually, think in Spanish rather than doing the long, elaborate process of hearing Spanish words, putting them in English, thinking of an English answer, and finally translating it into Spanish.

Easy:

Because Monday and Tuesday were the official Carnaval holiday, our Latin America and the Arts teacher is still out of town, which means no classes for me today. 🙂 A group of us walked down the street to La Cigale for ice cream and then to the park a few blocks away, where we rented paddle boats for about a dollar a person for half an hour and just drifted through this twisty, shady bit of lake, watching the bunnies and ducks that were playing on the shore and enjoying the breeze. Altogether, not a bad afternoon. We wanted to go see a movie (a significantly more expensive pastime) but we’ve already seen Underworld: Rise of the Lycans and Slumdog Millionaire (which is fantastic, by the way; I thoroughly recommend it), so there was really nothing in theaters here that we wanted to spend money on.

Hard:

I’m tired. It’s getting hard to do all my classes and schoolwork, work for Lynne, stay in contact with the GATA girls, stay connected socially, and do my own personal writing and still get plenty of sleep. Also, I’m thoroughly tired of both apples and the greasy food of the pizzeria down the block, so it’s getting hard to find something to eat in the evenings. We bought groceries, but we didn’t buy enough ham, so there was only two sandwiches-worth. Dang metric system, throwing us off.

Sorry this has been such a boring post. I have so little to say these days. We’re going to Rocha this weekend, though, so I should have more to report on Monday. ¡Ciao!

Tango and the Catholic Church

No, I’m not going to somehow tie the dance that originated in slum brothels to the Church. Sorry to get your hopes up. But tango and the cathedrals of the Catholic Church are the two things that struck me most about Argentina.

First, tango. Me encanta. This dance is the signature of the Rio de la Plata region. It’s beautiful, provocative, complicated, elegant, emotional, intense…it’s powerful to watch and very hard to dance, even if you’re only trying the most basic of steps. It’s strange to me that I would like this dance, which is so chauvinistic and embodies the domination of women by men, but it’s so elegant, it makes you want to be a part of it.

We had a pair of tango teachers come to the Casa a couple of days before we left for BA, to show us real tango, not the strange, stiff-armed, rose-between-your-teeth version that Hollywood brings us and not the showy kicks and lifts of that touristy tango shows in BA. First, they danced for us, and I’m telling you, I’ve never been so impressed by dancing in my life. Silently, they somehow communicate to each other exactly where they’re going to be, and their motions flow together so seamlessly that they seem like one person. Of course, they followed this image of grace by teaching all of us the basic steps, then sitting back to watch us totter around like newborn foals finding our legs.

There are eight basic steps in a tango (for a woman…not sure about the man’s part, except that it seems so much easier), and they always take a woman backward. It’s the man’s job to steer the woman around obstacles and other couples, because she can never see where she’s going. When you’re in the tango “hold,” you have one arm around the other person, and with the other arm you sort of hold hands, although the woman’s wrist is bent at a 90 degree angle and her arm is tense so that she can be guided by the man’s pushing.

It was a strange experience, dancing with everyone at the Casa. There were three levels of dancing: first, dancing with the other boys in our group, who were only just learning the steps, too, and who usually ceded the lead to you if you knew better what you were doing 😉 . The second level was just Wimon, because he and Rosalinda have been taking tango lessons for something like a year now, so he’s got the steps down pretty much pat, and he’s just learning to give the right cues so that his partner knows when he wants her to do what. The third level – very intimidating! – was dancing with one of the two professional men, either the instructor or the younger male assistant they brought with them. These guys lead. You go where they want you to…you have no other choice.

When we got to Buenos Aires, tango was everywhere. That city knows how to market its assets! La Boca was full of tango dancers, doing the steps in the streets, blasting tango music from storefronts, posing for pictures with tourists, and entertaining lunch guests at the restaurants all along the streets. Everywhere, you could buy pictures, paintings and figurines of tango dancers. At night, tango dinner shows draw tourists in droves.

Show tango is so different from ballroom tango that its almost not recognizable as the same thing. Dancers touch or don’t, they hook each other’s legs and kick between each other’s knees, the men dip the women or lift them over their heads; it’s ostentatious and choreographed and obviously designed to impress.

Speaking of designed to impress (yeah, this is a stretch of a transition), the cathedral at the Plaza de Mayo in Buenos Aires was one of the stops that my smaller group took on our single day of free exploration. We walked through, awestruck like all the other photo-snapping tourists, and then sat down on some of the benches for a few minutes of quiet contemplation. I looked around at the beauty of the place, and I was inspired – so this is what I wrote in my journal while we sat there:

The cathedral is beautiful – every inch of it is decorated, from the mosaic-tiled floors to the vaulted arches and painted domes. It’s awe-inspiring…but I do not feel God here. This was my first thought as we walked through this place, but then I realized that even as I felt that intangible sense of spiritual disappointment, I was praying, reaching out into the empty space to see if my fingers brushed His presence, like a child searching the hole left by a lost tooth with his tongue.

I look up at the ceiling high above me and see sunlight streaming through a high-set stained glass window in golden bars, and the hair on the back of my neck stands up. How could God not be in this place, taking a father’s pride in the art his children created and accepting their reverence? And how could I say this place was not spiritual when it made me consciously reach out to God in a way that my stubborn self-reliance generally does not allow?

Cheesy, maybe, but don’t judge. Being in a place that gorgeous will make you want to wax poetic.

Buenos Aires: buen por el cuerpo, buen por el alma.

So I’ve only been in Argentina for a day, and I’m already in love with it. I don’t want to go back to Uruguay! Don’t get me wrong, Montevideo is great, but Buenos Aires is so pretty – even the narrow sidewalks and buildings that block out the sky. I miss huge expanses of sky sometimes…just one more thing that’s holding me to Texas like a stretched-tight rubber band.

But BA (this is what Wimon and Rosalinda call Buenos Aires, and it never ceases to make me laugh) is lovely, from its glittering, glitzy shopping areas to the green, tree-shaded parks to the colorful La Boca port neighborhood. Today, we took a bus tour, just sketchily going through all the landmark places in BA. We went first to La Recoleta Cemetery, this really incredible place that put me strongly in mind of a vampire city. It was eerily gorgeous; all of the mausoleums were the size of small houses, made entirely of stone and usually topped with some sort of beautiful, elaborate statuary.They were packed cheek by jowl all through the place, and there were “alleys” between them so that people could walk through.

We saw the final resting places of the most famous president of Argentina, who brought free, mandatory public education as well as the first trains to the country, making it the modern nation it is today, and Eva Perón, a.k.a. Evita, the most-loved and most-hated woman in Argentine history, about whom there is now an Andrew Lloyd Weber musical. People still leave flowers at both of their graves.

After the goose-bump-inducingly-awesome walk through the cemetery, we went to see the flower of Buenos Aires. It’s this huge metal flower (the largest in the world, although I can’t imagine that there are many contenders for that title) that opens in the morning and closes at night. It’s made of something like 6 tons of metal, and our tour guide said she thought it was becoming the new symbol for BA. Up to now, the most recognizable feature of BA has been the huge obelisk in the middle of Nueve de Julio Avenue, the widest avenue in the world. But lots of cities have obelisks. How many places can claim a six-ton flower that opens and closes in response to the sun?

We wasted a good bit of our morning in the rose garden where we went next. I don’t think we were even supposed to get off the bus there, but people wanted to take pictures, and when this group gets started taking pictures, it’s hard to get them to stop. It was pretty, but we saw flowers that you can see anywhere in the world rather than seeing the Plaza de Mayo and the Casa Rosada, which are completely unique to BA. We did hear an interesting story, though. There’s this really lovely little white bridge in the park that we had to walk over to leave, and our tour guide says that it’s the bridge where all the young men take their girlfriends to propose; if your fella suggests a walk there, you can bet he’s about to pop the question lol.

We had lunch reservations at a fabulous Italian restaurant down the street from our hotel – which is nice, by the way…totally posh – and the food was excellent. No one was able to finish what they ordered, though, because the maniacal waiters stuffed us all full of the most amazing bread first. They just kept bringing baskets of the stuff, and how could we turn down anything so fabulous? I ended up with three chickens-worth of chicken breast and a sack of potatoes-worth of fries in leftovers that I can eat for dinner some night and save some money.

After lunch, we bussed over to the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, which has both South American and European art – and even a little from the good old U.S. of A.! I saw a lot of beautiful art, just like the name of the museum promised, and I even got a little sketching in. All in all, a good day. 🙂

Now I’m off to dinner. Someone said that a restaurant that served something like Tex-mex had been found. I’m going hunting for it. Wish me luck!

Una semana loca

Well, lots has happened since I last wrote a blog. It’s a little overwhelming, actually. I’ll try to skim over everything, so this doesn’t get too long.

On Monday we went to the celebration of Iemanjá, the goddess of the sea who is, according to the religion based around her, the mother of all other gods. At sunset, we went down to the beach where they were having the big ceremony for her, and there were hundreds and hundreds of people dressed in white sticking little blue and white candles in hollows in the sand and lighting them, tossing blue and white flowers into the sea foam, and wading out into the ocean pushing little (or big) boats with dolls or flowers inside, decorated with blue and white ribbons – offerings for Iemanjá.

We also checked out her statue, where there were more white-robed people with candles praying for a fruitful year and laying flowers at her feet. The statue was interesting to me because Iemanjá didn’t look like the traditional beautiful, willowy goddess that you’d see from the Greeks; she was a strong-featured woman, built like an ox, who looked like she could probably take the Governator in a wrestling match, even if she was wearing a long, draping dress and had mermaid hair down to her waist.

Also this week was a trip to Museo Blanes, where I got the opportunity to see a lot of art by some of Uruguay’s most famous artists. I really liked Blanes, but I wasn’t a big fan of Figari. You can go check out the pictures on Facebook if you want; to me, Figari’s style is very simplistic and child-like, and I’m inclined to agree with the critics of his time and say that they’re just not up to par with the other Uruguayan artists. But that, of course, is only my opinion. Figari is now internationally famous, so someone must think he’s worth something.

The Japanese gardens were gorgeous, too, and I took tons of pictures. Facebook ’em.

Thursday night was Las Llamadas (literally, “the calls”), which was another parade much like the Carnaval parade, except much cooler. It was comparsa after comparsa, filling the night with a heavy beat that the crowd echoed with claps and rocking bodies. Remember how I said that the Carnaval parade was like a big playground for kids? Well, Las Llamadas is like a big playground for everyone. I’ve never seen so many people have so much fun at the same time. People are dancing in the stands to the music, yelling for their favorite comparsa, whistling at the prettiest dancers, clapping to the rhythm of the music when the drums are going, and calling for more with their claps when the drums break for a moment (clap, clap, clap, clap-clap…).

This parade was so much less commercialized than the Carnaval parade. It’s not on a main street, 18 de Julio, like Carnaval was, and there are no floats devoted to this or that sponsor, spewing their jingles from speakers. It’s just people who are really passionate about candombe, dancing, singing and playing their hearts out; they’ve all prepared all year for this moment. There are so many comparsas involved in Las Llamadas that the event actually has to be spread over two nights – which is crazy, because we got there the first night at 8 p.m., with the parade already beginning, and staying until midnight, and the thing was still going strong! We didn’t go back the second night.

And yesterday, we went back to Punta del Este, this time as a whole group. It was really cool: first, we went to Casapueblo, a house built entirely by the artist, Carlos Páez Vilaró, who clearly had a hatred of straight lines. The place is massive, and all covered in domes and swoops and little jutting-out places, like some sort of Dr. Seuss creation. Every part of it is covered in art; where there’s not a framed Vilaró painting, there’s a mural he painted on a wall, or one of his sculptures standing in a niche; and, of course, the entire house is his art. It’s now been turned into both a museum and a seaside resort. I didn’t take my camera with me on the trip this weekend (I know, shame on me) so I pulled some pictures off the internet so you could understand how cool this place was.

Then we went to the creepiest park in existence, covered in huge, off-color, misshapen statues of animals and people, like a kid’s nightmare. It was a cool place, though, because there was so much stuff to climb on and take pictures with; just don’t get caught there after dark! I’d love to go back there someday and film a horror movie there. We had sandwiches there, which were delicious, and then we set off for the beach.

We were supposed to get to boat out to this sweet tropical jungle island, but the guys who run the boats said that the weather was too bad to take us out (to which I have to reply, “what?” The weather was a perfect, breezy 75 degrees, partly cloudy and brilliant). Anyway, we ended up just going to the beach for the rest of the afternoon instead.

Just like last time, the waves were fantastic, and because we went to a different beach than before, the sand was a lot nicer, too (At the last beach, the sand was just crushed-up seashells, really hard on the feet). I got such a workout, fighting the waves for an hour or so, then getting out on the sand and running, jumping, and diving for the frisbee. I’m getting pretty good at frisbee, and at running in sand and waves! lol

A couple of people played sand soccer with some Uruguayans, and got their butts totally kicked. Even the oldest man playing had more endurance than any of us silly Americans, except maybe Ben, who was a cross-country runner.

It was a glorious weekend. And coming up next week, Buenos Aires! We leave for Argentina on Wednesday. I can’t wait!

Me gusta Carnaval y, tambien, me engordo

Last night was the Carnaval parade, the big Mardi-Gras-esque celebration with lots of people and food and music and insanity. Just getting to el desfile was a huge adventure. Once again, we had our Uruguayan bodyguards, the guys from the youth group and their girlfriends. Not only did they have to help us get to the plaza where we could find the seats we’d paid for, but they could keep their eyes out for pickpockets and drunks and anything else that might cause trouble. It wasn’t all business, though – how could it be, when there are kids running around spraying strangers with something akin to silly string and the sound of drums quickening everyone’s steps? The whole city was one big party.

Our group set out much too late from the Casa, though, and we ended up getting to 18 de Julio (the street where the parade would be) right at 6, which was when the party was supposed to start. There were roadblocks set up everywhere, keeping the people out as well as the cars, and policemen guarding every entrance to the street. We couldn’t get in to get to our seats. Martín, the most responsible (and the oldest? not sure) of the Uruguayans, was constantly explaining our group to la policía and the Carnaval organizers, trying to get them to help us get past the huge crowds and into the close seats we’d paid for.

We finally spotted some empty seats and Martín convinced one of the more helpful organizers to let us climb over people and barricades to get to them, but then someone came by to check our ticket numbers, and the seat numbers didn’t match. They pointed us, instead, to a section of seats that were definitely not empty. By now, the parade was well under way and floats were drifting by, blasting loud Spanish music from speakers while the crowd clapped and stomped along. We became a little parade of Americans walking up the street in the opposite direction of the Carnaval floats, and then the organizers were stuffing us into seats, throwing out the opportunistic people who had moved up from the standing masses on the sidewalk behind the seats, presuming the benches to be unclaimed. I felt bad throwing the Uruguayans out of their front-row seats at their party, but we had bought the tickets, and they had not.

I got quite a few pictures before my camera died, the poor thing – I need to find out where I can get las pilas here, so I won’t miss any more picture opportunities! – and then I just sat back and enjoyed the parade. There was so much to watch. The floats were mostly advertisements for sponsor companies, and the music they were singing was a bunch of jingles specially tailored for the Carnaval.

Then there were the groups of Candombe dancers and drummers, which we had learned about in classes in the week leading up to the parade. We saw the flag-bearers, who brought the flags swooping down on the crowds while the kids tried to jump up and grab the ends of the banners; we saw the adorable mamas viejas and their gramilleras, dancing with fans and canes respectively, flirting like the cutest old couples you have ever seen; we saw vedettes and bailarinas, the girls clad only in sequins and feathers; we saw the tamborillas, the traditional drums of Candombe, and their rows of drummers in symbolic garb, pounding away at the drums each with one drumstick and one palm. You could feel their beat in your chest, and it made me want to dance along, like the Uruguayan women around us. When the music stopped, the crowd called for more by clapping in unison (clap, clap, clap, clap-clap) over and over until they began again.

There were also the comedy groups, who dressed in parodies of something or another (one group was dressed as nuns, and they ran up and down the sides of the street, throwing “holy water” at the crowd) and generally spraying the crowd down with water. Some groups wore costumes with huge papier-mâché heads that the would swoop down on the kids with, and the kids would either cower and scream in fun-fear or spray the heads down with the soapy silly-string suds their parents had bought them from the street vendors, then paper them with colorful styrofoam confetti pellets.

If it weren’t for the scantily-clad girls, this place would have been just a huge childs’ playground. During Carnaval, kids can literally do whatever they want. They sat on the edges of the street in front of the ticketed seats, and between floats and groups they ran back and forth across the road, kicking bottles like soccer balls or waiting for the rows of people that preceded their groups, carrying a street-wide banner between them, so that they could lay down in the road and let it pass over them. Cotton candy, caramel apples, popcorn, candied peanuts, plastic masks with the images of American cartoon characters, cans of the sudsy spray and bags of styrofoam confetti, colorful light-up necklaces and glow sticks – all these things were for sale from men who carried them back and forth through the crowd, and the kids got pretty much whatever they asked for.

The parade was fun and exciting at first, and it was interesting to see all the different costumes, but eventually it got repetetive, and groups left to get something to eat. A couple of us tried to press our way down 18th to a restaurant, and it was literally like trying to swim against a current. People were everywhere, running into you, elbowing you out of the way, jostling you this way and that, trying to get a better view of the parade or get wherever they needed to go. There were a lot of drunk people – one guy grabbed me as I was passing and kissed me on the cheek! – but we made it to the restaurant, eventually, and had some pretty darn good pizza.

And that’s all I have to say about Carnaval. I do have a couple interesting notes to say about other things.

First of all, as my title says, I fatten. Lol. I’ve left stuffed at every meal, and the five pounds or so that I lost in the first week from walking so much, I’m gaining back because these people care not one whit for calorie count. Too bad it’s so delicious, so I can never turn it down.

Second, a group of us has been talking about what we are going to give up for Lent. I’ve never actually participated in Lent, but it’s sort of part of the South American culture, and I want to prove to myself that I can have the discipline to give up something important for 40 days. So here’s what I’m giving up: English.

Just spoken English, of course, so I don’t leave the few of you who are reading this blog in the dark, and I’ll allow myself English on Skype and in classes where it’s required to answer questions, but I really feel like total immersion will help me learn the language so much more quickly, and teach me discipline, and help me depend on God when I get so frustrated because I can’t get my ideas across. Plus, several other people have said that they want to do it, too, so we’ll have a community that can support and sympathize with each other for forty days. I feel like this is an opportunity I could never, ever have in the States, so I’m determined to make the most of it.

Wish me luck!

Punta del Este

So, this weekend was supposed to be a big group trip to Punta del Este, the beautiful, beach resort town on the coast of Uruguay. Unfortunately, the weather was dismal and rainy, which doesn’t lend itself to sunny afternoons on the beach and picnic lunches on a breezy island, so the trip was postponed until next weekend.

Two smaller groups, however, had already put deposits down so that they could stay for a night (or three) and spend the whole weekend in this pretty place, and neither group decided to back out because of the weather. One of the groups (seven girls and one guy lol) stayed in a luxurious hotel near the beach, enjoying the shopping and the nightlife rather than the beaches because of the rain. They’re staying Thursday night, Friday night and tonight and coming back tomorrow.

The other group – my group – was composed of a more penny-pinching set: me, Morgan, Ashley, Lawson, Ben and Sam. We left yesterday afternoon for the two hour bus ride (the ticket’s something like 7 bucks) and arrived in Punta del Este at 5:30 or so, then walked (taxis in Punta are outrageously expensive) to our hostel, “Roger’s House.”

This place is run by a couple of surfer dudes, and it honestly feels like a bachelor’s pad; I swear, these guys just looked around their house one day and were like, you know what? We’ve got a couple extra rooms in the back. I bet if we stuck some bunk beds in there, we could charge people to stay. And so they did. The feeling of this place was totally laid-back: as soon as we walked in the open glass front doors, we were greeted by a couple of guys lounging shirtless in the living room on the couch and floor, watching a movie like they had nothing else to do in the world.

We had asked for a six-person room (someone wisely advised us to try to always go with enough people that we could buy out a room in a hostel, so that we didn’t end up sleeping next to weirdos), but we ended up with two rooms that shared a bathroom, one with four beds and the other with three. We split it up half and half, guys in the smaller room with three beds and girls in the other.

Our group arrived at the hostel about the same time a plumber did, which was good, since our toilet was leaking all over the floor. We assumed, when the plumbers went into the bathroom, that they were going in to fix the toilet. Not so. Next thing we knew, our toilet was being carried out the door and into the backyard. It came back eventually, and no longer leaked, but I wish I had a picture of our faces. Our expressions said something like, “Excuse me? Did we just pay $25 a night to pee our pants?”

We didn’t stick around in the hostel long; the pounding of the waves called. We changed into swimsuits and made the trek down to the almost entirely empty beach, where the weather and the scenery were beautiful. The sun never came out yesterday, but that was definitely not a problem. The weather was a humid 75 degrees or so, with just the hint of a breeze, and fog hung over the sand so you felt like the beach went on forever into oblivion. The waves were towering, surfers’ waves, and the water that ran up on the sand was constantly whipped into foam.

I have never seen waves like these. They’re a little bit ominious, actually, because you can wade out into the water up to your thighs, and as you see a big wave rolling toward the beach, the water sucks away from you, feeling like sandpaper because its dragging silt past your calves, and the water level drops down to your ankles, and then suddenly you’re smashed with the force of the breaking wave, driven backward in a spray of foam. It was incredible. If I could relive that afternoon every day for the rest of my stay in South America, I would be thoroughly happy.

Fighting the push and pull of the waves, running up and down the beach and having foam- and sandball-throwing wars exhausted our group pretty thoroughly, and although it was pretty hard to grasp the passing of time because the sun was hidden in the greyness, I’m pretty sure it was about eight-thirty or nine at least by the time the rumbling in our stomachs was enough to tug us out of the sand and back onto las calles in search of a restaurant.

Point of interest: advertising works. All the way up and down la rambla, there were signs advertising the Burger King Steakhouse Burger. By the time we’d rejoined civilization and were walking past touristy stores and cafes, we had to have Burger King. Nothing else would do.

It took a lot of walking and a little directional help from our friend the policeman, but we finally found it, right next to (what else?) a McDonald’s. But the Mickey D’s here are much worse than they are in the States, if that tells you anything, so the choice was an easy one. We had it our way.

Burger King was quite expensive, something close to twice what we would have paid back home, but I have never tasted anything so delicious in my life. I’m sure it helped that we were absolutely starving (as a local Uruguayan saying goes, “the best sauce is hunger”), but these burgers really were good. Perfectly seasoned, flame-kissed beef and fresher-than-fresh veggies, mixed with hot, salty fries and icy cold drinks made for a thoroughly satisfying dining adventure. One thing I really miss about the U.S. is bottomless drinks; I could have had a dozen refills that night and still wanted more.

We walked back to the hostel and hung out in the girls’ room, which was the larger of the two and had a “couch” of sorts – really just a pair of cushions set up in an “L” shape, but they were comfortable. We played a bunch of games and I drew a huge tattoo – essentially, a big conglomeration of doodles – on Ben’s shoulder, and then we turned off the lights and told scary stories, which was something of a bad idea, considering the night that was to follow.

You have to understand a couple of things, to understand why we might have been spooked. First, as soon as we’d gotten of the bus and started walking through the streets of this strange South American city, we were joking about how this would be the perfect setup for a horror movie. Second, the sliding glass door that opened straight into our room from the backyard/patio did not shut, so we had sort of made do by finding a broken screen door leaning up against the back wall of the house and leaned it over the opening, then drawing the curtains over that. Not very secure, really. Third, Ben was telling stories about creepy sounds, and as he was talking about them, we could hear corresponding ones in the hostel – the “drip, drip” of the stories’ murder victims’ blood was accompanied by the slow drip of the toilet, the banging of attackers coincided with the banging on the door of a couple of hostel guests who had stayed out too late and gotten locked outside, and the howling of the wind matched with the sounds of the growing rainstorm we could hear outside.

At something like 3 in the morning, it started to rain extremely hard, and the guys who ran the hostel and some guests came outside on the back patio (we could hear everything, of course, without a closed door between us) to shake the water out of the chairs and have themselves a good ol’ time in the yard. Also, because of the weird air pressure, when another female guest came stomping through our room to get to the bathroom, the door slammed behind her, and the sound of the flush was near-deafening.

When we woke up the next morning and started packing our things up, expecting to have to check out at 10, one of the guys in charge of the place came in and said that, although people would be coming in to take the beds at 11 a.m., we could leave our stuff in the closets or wherever and go in and out all day if we liked, just go to the beach and come back for a shower or whatever. Like I said, the place was really relaxed. So I give our hostel a 9 out of 10 on relaxed, fun atmosphere, and a 2 out of 10 for a good night’s sleep. But seriously, that afternoon on the coolest beach in history would have made a way worse hostel worth it.

Anyway, after a very tasty lunch at a pizzeria (they had real pepperoni for their pizza, which is both rare and fabulous) we boarded a bus home and returned this afternoon, thoroughly happy with our weekend.We also cooked taco salad (everyone misses Tex-Mex food) and the whole house shared the cost, so it ended up being only about $2.50 a person for a fantabulous dinner, so that was great, too.

And the weekend’s not over yet! Tomorrow, we go to the Carnaval parade and then come home to watch the Super Bowl! Can’t wait…stay tuned for a blog about it!