I Can't Stand it Anymore, I Have to Post Something New to Our Blog

Perhaps you have noticed I added the date of our most recent blog update to my email automatic signature. I thought it might be helpful to some people, but it is really irritating to me because it serves as a constant reminder of how far behind I am! I figure why should I be the only one feeling irritated and aggravate? Since misery loves company, I will invite you to join me by writing a long-winded boring blog!!!

We really do have lots to say, but as they say, "pictures are worth a thousand words" and with our camera balking at recording anything interesting, the only pictures we end up with are really dumb pics or photos I dare not publish under threat (by my sweet, adorable wife) of a miserable life for what may be a severely abbreviated amount of time.

Last Saturday we started the day with a church service project where we pruned, painted, and cleaned the outside of a school for orphans. Bonnie and I considered not going for a very silly reason; We obviously committed a major oversight by failing to pack and transport for 12,000 miles the type of clothes we wouldn't mind getting paint splattered on! I don't know what we were thinking! Lucky for me I had caught a new pair of jeans on a nail at the livestock show and ripped a hole in them, so the idea of punishing them by getting them splattered with bright red, yellow, green, or blue paint definitely appealed to me!

Our student friends, Aaron & Shannalee Hansen from Idaho (imagine a picture here of some really, really nice people with two adorable, very, very platinum blonde little girls [a 2 year-old and a six month-old]) host a lunch each Saturday for international students at the University Aaron attends. You can tell Aaron and Shannalee are really nice people because they even invite us to attend, so after the service project I made a quick visit in order to not miss out on Shannalee's wonderful pancakes with delicious home-made buttermilk and strawberry syrup. Pancakes are available in restaurants here, but only for dinner and as a dessert. At one restaurant we had to make sure we arrived after 3:00 at which time pancakes become available.  Similar to a fast food restaurant changing their morning menu to their normal daily menu- just advanced by four hours.
 
Daily activities start much later in the day here and end early in the morning. Recently I tried to make reservations at a restaurant with a big screen TV so we could watch the important World Cup qualifying soccer game between Uruguay and Argentina.  I think the hostess actually laughed out loud when I asked for a 7:00 reservation. Silly boy, we don't start taking reservations until 8:00 when the kitchen opens up!!!  Again, what was I thinking?!!

OK, back to my original plan of making you question your sanity by wondering why you are voluntarily spending all this time being irritated by lots of words without any pictures...

After lunch with the international students we hustled off to a 10K race with Aaron and Shannalee.  They were cross country runners at ISU (nope, I'm not going to tell you which University it is- BWA-HA-HA-HA!) where they met each other.  Shannalee told us she hasn't been on a long run since her first pregnancy over two years ago.  However, her credibility is now suspect because out of 5,000 runners she was the eighth female to cross the finish line (including the elite runners). Bonnie watched their two girls for the few minutes it took them to cover the 6 mile course.  The girls, Kayda and Kit, are so cute, Bonnie felt like a celebrity- everyone wanted to talk to the girls and lots of people took their picture. The double wide stroller the girls were in may also have contributed to their popularity, since it is probably the only such stroller in the country, but I doubt it.  Yesterday when I borrowed Kayda to accompany me on an extended cross-city bus trip I had many opportunities to practice my Spanish with the many friendly people who talked to me because Kayda was with me.  On the street people walking their dogs would approach to see if Kayda wanted to pet their dog.  I took her to the swings in the park in our plaza and discovered she was already quite well known by many of the parents and kids who were present.

I had to speak in church last Sunday (in Spanish, of course). Instead of leaving me with 10 minutes, the first two speakers left me with more than twice that amount. In the states, my ego would have taken a beating because the Bishop would have had to employ some strategem to retrieve his congregation from the dreamland I would have sent them to! Now I wonder why I didn't make myself popular by simply finishing early?  Hindsight is so omniscient.  I discovered an advantage to having an accent.  It was a major ego-boost to see everyone concentrating and hanging on my every word.  I choose to ignore the fact they were listening so hard in order to make sense out of every mutilated and scarred word I served up!

National elections are currently in process and have been since long before we arrived two months ago. From our observations it appears there are many people who believe that the bigger the caravan you can form out of horn-honking, flag-sporting autos the more people that will be convinced to vote for your party. In spite of the noisy racket, I did admire the creativity of the guy who had figured out how to make his car security alarm keep playing in an eternal loop. I hope he equally admired my creativity in the way I pelted his car with eggs, lettuce, apples, tomatoes, carrots, lemons, and water bottles! I am so excited the elections are this Sunday because the law says the campaigning must end as of midnight, three hours ago!!! I seriously doubt, however, that the horn honking addicts will be deterred.

After the 10K race arrived home to discover one of the many political parties was holding a rally in our little plaza.

This is Pedro, their candidate for President. Contrasting to our election process we were struck by the total lack of security and available access to the candidates.  We have also noticed we have yet to see a candidate dressed in a suit or tie. Someone told us all the candidates are trying to appear to be "one of the people" so the standard dress is slacks, a long sleeve shirt, and a sweater.  Of course, they also pointed out that it is only their party's candidate who really qualifies as "one of the people".  Today Uruguay is a very democratic republic, for 12 years from 1973 to 1985 the country suffered undera repressive dictatorship which freely employed tactics of torture and murder.  The aforementioned "one of the people" candidate, Pepe Mujica, was imprisoned and tortured for 11 years during that terrible period of time.

Anyway, when Pedro finished his speech, Bonnie commented it would certainly sound funny in the States to have a politician end his speech with "Hugs for everyone!" 

Hugs and kisses are part of the culture here as it is the way people meet and greet one another rather than shaking hands. It is rare to say "Hi" to an acquainance without a hug and kiss on the cheek.  I'm sure I have kissed more women in the last two months than I have in my entire life (only on the cheek, though)! I think if I were a young buck and lived here, I would troll the Rambla and pretend to know every pretty girl I saw! 

The traffic jam in the far traffic lane was caused by a different political party rally going on half a mile away.  I have seen a lot of streets made impassable because of these political  rallies.

Hey, here's a photo our camera deemed worthy to take- our washer and dryer.  All I can say is the washer is very eco-friendly because it is only big enough to hold about a quart of water!  The top one is the dryer and although I didn't think there could be many things smaller than our washer, the dryer seems to be one of those things!

Hey, wow, check out this great artistic shot.  Look at the symbolism and read between the lines.  There is a greater meeting here than meets the eye.  At least our camera seemed to think so.  If you can figure out what our camera saw in this scene, please let us know!

This is our "burning made easy" stove.  Gas cooking really is great- it does heat things up very quickly.  We can boil water faster on the stove than in the microwave.  Sadly, there are no temperature markers.  You must guess at the temperature by looking at the size of the flame.  Lucky for us, Aaron Hansen served a mission in Brazil and was familiar with these type of stoves.  He confirmed my suspicions we had a gas leak and repaired it in the missionary way-  with bubble gum!

This is our Mate cup gifted to us by our wonderful friends, Gerardo and Rosario Gonzalez.  It is made from a hollowed out gourd.  I am determined I am going to learn to tolerate this drink.  I need to do it quick, though, because in Uruguay (Vs. Argentina) it is the custom to drink it very hot and the summer is just around the corner!

I guess our camera thought our kids might get a chuckle out of seeing the largest box of oatmeal we have seen.  Many things seem to exist on a much smaller scale here.  This picture actually makes the box look much larger than it is (very similar to all the photos of me- it must be a defect in our camera).  I don't think there is enough cereal in this box to have been able to feed all of our family for one breakfast!

If you are beginning to resent me for making you join me in my misery, remember, it took me a lot longer to write this tripe than it did for you to read it!  It is now 4:00 in the morning but I retire to my bed satisfied in the knowledge that soon I will not be alone in my misery.  BWA-HA-HA-HA-HA (again)!

Colonia

Above are our new good friends from Uruguay, Gerardo and Rosario Galvez.  We spent a lovely weekend in the oldest town in Uruguay, a place called Colonia.  They drove up the three hours from Montevideo to spend Saturday with us exploring this interesting little town.  Colonia was first settled by the Portuguese in 1680, but since it was just across the river (Rio de la Plata) from Buenos Aires, the Spanish would come across, conquer ,and sack the city.  Eventually the Portuguese would get it back and rebuild it and the cycle would repeat itself.  There are still buildings and streets from those old days and even though it is a small town of only 20,000 people, it has been taken over by artisans and is filled with all sorts of hand crafted, painted, sculpted, etc. pieces of art and is filled with little boutiques to sell the art stuff or other touristy stuff.  I got Bonnie a hand crafted necklace and earring by the amazing and wonderful artist, Mario!

This is the wall and bridge entrance (they built a moat) to the original old city (it was built as a fortress, although from reading the history books, it didn't seem to help much!).  I don't recognize the big, fat guy in the funny hat that is with Bonnie and Gerardo & Rosario.  The hat is something the people or gauchos from the country often wear.  I thought it might help me "blend in" with the locals.  However, Uruguay is a place where we gringos do not stand out.  Bonnie and I often get asked directions from people on the street, so we must look like the locals.  I say locals rather than natives because there are no natives.  The indigenous Charrua Amerindians were virtually wiped out in the colonial era.  As such, nearly 90% of the population is Caucasian, mostly from Italy and Spain.  The Italian heritage must explain the outstanding pizza they have here.  Once you get away from downtown to where there are individual houses (instead of high-rise apartment buildings), it seems like every house has a brick barbecue grill and a pizza oven built in the back yard.  Grilling here is done with wood and many restaurants have interior, wood-fired grills.

Since our camera gives us fits and rarely takes pictures, you will have to settle for the few it did decide to take, like this one of Bonnie on an old Spanish cobble-stoned street peering down an original Portuguese street.  The Portuguese used larger rocks and pieced the streets together rather than use cobble stones so it was easy to tell who built which street.  As we looked at all these 300 year old homes and streets we couldn't help but wonder how many or our modern day buildings will still be in existence when the same amount of time has passed.

Some silly people coming down one of the streets that radiate out from the old main plaza.

Bonnie has just grabbed some of the blooms from this tree and placed them in her billfold because tradition has it if you place the petals in you billfold you will never want for money. 

This is the old main church and pigeons and swallows use all those visible holes in the outer wall as nests.  There were lots of birds (we enjoyed sitting on that bench in the background and listening to all the different birds) including many green headed loros (like parrots).  Above you can see a beautiful lora (female loro), which we learned is the word applied to people who talk all the time!

We saw our first Mexican restaurant here and we also saw a restaurant that offered "Arroz a la Cubana" (kids- that should bring back some memories; good for some and otherwise for others!).  We are being very good with our budget, however, so we couldn't afford to eat at those places.  Bummer!  Nevertheless, our budget led us to another new experience- we stayed in a hostel.  We had our own humble and simple room with shared bathrooms down the hall.  It turned out so well, we joined Hostelling International so we can do the same in other cities.

Buenos Aires is on the other bank of the river (and it truly is a river here) only 25 miles away so you can see the tops of the skyscrapers from Montevideo.  We climbed the light house and were able to see a little more of Buenos Aires from that vantage point as well as all of the city. 

Interestingly, the only bullfighting ring in Uruguay is in this city.  It was built by an entrepreneurial Argentine in 1920 as a place for wealthy Argentines from Buenos Aires to come to gamble.  After only eight bullfights the Uruguay government outlawed bull fighting.  Not all entrepreneurs are meant to be successful!

You can wake up now, I'm done.