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).
3 comments:
awesome stuff:
glad to hear your spanish is improving
also glad to hear you found pita bread/other delicious food
"There were leather couches too. American McCafes aren't this classy, are they? At least they were playing 50 Cent. There are limits."
*Chuckles*
Also, who won the soccer game?!
The good team won :)
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