Palacio Legislativo

This past Friday, we took a tour of the Legislative Palace of Uruguay, located here in Montevideo. The building itself is an awe inspiring construction. You’ll have to look up some pictures online (http://www.parlamento.gub.uy/palacio3/p_visitavirtual.asp?Lang=Eng): it commands a large area and its marble columns at one of the entrances are impressive. There aren’t very many buildings in the area that are as built as high either. Its idea was born in the early 1900’s because the Legislature at that time didn’t have any official place to meet. They met in people’s houses and rented buildings for larger events. Actual construction began in 1908 and was overseen by an Italian architect giving the building its distinct design. They finished work in 1925 in time to celebrate the centennial of the country.
If it’s possible, the inside is even more remarkable. The first room that we entered is called something like the “Room of the Lost Steps” and it separates the halls of the Senators and the Representatives. Located in the center of the building, this room has ceilings, artwork, and design fit to be in some of the cathedrals that we have visited. This in itself is interesting when you remember that Uruguay is one of the most secularized countries in Latin America having gone through an extensive process beginning in the 19^th century. The tour guide informed us that the room was constructed entirely from 52 different kinds of marble, all taken from quarries in Uruguay. Above our heads there were also amazingly detailed mosaics (if I hadn’t known they were tiled I would have thought it was a painting!), beautiful stained glass windows imported from a artisan in Italy, and 24 k gold and crystal lamp stands. Next we moved to the ballroom, where everything is original, nothing being restored. The entire room was built with wood imported from Italy and at the center sat a huge Turkish rug and an enormous table carved from one piece of oak. We were also shown the library which is also completely handmade with wood furnishings including bookshelves of a type of rose wood claimed to be the most expensive wood in the world. It’s the 2^nd largest library in Uruguay and is open to the public. It was cool for us to see some people actually in the room studying.
After being blow away by the architecture, we followed our guide to the rooms which the senators and representatives meet twice a week. It was kind of surreal to step onto the balcony and look into the area where the politicians sit. I’ve only seen scenes like it in the movies. Uruguay’s system of government is very similar to ours and has had tow major parties like us since its creation: the Red Party and the White Party. Only recently has a 3^rd party emerged: the Broad Front, a liberal-socialist type party, which is the party of the current president. As they conduct meetings, the elected officials sit segregated with the older parties on the sides and the new Broad Front party in the middle. In the Representative chamber, there are 99 representatives, most of which are from Montevideo and there is also 1 Independent member elected. I don’t know exactly where he sits during meetings… One thing we noticed, were 2 coasters sitting on each of the desks. When asked about these, the guide laughed and said they were for coffee and tea. She also said that the members are now allowed to drink their mate during meetings (they hadn’t always in the past) but that they haven’t gained the liberty of having 3 coasters on their desks…
Two more cultural things: First, Uruguay flies three flags in many places. One has a red diagonal on it: this was Artigas’ flag as he fought for independence from Spain. One has the inscription “Libertad o Muerte”, liberty or death: this was used by Lavalleja and the 33 Orientales (roughly “Revolutionaries”) when they returned from Buenos Aires to fight for independence from Brazil. The third is the current flag with alternating blue and white stripes on the right and a sun in the top left-hand corner. Second, the Uruguayan seal or shield is shown in many places. It is split into four sections each with a symbol: (going from top left, counter clockwise) Scales=justice, Horse=liberty, Ox=richness, and The Cerro(the highest point in Montevideo)=strength.

The Wild West Should Meet the Original Gaucho

On Sunday, we got opportunity to go to a Uruguayan rodeo and fair. Holy Week, the week before Easter, has been renamed Tourism Week as part of a separation of Church and state process that began the 19^th century and as part of last week they put on a week of festivities here in Montevideo. They call it Semana Criolla, roughly translated at Heritage Week. Gaucho (the cowboy of the Southern Cone) culture is a huge part of the Uruguayan tradition and much of it was being celebrated while in different presentations we were able to attend while we were there. First, Ximena (one of our Spanish lab instructors and good friends) took us to see the end of the rodeo part. The riders, dressed in Gaucho wear, would mount a horse tied to a post and ride the bucking bronc swinging their whips above their heads. It probably wouldn’t have been the favorite place of a PETA member, let’s just throw that in there. Then, we walked through an artisan market while looking for some other form of entertainment. We found a magic show/circus in progress and I at least had a very good time watching the proceedings and trying to understand what they were saying. Man it’s hard to come back to Montevideo and hear Spanish after listening to the clear speaking of Peruvians! Then we went to see a song and dance show presenting folk dances and music of the past. It was very fun. Mom, you would have loved it. Other than that, we were able to talk with Ximena about different aspects of Uruguayan culture and share with her some of the funny things that we do in the States that is different than here.

I tried to take notice of the similarities and differences between a fair/rodeo here and back home. Honestly they were very similar. We saw a lot of families spending time together and the smell of hotdog and hamburger stands filled the air. The biggest difference was the lack of games or rides that you would normally find at a fair in the states. It was a relief not to be accosted by carneys every step you took.

Crazy Taxi Drivers and Dog Poo

As I was running this morning, I thought about some interesting things to tell you about city life in Montevideo. We’ll see if I can collect my thoughts:
Trash:
I’ve been taught growing up that you don’t litter and my coaches in High School repeated over and over that they weren’t my mother and therefore were going to make me run if they had to pick up after me. So, upon arriving in Montevideo, they way people treat their garbage was kind of a shock. First, they have dumpsters where we carry our garbage and they are regularly picked up by the city. However, there are a certain “class” of people who live in the outskirts of the city and come around either on bicycles or horses pulling trailers and they sort through the trash for anything that might be useful. This serves as the recycling service as well since they pull out all the materials able to be recycled and turn it in for money. It seems as though this has become a way of life for both them and the rest of the people of Montevideo. Some leave food, usually leftovers, out in front of their houses or hang plastic bags from the trees with stuff that they can use. Also, if you have a plastic or glass bottle, the custom is to leave in on the sidewalk next to the dumpster.
Secondly, people don’t have any qualms about throwing trash on the ground all over the place. You especially see this on the main streets where people are hired to stand out in front of businesses and hand out flyers to passerby. Entire the block around the distributor is littered with the pieces of paper that he or she just handed out. I think the reason behind this is creating jobs. There is a huge unemployment problem in Uruguay and even if you do have a job it’s for very low pay. So, if there is trash on the ground the government can hire workers to clean it up. Everyday that I run through the park close to the Casa, I see workers cleaning up trash from the grass. At the beach as well (I don’t remember if I’ve mentioned this before) they clean the sand of garbage and whatever floats ashore from the river.
Streets:
The traffic is crazy here in South America! It’s very interesting to watch drivers interact with each other via flashing headlights and their horns. As they drive they don’t really give any concern to the painted markings either. If there is a space between two cars you’ll see a driver squeeze through honking all the while to let the others know that he is there. In Peru, we rode in a couple of busses who would pass other vehicles in the strangest places. I think we passed another bus as we went over a speed bump once, so we were both going about 5 miles an hour!
We’ve thought about renting some kind of scooter to get around town faster, but I think I would kill myself! The traffic is crazy, but I’ve never seen such good drivers. They put people in the States to shame with their attention to the task at hand, awareness of the road and other vehicles, and quick response times. I feel more comfortable riding in a taxi here I think than I would in the states. We had a couple of close calls in taxis in Lima, Peru (where the traffic is supposed to be the worst in all of Latin America) but no accidents. We also got to see some road rage in Lima where a man reached out his window and tried to slash the tires of a taxi next to him because the driver wouldn’t let him merge! To be honest I’ve only seen three total accidents while I’ve been here. The first happened in Minas where everyone had the typical small town reaction. It looked as though the entire police force was there directing traffic (all of 2 cars every 10 minutes or so) around the accident and people up and down the street were hanging there heads out windows to see what all the “hubbub” was about. The second was in Cusco where we saw a taxi back into a light pole while trying to turn around in their ridiculously narrow streets and shattered his rear window. The third was this morning while running I saw a motorcycle and a car slide into each other. Both parties were okay and it didn’t look as though there was much damage, but it really surprised me to even see an accident after all the experiences we’ve had.
Sidewalks:
The sidewalks here are one heck of an extraordinary mix of amazing ingenuity and frustrating inconvenience. They aren’t a complete slab of concrete, but instead are made of individual concrete tiles stuck together. It seems like a great idea allowing the roots of trees to grow without breaking the costly sidewalk and when they’ve worked in the water works nearby, all they’ve had to do was pull up the tiles and dig down to the pipes, replacing everything when they were finished. But inevitably as you walk down the street there are broken tiles everywhere, tiles missing, and the tiles put in place but not stuck down. These latter are really annoying after it rains and they seem to float on the surface of a hidden puddle, only to splash your entire lower body when stepped on. There is also the problem of dog poop that one must dodge while walking down the street. This kind of applies to the first category in that we’ve been taught to pick up after our pets in the States. I really don’t know who ends up cleaning up the “sidewalk feces”.

In contrast, people like to take care of their sidewalks. It’s common place to see people outside their home or business cleaning the walk with a bucket of soapy water and a broom or even just sweeping the leaves off into the street. People take pride in having a clean place in front of their respective homes or shops.

La Paloma era muy bonito.

So this is a little behind, but a couple of weeks ago we took a combined trip to La Paloma (along the east coast of Uruguay) and the surrounding area. I liked the picture idea that I had for the climbing trip and BA so that's what I'll do for this one. Here goes:

One the first day in La Paloma, a group of us decided to take surfing lessons. Here are the six guys who braved the cloudy weather and crashing waves to learn the art of surfing.
First part of the lesson included learning to jump up from a lying down position to standing. On the beach it seemed pretty easy, on the board in the water: not so much... I don't have any actual surfing pictures because my batteries died about 2 minutes after this photo. :(
We took a 4x4 ride to a rocky ithsmus called Cabo Polonio and this is the lighthouse that warns ships of the perilous rocks.
We got to hike to some sand dunes just outside of town as well. Here's Branson, Mark, and Holly enjoying the views. It was kind of wierd hiking between the dunes and the surf in the light conditions we had: felt like we were on some strange planet with no life around for miles.

Here are more dunes off in the distance. We hiked to the nearest one visible with the two dots on it in the left side of the picture. The dots in the picture are our resident professor's family Ken, Karen, Krista, and Katie Cukrowski. (I think if you click on the picture it will load in a different window bigger).

A picture of Sarah Boyd and I standing at the top of the lighthouse shown earlier. You could see for miles around (probably because everything was so flat). The four of us up there couldn't do anything else except stand there and take it all in. Gorgeous!

Now here's a fun game. I hope I'm right about being able to click on a picture and loading a larger version in a different frame, because it'll be harder to play without it. Here's the deal. This is a photo from the top of the lighthouse there is a napping kitty-cat on the rocks below. Can you find her? (Hint shown below)
This picture is taken at Punta del Diablo. The waves would come in and crash on the rocks of the point, resulting in amazing photo opportunities. This is Branson in the foreground, one of my hiking buddies you'll hear a lot about in the Machu Picchu Blogs coming soon to a webpage near you.

Lastly, we visited a huge colonial era fort built by the Spanish. From above it is shaped in characteristic 5-pointed star and is now a type of museum with displays of how fort life would have been. As cliche as it might look I was not looking forward to "putting my nose back to the grindstone" the next day at school.
Also, included in this trip, but without picture evidence: French-style breakfast in a room in our hotel facing the Atlantic Ocean, a dinner in which I got to try shark, a horse-back riding trip along the beach, and a Sunday morning service we had on the beach behind our hotel which was awesome! Fun trip. Que pasan bien ustedes (Spanish for y'all...)!

Duh duh duh duuuuuuh, duh duh duh...

Hello friends and family! I have officially returned from my adventure in Peru rediscovering the long lost city of the Incas. Today I've been recovering from a 24 hour stint in international airports. That was rough! The trip was amazing as well, if you ever have a chance to visit the Peruvian Andes, drop everything and do so, they're fantastic. Being looking for a full trip blog (or parts of one anyway) coming soon.

As a tease, here is a picture of an unnamed Indians Jones wannabe climbing on HuchuyPicchu:

View From Cusco

Hola Amigos!
I couldn't help but to post something about this spectacular night. We've made it to Cusco after a whirlwind tour of Lima and now I'm sitting in a beautiful hostel on a hill above Cusco looking at the gorgeous lights of the city, breathing the cool, fresh, mountain air (we're at 12000 ft by the way), and posting a message that my friends are going to read all over the world. Small world...
I just want to throw out the fact that I'm following in love with the andean highlands and Cusco. If everyone ever wants to come, I'll gladly come back!! Maybe I'll quit school and move here and speak spanish all the time...
I'm thinking of y'all,
Sus amigo,
Colter

Cue the Indiana Jones theme music...

This is an "adios" to all of you! No I'm not going to quit doing the blog, but I'm off on a weeklong adventure to Peru to explore the Lost City of the Incas: Machu Picchu!
Be expecting lots of excitement and fun anecdotes when I return.
Chao, que tenga un buen dia.

Casa Tour Part II

And finally as promised, here is the second instalment of my house tour to you all. For a recap, the first part introduced you to my humble room and my roommates. This will give you a taste of the rest of the house.

Welcome to Casa ACU!

Here we are at the front door. Quite large as you can see. The whole thing opens so the family living in the church building can park their car inside. The size and decorative metal work is left over from the building's days as a coffee factory.

This is a picture of the courtyard in the middle of the house. The windows that you can see lead to our program director's and professor's apartments and the perspective is looking out my room window. It's been really fun to have a central courtyard and be able to talk from room to room across the way. Imagine doing your homework at your desk and being able to ask your teacher a question by talking out the window!

This is a picture of our kitchen. Mariela, one of our cooks, is pictured in the left side of the picture. She and Raquel are amazing cooks! I've probably mentioned that before, but it's good enough to deserve repetition. I also learned from Raquel how to make empanadas, a Uruguayan staple, and am excited to make them back at home. And get excited Dad: I also learned how to make hot, fresh tortillas from scratch! Are you drooling yet?
This is the "loft," where we have access to a TV and couches to hang out, chill, and enjoy movies or games with friends. Through the door on the left is a little work out area that isn't much, but it's always nice to have a space to go and do some pullups, pushups or stretch after a run (when you're hot and sweaty and just want to hide your tired-ness).

This is the computer lab, being demonstrated by Courtney. There are 9 computers with internet access and 2 printers for our use. Most of us have our own laptops, but the internet is usually faster up here and it's nice to be able to work on group projects in here as well since we aren't allowed in rooms of the opposite gender. I understand that they need to do it, but it really gets anoying!

This is a picture of the classroom next door in the church. Posing for us here is Ken Cukrowski, our guest professor who teaches my Christianity in Culture class, and Amelia, my beginning Spanish instructor. They're both really fun!

Hope you enjoyed the tour. If you have any questions or comments don't hesitate to send me an email or comment on this post. Que pasan bien!

Photo Update

Here's some photos of two of the trips that I've already blogged about (refer to BA and rock climbing blogs for a more detailed explanation of events mentioned):

Buenos Aires TripNight on the town: all dressed up for our Tango Dinner
Casa Rosada: Like the Whitehouse, only rosada (pink). The balcony in the center is where Madonna made some famous speeches in her role as Eva Peron in the musical of the same name.

In a rather large church. You are looking at the mausoleum of San Martin, one of the most famous revolutionaries of Latin American independence. I learned about him in my junior year of High School in "History of the Americas" class and now I actually get to visit where he lived. How cool is that?Some statues in the La Boca neighborhood representing three very important people to Argentina: (from left to right) Carlos Gardel, the famous Tango singer, Eva Peron, former first lady of Argentina, and Diego Maradona, the soccer player that led Argentina to a World Cup win.The strange rabbit animal whose name I just learned: a mara, or patagonian hare. Interesting, they let them run wild in the zoo.The tomb of Eva Peron (I said she was famous didn't I?).The Subte, the subway system of BA. My first time on a subway!Just "Monkey-ing Around" in the Natural History museum.

Minas Rock Climging Trip:
My climbing buddies: Mallory and AlanMuchos Uruguayos, Muchos Amigos!
Alan just finishing a route. Notice the non-verbal gesture he is making. Not the traditional US thumbs-up, similar but including the index finger. It means that the person is happy. Alan just got to rock climb a 30 meter route, therefore he is happy :P

Just hanging out, contemplating the answers to life's biggest questions. Oh, and rock climbing too. "Hold me Alan!"

While My Guitar Gently Weeps (or Alvaro Pierri's anyway)

A week ago today, a couple of us students attended a concert at the famous Teatro Solis (theater of the sun, or something like that). The outside of the theater is very impressive: huge white columns decorate the front entrance with a magnificent golden sun at the peak of the roof. Then, being inside the auditorium itself is mind-boggling. The ceiling is high over your head with the names of famous writers, musicians, and playwrights displayed in grand array. The sides of the contained the classic box-style seating that you see in the opera houses of movies. Not quite the immense scale that you would need binoculars or anything, but still pretty cool (although we sat on the floor and didn’t get the whole high class experience…).
When we got seated, we noticed that the stage was set with only one chair lit up with a spot light. Now we had bought the tickets and gone to the concert thinking that it was to be a man playing traditional Uruguayan instruments. However, we figured out right before the show that we had mistranslated the show title and it was going to be a famous Uruguayan classical guitarist, Álvaro Pierri. Not to be dismayed we settled in to enjoy the show.
And boy, were we impressed! After a little presentation of some kind of award, he went backstage and returned with guitar in hand. He sat down and introduced the first song, tuned his guitar, and began to play. I’ve been in very few public places that were ever that quiet in enraptured attention. Pierri’s fingers basically flew over his guitar at times so fast you couldn’t tell where they were on the fret board. Some times during the music he would seem to curl around his guitar with his face a couple centimeters away as musician and instrument became one with the music. He played with such ease, enjoyment, and passion that it was infective to the audience as we sat there and gaped at his ability. By the time he finished his first 20+ minute long opus (completely memorized I might add) we were completely hooked.
Between songs he would give a little incite into the composer and the piece itself (this is all what I could understand with my limited Spanish). And he must have been a funny guy because he would make remarks that made the audience laugh but I couldn’t comprehend. I felt like a little kid again listening to laugh-tracks on TV shows telling me when things were funny. All we could do was smile and pretend that we weren’t as confused as we actually were. “Smile and nod, just smile and nod.”
He also made some sounds come out of that guitar that I never would have thought possible. Some of the songs contained sort of percussion and others strange strumming techniques. My question is how you’d write something like that down on paper? As one sat and listened to the music, you could let your mind go and imagine anything you wanted: soaring over the cerros of Uruguay or through the mountains of Montana. I guess that’s why I like classical guitar music so much. The concert finished with tremendous applause and the audience beckoned him back for three encores, with the last seeming to say, “I’m good, this song is amazing yet short, and I’m tired so go home.”

Everybody Must Get Stoned...or climb them anyway!

I’ve been really fortunate this semester in that I found the only rock climbing gym in all of Uruguay (and it happens to be only a couple of blocks away from our house!). The wall is located in the local YMCA, which is called the Asociacion Cristiana de Jovenes (Christian Association of Young-People) in Spanish, and several of us students have placed membership there. Three of us, Alan, Mallory, and I have been frequenting the rock climbing wall about 3 times a week. It’s been a great place to train for climbing, to make friends, learn about Uruguay, and to practice Spanish.
Recently, we were asked to go on a rock climbing camping trip with the group. Not wanting to be stuck in Montevideo we gladly accepted and went on to have the time of lives. Here’s our weekend in a whirlwind: rode on a rickety, old bus, rock climbed, ate Uruguayan food, rock climbed, pretended to know Spanish, learned Spanish, practiced Spanish, swam in the river, rock climbed in the river, ate Uruguayan parrilla (grill: we had ribs), slept, and repeated.
On the trip we got to meet a lot of the Uruguayans that we had been climbing with over the past couple of weeks and have made some pretty good friends. One of our closest, has been Pablo. We met him from the very start when we toured the ACJ, most likely because he speaks the best English out of anyone I’ve met while living down here. And he’s crazy: he’s the best climber I’ve ever met, he’s single and in his 30’s, and we found out on the camping trip that he’s a ham! While we were waiting for the ribs to grill on Saturday night, he kept trying to get the kids to sing and dance to no avail. And the 3 of us also call him our “mom.” He helped us out a ton on the camping trip, most comically by bringing us every kind of food available to try: “You don’t have to eat it if you don’t like it, just try it” he would say.
He also has one of the coolest jobs ever. I don’t know if he works for the ACJ or not, but we’ve come to learn that he has a private business creating fitness programs for special needs people, especially those with Down Syndrome. Alan and I were able to see him work with a group with DS in the rock climbing area and it really touched me. In the future I want to do something like that. Maybe not specifically with handicapped people, but just the aspect of using something that I love like rock climbing to make a difference in the world really appeals to me.

BA continued

Continued…
So we’re still on the city tour and go to visit more of La Boca neighborhood, specifically the caminitos. The Caminitos were sort of like tenement houses where immigrants fresh off the ships in the Buenos Aires harbor could go and live. They are brightly colored because the only paint that the people could get was that which was left over from painting the nearby ships. BA is extensively European and they can thank the many immigrants who came over on ships in the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries. We got out and walked around one touristy area and were able to walk through an artisan market and were blown away by some of the fantastic paintings and sculptures that we saw. Back on the bus, as we continued to drive around we passed many huge parks or squares that you would picture seeing in any large city. People were stopped for picnics, or tea/mate time, or even that much needed siesta. You couldn’t help but notice another familiar occurrence on the streets of BA, especially near parks: dog walkers. Our guide said it was very common for people to hire dog walkers to take their dog out on private or public walks. As for the public walks, it wasn’t uncommon for us to see a person walking 5 or more dogs all at once! Imagine the pooper scooper you would have to carry around! For our final destination, we visited the Recoletta cemetery where the members of the namesake high-class neighborhood are entombed. One of the highlights was to see the tomb of Eva Peron, the wife of a former President of Argentina, one Juan Peron, and heroine of the working classes. She was both controversial and beloved by the people during her husband’s terms as president and it was a sad day in Argentina when she succumbed to cancer at a young age. There is a Broadway show called Eva Peron telling the story of the young woman’s rise to fame and an Argentine version Evita that we watched earlier as part of a class. Madonna and Antonio Bandera star in a movie version of the former.
After the tour, we were set free until dinner time, and four of us decided to visit the Natural History Museum across town. Because of its distance, we rode the Subte (the BA subway system), me for the first time on a subway! It was every thing that I ever dreamed a subway would be…loud and bumpy and gave me a nasty case of vertigo when I got off. Other than that it was a pleasant experience. At the Museum, we saw all kinds of weird and wild stuff from a South American perspective. When I say that, I don’t mean that Argentine scientists name things differently that we do, only that many of the dinosaur and prehistoric animals I had never heard of before, most likely due to their only being found in South America. It was very fun to wander around with my friends finding funny ways to “interact” with the exhibits to produce comical photos. After our private tour (and being thoroughly exhausted and very hot and sweaty) we retreated back to the hotel.
For dinner, we walked to a restaurant called “La Estancia” (ranch) and had another unbelievable meal. We had the choice of an appetizer, beef or chicken, and what dessert we wanted. I’ve never seen so much meat on a plate in my life! I swear that the steak I got was half a foot long, three inches wide, as many thick, and every bit of it very good. I’ll also have to throw in for my good buddy Alex Cox (wish you could be here man) that we had a course of freshly baked provolone cheese. We pictured it more as an appetizer, but they didn’t serve it until after the main course. Interesting, but I don’t feel as though it cleansed my palate at all, it that was its purpose.
The highlight of the next day was visiting the zoo. I wanted to go to be able to specifically see native South American animals and got what I wanted. We saw capyberras, native wildcats, an Argentine black bear, llamas, and two types of rodents that they let run wild in the zoo: nutria (muskrats) and a strange rabid looking animal that I to this day have no idea what they are called. One funny anecdote: Mark and I walked up to the baboon exhibit and all of a sudden they went nuts! They threw themselves at the front wall of the cage and screamed their heads off! We finally figured out a kid wearing a monkey mask had approached the cage and they were acting out of territorial interest. That kid would have been a gonner had that cage wall not been there.
On the way back to the hotel to gather and head back home, we walked by a huge metal, flower sculpture that is mechanized to open during the day and close at night. I would have really liked to have been there when it opened at sunrise. After that we perused the fine arts museum and saw actually paintings by Monet, Van Gogh, and Rembrant. There wasn’t anything like Starry Night, but it was still cool to actually attend a fine arts museum. I’m becoming so “cultured” on this trip it’s scary!
Later that evening we climbed, exhausted yet enlightened, onto the Buquebus for our return voyage.