A Term With Plan Ceibal

6/11
After interrogating everyone in the hostel in Montevideo about how to maximize my one week to see some of Northern Argentina, I decided to go to Cordoba and then to Iguazu Falls. Thursday night, I took a cushy overnight bus from Montevideo to Cordoba, Argentina's second largest city. The bus had fully reclining seats and served free meals, soda, and martinis. (Although it did also break down for an hour and a half right outside of Montevideo.) I got to Cordoba at 10 am the next day and dropped my stuff at a lively hostel downtown, where I ran into my friend Niels from Montevideo. I checked out all the touristy sights downtown, like this cool looking church, and got a giant plate of tofu for $2 which made me pretty happy. Everything here seems to be about half the Montevideo price.


This morning, I took a bus to a town called Capilla del Monte, in the mountains about 2 hours from Cordoba. It has a sort of hippie vibe--lots of health food stores and advertisements for massages, yoga, and various Asian religions. I wanted to climb the closest mountain, Uritorco, which is supposed to have not only nice views, but also special powers that attract UFOs. Unfortunately, you have to start climbing by 11 am, and the early bus I planned on taking turned out to not exist, so I didn't get to town until 10:30. I'd found a hostel online, but didn't bother making a reservation because it's low season and none of the hostels seem to be full. This turned out to be a mistake--not because the hostel was booked, but because they weren't expecting anyone so the staff left to go watch the World Cup game with the rest of the town. I couldn't get into the hostel, I didn't want to hike anywhere with my overstuffed backpack, and most of the rest of the town seemed to have shut down too, so I postponed the adventuring and ate dulce de leche and watched Argentina beat Nigeria. By the time the game was over and I could ditch my stuff at the hostel, I didn't have time to do anything I'd planned, but the guy at the tourist desk told me to walk a few kilometers to a nearby dam that had nice views of Uritorco, the lake, and this odd shoe-shaped rock.


When I got back to town, I tried to check out the UFO museum, but sadly it's closed until next week. The sign says "The governments know...do you?"

I considered staying another day to hike Uriturco, but the only other people in the hostel were a middle aged Argentine couple, and the fact that you have to fill out a medical form to climb it made me think it wasn't something I should climb alone with no cell phone, no knowledge of the area, and very minimal hiking equipment. So, I'm going to head back to Cordoba tomorrow and catch a bus to Iguazu Falls.

6/15
I got to Puerto Iguazu about 10 am yesterday, and saw the three main sections of the Iguazu Falls park that day. The Lower Circuit runs along the riverbank at the bottom of the falls and allows for panoramic views, the Upper Circuit goes along part of the top of the falls, and a catwalk leads to the Garganta del Diablo (Devil's Throat), the top of the biggest part of the falls. On the Lower Circuit, bands of coatis follow people. They seem pretty tame and cute at first, but once they saw that I had bananas, they started lunging at me! A little train takes you from the park entrance to each path, and I randomly met a Dartmouth '07 on the train back from the Garganta del Diablo.
Lower Circuit:

Upper Circuit:

Garganta del Diablo:

I went back today to take a motorboat trip that goes terrifyingly close to the bottom of the falls (you get completely soaked, so i didn't try to take pictures). Then I walked a 3 km trail to a smaller waterfall, and saw lots of birds and capybaras along the way. The tour bus groups didn't come to this part, so I was the only one there when I got to this waterfall:



6/17
I took an overnight bus from Puerto Iguazu to a town called Colon, near the Uruguayan border. I wanted to visit the cool-sounding national park nearby, full of huge palm trees and wildlife. I thought the bus would take me to the town bus terminal, like the other buses I've taken, but instead it dropped me off in the middle of a construction zone/giant mud pit on the side of the highway, and the driver pointed in the direction of town. A construction worker told me that town was seven kilometers away. But luckily, there was a gas station across the road, the guy there called me a taxi and it all worked out. In Colon, I looked for buses to the national park, and was told that I might not be able to get to the actual park, because the bus drops you off at the highway entrance which is 5k from the park. In high season, it's easy to hitch a ride in, but it's low season and I'm alone and don't have any camping stuff. So, I chickened out and bought a ticket across the river to Paysandu, Uruguay. From there, I was hoping to find a bus to Colonia, a historic town that's one of the places you're generally supposed to go when you visit Uruguay. I passed through on my way to Buenos Aires, but I hadn't gotten a chance to really see it.

I arrived in Paysandu and discovered that the next bus to Colonia wasn't for four hours, so I had some time to explore. Paysandu isn't a typical tourist stop, but it does have a tourist office, where I must have looked really lost because the woman at the desk started by pointing out where we were on a map of Uruguay. But eventually, she gave me directions to the hot springs (too far away to get to), a restaurant creatively named "El Bar" with truly terrible pizza, and points on the river with panoramic views. That sounded great, except that a torrential downpour began as soon as I started walking, and views seemed unlikely. So, I returned to the bus station to watch the World Cup and eat alfajores, which is hard to complain about. I got completely soaked though, and I don't think I'll be in one place long enough to do any laundry before I leave, so I will probably arrive in Boston really smelly.

I got to Colonia and checked into a hostel near the old city. I thought I probably wouldn't make many friends in my room by coming in smelling like a wet dog, but luckily, the room already smelled like a wet dog when I got there. One roommate kindly doused the place in cologne in an attempt to improve things, so now I smell like a very manly wet dog. Colonia is charming and tranquil, with lots of quiet cobblestone streets, white fences, and panoramic views of the river.

The map I had didn't give me much information about the sights I saw, but I'm sure they are very historic as well. I checked out the gate to the old city (from when it was a fort), the new lighthouse built on the ruins of the old one, the main plaza, the port, and the basilica. The most unusual thing listed on the map was the "Calle de los Suspiros"--Street of Sighs.

It's just a little one-block street near the plaza with especially bumpy cobblestones. I'm wasn't sure what inspired the name (Google suggests that condemned prisoners walked down the street to be drowned in the sea, that a woman waiting for her lover was murdered, or that it was full of prostitutes). It's a small town, though, and three hours seemed like plenty to see most of the sights. I got an early afternoon bus back to Montevideo, where I'm going to get my suitcase, say some final goodbyes, and stuff all the remaining space in my bags with dulce de leche and alfajores. My flight leaves at 9 tonight.

I guess this is the end of the travel stories, but I do have to write a sort of summary/reflection for ISTS/Neukom (the programs that funded me), so there will probably be one more post coming!

During my last week of the project, I took two trips out of the city and did some touristy things I've been meaning to do since I got here.

On Saturday, I took a trip with Flor de Ceibo to the country, north of Montevideo near a town called Tala. The trip was a "diagnostic visit," and the event was held in a community center next to a school, surrounded by farms. A few dozen community members showed up, and students from the College of Agriculture at the University of the Republic gave presentations about the geography and economy of the region and its needs. Afterwards, there were hamburgers, soda, and pastries. I'm not entirely sure what was being diagnosed, or really how it related to Plan Ceibal at all, but it was cool to see another part of the country and get to talk to the other students in the group more. Here's the gathering in the community center:


Monday, I went with Pablo and Cesar to another blogging workshop in the town of Salinas, about an hour outside of Montevideo. It was held at a large elementary school (with about 800 kids) in a suburban neighborhood just off the highway. When we arrived, we found a few groups of kids using their XOs. They were far too absorbed to notice us posing for photos.

A group of a few dozen teachers, all of them women, was waiting for us. Cesar and Pablo introduced Tus Ideas Valen and ceibalJAM! Pablo had created a test blogspot site, and asked them to comment on a post with their idea of what a blog was. Most of the teachers weren't familiar with blogs, or really the Internet in general. When Pablo put the URL of the test blog on the board, many of them typed it into Google instead of the address bar, and many of the comments they posted were along the lines of "we don't know, we're here to learn!" But they all seemed to be having a great time figuring it out, and by the end of the workshop had an idea of what a blog is and how tools like Blogger function.

Video coming soon!

Sunday night, I went with some friends to see candombe in a park near the hostel. Candombe is a kind of drumming musical style that originated with African-Uruguayans in Montevideo. On Sunday nights, neighborhood groups practice in the streets, and during Carnival there are competitions. Candombe is mostly performed by men, but the group we saw, called La Melaza, is all women. People surround the drummers and follow them through the streets dancing--lots of fun!


Tuesday, I took the bus across town to "El Cerro," a neighborhood on the edge of Montevideo. It's across the bay from downtown and has a large hill with great views of the city from the top. The guys at the hostel told me to take a taxi from the bus stop to the museum at the top of the hill because it wasn't a safe neighborhood to walk around in. So I did, and the taxi driver immediately told me that it was not advised to come here alone, but I figured that taking a taxi to a museum staffed by soldiers and then a taxi back to the bus stop was not exactly reckless. But when the taxi driver dropped me at the top of the hill, I discovered that the museum is only open Wednesday through Sunday, and I was all alone on top of the hill. So it was a pretty nervous walk back to the bus stop, but no one even looked twice at me and the views were worth it!


As promised, here's some photos of a panaderia (bakery). You can't go more than a few blocks here without passing one. I never learned the proper names for most of the pastries because there are so many--I just point and say "One of this, one of this..." They usually have plain rolls, croissants (called medialunas--half moons), empanadas, and alfajores. Then there are dozens of kinds of pastries, but every bakery seems to have something different. You can get mini ones, called masitas, which are sold by the kilogram so you can get a variety. Basically, every American coffee shop with 10 cookie/cake options is a huge slacker in comparison.


An alfajor is basically a sandwich cookie with dulce de leche in the middle. Usually, the cookies are sort of thick and cakey, not crunchy like an Oreo. There are a million variations--chocolate covered, with nuts or coconut, with chocolate or orange or lemon filling, triple-decker, etc. They are sold fresh in every bakery, or packaged in every convenience store.

Now I'm going to spend a week traveling in part of Northern Argentina before I fly home!

I'm way overdue for an entry. It's been harder than I expected to condense everything that happens in a week into a coherent entry that's simultaneously appropriate for friends at home, friends here, family, and random people searching for info about Punta del Diablo. Plus, things like the three hours I spent trying to get a Python update to install correctly do not exactly make for thrilling blog entries, even if they happen in a foreign country. But I will try to keep you all awake.

The work with Flor de Ceibo (the group from the University of the Republic) is slow going, and I'm slow to understand what does happen. For the Uruguayan students, Flor de Ceibo is a much longer program, so they're not in a rush. A few trips have been cancelled, and I missed one last weekend because the leaders didn't call to tell me until the night before, and I stupidly didn't have my phone on me, or even check it until Sunday. There's supposed to be one this weekend and then again next week before I leave Montevideo.

With ceibalJAM!, I've spent the last few weeks trying to put together a larger project, and I'll focus on it for the rest of my time here. The idea, called "blog-pals" is a website that will link the blogs of Uruguayan classrooms to each other, and hopefully to classes in the U.S. as well. There will be a theme for the entries every week or two, and games that teach some related vocabulary in English and Spanish that they can then use in their blog entries. Various logistical and technical issues (for example, Flash doesn't work great on the XOs) have made this a longer project than I envisioned. At this point, my goal before leaving is to modify a geography game ceibalJAM! volunteers already wrote called Conozco Uruguay ("I know Uruguay") to teach vocabulary instead. The website probably won't get finished before I leave, especially with the Flor de Ceibo trips planned, but hopefully my summer term classes will not control my life and I can stay involved via the Internet. There is another blogging workshop next week too, in the town of Salinas.

I'll probably have a lot more to write about work-wise in a week or so. Until then, here are some more snapshots of life in Montevideo...

A few of many painted benches along my walk home from the centro.







Nils from the Netherlands eating a "hamburguesa completa." In order for a hamburger to be complete here, it needs cheese, lettuce, tomato, ketchup, mustard, mayo...and ham, peppers, a fried egg, and peas (!).


Most famous Uruguayan dishes involve large amounts of meat, so I'm not exactly an expert on them. When I tell people I'm vegetarian, the most common response is "but you have to eat meat here, the meat here is really good!" followed inevitably by "do you eat chicken?" I'm still holding out. The guys who run the hostel tried to convince me that they take the blood for blood sausage without killing the pig and so therefore it's just like milk, but really they've gotten used to me and even started grilling peppers and onions along with the meat at the weekly barbecues. Plus, no one ever steals tofu from the hostel fridge. Luckily, there is a lot of Italian influence in Uruguay, which means you can get pizza and pasta everywhere. If you just ask for "pizza" it will come without cheese...you have to ask for a "muzzarella" to get cheese. All the pizza places also sell faina, a flatbread made from chickpeas. If you eat them together like this, it's called "pizza a caballo"--pizza on horseback.


People drink mate everywhere--at work, in meetings, at the park, in the supermarket. Often, signs that say "no eating or drinking" have to specifically add "and no drinking mate." It's a bitter tea that you drink out of a hollow gourd cup also called a mate. The tea goes in the top part and you pour hot water from your thermos over it, then sip from the metal straw, called a bombilla, that has a sort of strainer at the bottom. When you finish a cup, you pour more water in and pass it to a friend. It doesn't taste great (though it's not bad either), but I like the ritual of passing it around.


The warmth of the tea is also nice now that it's winter here and colder. It's more like October weather by Vermont standards, but everyone is shocked at me for still wearing flip-flops. Still, I'm looking forward to beach weather when I get back!

I was going to write about the desserts too, but I decided I didn't have any pictures that properly capture the amazing bakeries here. Next time!

On Tuesday, I visited an escuela especial--a school for kids with disabilities--with several other ceibalJAM! volunteers to test out a new program. The XOs have a game called Memorize, which volunteers have converted into an accessible version. Instead of using the keys and touch pad, the student can navigate the game by pushing a lever to the side with his head. We also tested a PC game called Plaphoons that uses the same technique. The tester was a 9-year-old boy named Nelson, who Roxana told us is very smart and likes computers, but he can't use regular computer games on his own because he is mostly paralyzed. Using the lever, he played both games successfully and seemed to be having a great time. Here's the video we made about it:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BZctBPnzC4U
At the end, Roxana is telling Nelson that volunteers are working on more games he can play this way, and asking what he thinks--that's what elicits the big smile.

Saturday was ceibalJAM7! (The exclamation mark is part of the name). So far I've been to miniJAMs, which meet for a few hours to work on one development project. A full ceibalJAM, however, takes most of a day and breaks into groups to work on a variety of projects. There were five projects at this one:
-Pippy, a game that teaches the basics of programming in Python.
-Creating more examples and class plans for Scratch, which also teaches programming.
-Making programs accessible for kids with disabilities
-Conozco, originally a quiz game about Uruguay's geography that is now being extended to other topics.
-Exploring possibilities for new games using a tool called pygame
Despite the fact that all of the buses and most of the taxis were on strike, there was a good-sized crowd with a wide range of programming backgrounds. Here's a photo of the Scratch group working on the laptops. Video to come.

Last Saturday, I went to a free software convention called FLISOL, held downtown in a gorgeous old building that I thought might be a museum, but turned out to be a public high school. These events are held all over Latin America, and are intended to introduce people to the world of free software and allow current users to meet and learn from each other. There seemed to be a wide range of people attending, i.e. not just programmers and students. ceibalJAM! had a table with some XOs set up for people to play with, where people could learn about different projects. All the software ceibalJAM! works with is free software. This means that it is free to use and distribute, which is important because we want to distribute it to students without requiring schools to spend a lot on software. However, it also means that the code is freely available so that others can learn from it and reuse it, which increases the quantity and quality of software produced overall. There were a variety of other free software-related organizations there as well--openOffice, Mozilla, etc. Different groups gave speeches throughout the day. My friend Ismael told me that Linux is a hard sell in Uruguay in part because most operating systems are pirated versions of Windows, so are already free. Hence the slogan here: "Free software is a question of liberty, not price"--the idea is that even if you don't pay to use Windows, you're still contributing to its dominance.


A short video about the event is here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=219hWnCJ00A

On Monday, I had my first meetings with the groups from Flor de Ceibo that I'll be working with. The first group, which will be working in rural areas, is almost all girls, many of whom are studying education or psychology. The second group is more mixed and has many engineering students. It's hard for me to understand long talks in Spanish, so I hope I'm not missing crucial information. In the evening, there was a larger event for all of the Flor de Ceibo groups, and several people gave talks about how Flor de Ceibo has evolved, its importance to society, and the sorts of problems facing Plan Ceibal. For example, one goal is for the laptops to be a resource for parents as well, so they discussed reasons parents weren't using the computer--some don't know how, some are afraid of breaking it, some thought it was just for kids, etc. There are more meetings this week, and next weekend I'm going to visit a school in Rivera with the second group.

This weekend, I left Montevideo and went to a little town on the eastern coast called Cabo Polonio with a few friends from the hostel. It's on a peninsula blocked off from the nearest road by six kilometers of forest and sand dunes, so the bus drops you off on the side of the road and you take a Jeep into town. It doesn't have electricity or running water, and the year round population is about 80 people. It's fall now here, so things were quiet. Here's a view of the whole town:


We rented a creatively decorated little casita for $30 a night, split five ways. It had different colored bottles stuck in the walls to let the light in.



On Saturday, we explored the rocky tip of the peninsula where the sea lions hang out. From far away, their cries sound like people on a roller coaster.





On the way back, we met some friendly old men in Speedos, who offered us the local specialty: deep fried seaweed balls. They're better than they sound!


We decided to collect some seaweed and make our own. The traditional recipe is just seaweed and a batter made from flour, eggs, milk, and a little sugar, but we added garlic, onion, and cheese to ours, and they looked disgusting but were actually delicious.

On Sunday, we headed in the other direction, toward the sand dunes. From the tops, there were amazing views of the ocean, dunes, and town that my photos completely fail at capturing, but here's one anyway:


We'd heard there was a forest of ombu trees, and thought it was the forest we could see beyond the dunes, but it turns out you have to take a boat to the ombu forest and we were out of time. The forest beyond the dunes turned out to be made up mostly of a variety of pine tree with needles a foot long and white pine cones, which was interesting too, but not quite as cool as ombu trees.

I'm back in Montevideo now, and looking forward to starting more work with Flor de Ceibo. I have another meeting in an hour with the first group, the one working in rural areas.

Saturday, I traveled about two hours east to the city of Maldonado with Mariana and Diego, who work with Tus Ideas Valen, for a blogging workshop at School 93. Diego told me that the school was in a poor area-- a "critical context." The school itself is relatively new, though, and while there was definitely less "stuff" around than in a typical American school, nothing struck me as a really huge disparity except the lack of desktop computers--no longer an issue because of Plan Ceibal. There were two parts of the workshop. A class of kids were in one room, and a group of teachers were in another. My job was to film the workshop, which was nice because I got to hang back and observe without being completely useless.

Mariana taught the kids' workshop. I'm not sure how long this school has had laptops (they were phased in over a few years), but the kids seemed to know their way around the computers and the Internet well. Many of them had stickers of cartoons or fútbol logos on their laptops. They all had email addresses and more or less knew what a blog was. More importantly, they seemed comfortable exploring and Googling things to figure out what they didn't know. Mariana started by asking them what a blog was, why someone would make one, and how they are different from other websites. One of my favorite moments was when she asked a few kids their fútbol team preferences, then asked, "if Cristian and Ana both have blogs about fútbol, but Cristian roots for Nacional and Ana roots for Peñarol, are they the same?" Loud chorus of "NO!" Then they set about learning how to set up a blog. The EduBlog software isn't ready yet, so they used Blogger, the same tool I'm using for this blog. It was Saturday, and they had come to school just for the workshop, but none of them seemed at all bored or eager to leave. Mariana, who has a master's degree in technology education, told me it was ideal when the students taught each other, and that's exactly what happened. Even though they each have their own laptop, they spent a lot of the time walking around, looking over each other's shoulders and learning from each other. This is an advantage of the small, durable laptops--it would be harder to do that in a computer lab with desktops, or even regular (fragile) laptops. It was a cool dynamic that you don't see that often--kids can't usually walk around and check out each other's math worksheets.


While Mariana talked about what a blog is, most of the kids already had their laptops open and were surfing around as she talked. It didn't seem to keep them from paying attention, though, and that really is how you learn about the Internet. They're very eager to learn a little bit and then go play with it, while the adults tend to want more specific instructions. The kids were so excited to show their teacher their blogs, and even more excited when he suggested they go downstairs and teach the adults what they had learned, like they're doing here:


Diego spoke to the group of adults, and went into more detail showing how different parts of Blogger work. My first impression was that the adults looked frustrated and weren't having as much fun as the kids were. I can't understand everything that's being said, so I don't completely trust my interpretations, but it would make sense. Andrew told me that like in the US, there is often a generation gap, where the students know more about the computers than the teachers. Not all of them had computers to try things out right away; a lot were taking notes on paper. But when the kids came downstairs to show them the blogs they'd made, the room got a lot more lively. Before we left, Diego and Mariana signed a certificate for each kid saying they had completed a blogging workshop.

On the way back, we stopped in a little town on the coast called Piriapolis. We drove up a small mountain, which had great views from the top.



Then I went to the miniJAM I wrote about before, that focused on the arts. Many people there were artists and teachers who hadn't been involved with ceibalJAM before, so there was a presentation about what ceibalJAM does and how the arts are incorporated. Then everyone got to experiment with a table full of XOs (and their art-related applications):



On Sunday, I went to another fútbol game. This one was between Montevideo's two most popular teams, Peñarol and Nacional, so it was even crazier than the last one. Games between these teams are called "el clasico," I guess because it's a classic rivalry along the lines of Yankees-Red Sox. The most intense fans tend to congregate behind the goals, but we were on the side. When I saw all the fireworks people were setting off, I decided I was glad. Here's the Peñarol side as their team jogged onto the field:


I've been doing some translation work this week. When we get a few technical issues resolved, I'll be editing down the video from the workshop, and hopefully posting some of it here. Tomorrow I'm helping out at an event called FLISOL, whose name translates to Latin American Free Software Installation Festival.

On Sunday, I went to a huge street market on Tristan Narvaja that takes place every week. It sells pretty much anything you can think of. For example: produce, meat, flowers, books, toys, typewriters, Michael Jackson posters...

...puppies and kittens...



...all the shoelaces you could ever want...


...piggy banks shaped like Homer Simpson?



I also tried a torta frita. It's deep fried dough with sugar, basically like American fried dough, but crispier. It's delicious and really cheap and definitely terrible for you.


But I've been doing actual work too. Up to now, a lot of it has been stuff I do on my own on the computer. My hostel has wifi, but it's not always super conducive to getting work done, so I started looking for someplace with free wifi that wouldn't mind me working for a while. There doesn't seem to be a library near me, and although you can get espresso and cappuccinos at a lot of restaurants here, there aren't many of the kind of coffee shops where you can just hang out. The solution, it turns out, is McDonald's. I'm kind of embarrassed by how much I like it here. They not only have the delicious hot chocolate and nice couches I wrote about before, but also free wifi, outlets, discarded newspapers for practicing my Spanish, and as far as I can tell, the only bagels in town. Believe it or not, it actually seems to be a community meeting area with a nice friendly vibe. I still don't understand why people would eat the burgers here! Now we have a semi-permanent office downtown, though, where I'll work from 9 to 1 each day.

Saturday, I went to a miniJAM. This is an event organized by CeibalJAM where a group of volunteers gather to discuss a few things that need to be done and then work on them. This meeting focused on organization and content for CeibalJAM's website. Most people were working on technical aspects, but others were working on communications-related stuff, and one guy was shooting video. The meeting space is a building that will eventually be a small art museum.


The miniJAM this Saturday will focus on applications for the XO that allow students to create art in various ways, as well as figuring out how CeibalJAM can incorporate artists and designers. So, one of my current jobs is to make artistic masterpieces like this:


I'm testing out a bunch of new art-related applications, figuring out which ones are buggy, and taking screenshots and writing descriptions of what you can do with each so we'll have a summary for Saturday afternoon. For example, this program (TuxPaint) still has English directions in a few places, which could confuse the kids, so I take note of issues like that while I get in touch with my inner six-year-old. On Saturday morning, I'm visiting a school for the first time to help out with a blogging workshop in Maldonado, a small city east of Montevideo near Punta del Este. My work with Flor de Ceibo is supposed to start on Monday. I'll be part of two of their groups--one working in rural areas, and another working in the city of Rivera on the Brazilian border--I'm excited to see some more of the country!

My work with Plan Ceibal has been gradually starting this week, but isn't completely underway. At first, I was just familiarizing myself with the XO laptops and learning how they work. The first thing I noticed was that these computers are not designed for Uruguay--they have American plugs (so will always need converters), and all the information in the "help" section is in English. Here's the home screen--the XO logo surrounded by logos for all the different programs.


There's a Wikipedia link, Skype, "Tortuga Art," which is like Logo, a calculator, a chat program, a text editor, a web browser, a paint program, and a bunch of games that are less clear to me. One, called "Pippy," seems to teach some basic programming--not something I learned in elementary school! But the games aren't big, pretty, multilevel programs like Oregon Trail or Gizmos and Gadgets or the other supposedly educational games that caused everyone to fight over computer time when I was in elementary school. There's a simple maze game, a tetris game that uses math, a quiz game about cities in Uruguay, etc. I guess the Internet connection is probably the most important thing, but it still seems weird that these games are so much more basic than what American students were playing a decade ago.

I'm still figuring out exactly how the different volunteer groups fit together. Pablo mostly coordinates CeibalJAM, which is a group that works on programs for the XO computers. He also directed Blogging Desde Infancia, which apparently has now been replaced with Tus Ideas Valen (something along the lines of "Your Ideas Have Value"). Yesterday I met Cesar and Nathalie, who are working with this group. CeibalJAM provides technical help to Tus Ideas Valen. Flor de Ceibo is separate, and works with kids in the classrooms using what software has already been developed. I haven't started any work with them yet. Hopefully soon.

So far, the schools participating in the blogging project have used tools like Wordpress and Blogger, which are free and accessible but definitely not designed for six-year-olds. So CeibalJAM has written its own version, called EduBlog, which is much simpler and has features designed for the classroom. For example, rather than sending a forgotten password to an email address, a teacher can restore access. However, the site is still very buggy, and the user guide is very brief. So, my current job is to test all the different parts of the site to figure out where the bugs are, and to work on English and Spanish versions of two user guides--a detailed one for teachers, and a simpler one for the kids. Unfortunately, at the moment the home page won't even load, so I haven't gotten much done today.

Cesar and Nathalie asked me what I was most interested in working on, and said that there are tons of jobs and almost everyone's a volunteer so I should make sure to tell them what I enjoy. I had no idea what to say (not in English, and definitely not in Spanish), because I don't really know how the organization functions or what jobs there are to do. But it sounds promising! I'm supposed to have dinner later with Andrew, who has been working with Plan Ceibal since he graduated from Union College last spring. I'm looking forward to hearing what he's figured out.

Since I got back from Punta del Diablo, I've mostly just been exploring the city. My work with Plan Ceibal started yesterday, but I'll put that in a separate post.

Saturday, I finally spent an extended period of time with people who aren't fluent in English. I took a trip to the historic section of the city with two friends from the hostel, Julieta from Argentina and Ricardo from Brazil. At cross-country camp in high school, we used to play a game called Mad Gab. It has phrases like "These If Hill Wore" printed on cards, and you have to say it over and over again until you figure out that you're basically saying "The Civil War." Once you get the answer, it seems extremely obvious, but until then you can't make any sense of the sounds. This is more or less how I feel trying to decipher the accent here. It's frustrating to have the vocabulary but not be able to use it. But it's slowly getting better, mostly thanks to people like Julieta who happily repeat themselves five times, snail-pace. Ricardo is fluent in Spanish, but he speaks a little more slowly since it's not his first language, which was great news for me. I felt like my Spanish improved more in one day than it had in the previous week. We walked down Avenida 18 de Julio, the main street of Montevideo's downtown, then through Ciudad Vieja along a pedestrian street called Avenida Sarandí to the port. There were various interesting things along the way.

This is an entrance to the subway. Except, wait...Montevideo doesn't HAVE a subway system. When you go downstairs there's a small art museum...filled with giant anime prints, interestingly. I couldn't understand much of the attendant's explanation of how this came to be, but everyone seems to think it's a great joke.


Located on an apparently arbitrary street corner, between a sandwich stand and an ice cream stand, is a small fountain surrounded by a metal fence with thousands of locks attached to it. The legend is that if a couple writes their initials on a lock and attaches it, they will return to the fountain and, according to the sign, "their love will be forever locked."


This is the Plaza de Independencia, Montevideo's main plaza (though there are tons of smaller ones). The statue is General Artigas, the "father of Uruguay's independence." His tomb is beneath it. Behind the statue is a stone gate that leads to Ciudad Vieja--it's what's left of the wall that used to surround the entire city.


The area around the port has lots of shops and restaurants, which were crowded since it was the day before Easter. They all seemed to serve the same things for the same prices, so we picked a random one. They gave us slightly smoky-tasting bread with a delicious sort of salsa made of peppers, onions, and tomatoes in oil. I had gnocchi (common here; many people have Italian heritage) with tomato sauce. It looked tasty, but I have to say I'm not a huge fan of Uruguayan tomato sauce--it involves more salt than tomato.

On Sunday, I went with a group from the hostel to a soccer game. There is a fierce rivalry between Montevideo's two main teams, Nacional and Peñarol. The hostel staff informed me that I would be rooting for Peñarol. This game was between Peñarol and a less-cared-about team, Cerritos, so the crowd was less intense than at a Nacional-Peñarol game, but still way beyond any American sporting event. The stadium was surrounded by riot police, and the fans went way beyond chanting the team name and yelling randomly--they sang (screamed) actual songs. I couldn't understand much of the lyrics, but I did catch plenty of the swear words my Argentine friends taught me last week.




Yesterday, I walked to Montevideo's newest mall, Punta Carretas Shopping, because I'd heard the grocery store there had more unusual stuff (tofu was too much to hope for, but there was "pan arabe"--pita bread). The mall itself was extremely expensive, but surprisingly entertaining. There are a few American chains--Reebok, Nike, Columbia, Lacoste, and an Urban Outfitters--but mostly names I didn't recognize. A lot of signs are in English, though. At first, I thought this was catering to expatriates, who probably make up a significant chunk of the people willing to pay the ridiculous prices. But then I saw this:


No, it doesn't mean something different in Spanish.
And this:


"Invierno" means winter. I guess they're not looking forward to it. But it's just barely the start of fall...

There's also a McDonald's. According to people who eat meat, Uruguay is a fantastic place to get high-quality beef cheaply. McDonald's has crappy meat, and here, it's not particularly cheap, but they're everywhere. I think they're actually considered kind of trendy. They all seem to have McCafes as well, which is considered some of the best coffee you can get (no Starbucks here yet). One of the blogs about Uruguay that I read before coming said that their hot chocolate was really good, so I decided to check it out. The menu called it "submarina" and said it was warm milk with a bar of chocolate that you mix in. I was already pretty impressed. Then the girl gave me the milk in an actual glass with a saucer, on a pretty wooden tray, with a free glass of seltzer water and a little cookie. At McDonalds?!


There were leather couches too. American McCafes aren't this classy, are they? At least they were playing 50 Cent. There are limits.

I'm trying to upload more photos to Flickr, but the Internet isn't incredibly fast so it takes forever. Tomorrow I'll write more about the cuteness of the XO laptops (and about the work I'm doing on them).