Montevideo vs Buenos Aires

Today we took a guided bus tour of Montevideo to compare to our guided tour of Buenos Aires. Our conclusion is that everything that Montevideo has going for it is bigger, better, and flashier in Buenos Aires. Everything except the Chivito (the Uruguayan hamburger) of course! We toured the old city, some of the major parks and historic sights, we saw a few of the old cemeteries containing graves dating to the 1500s and up to WWII. Our tour took most of the day and a few of us ended it by walking down to a local "feria" (a fair type set up) so I could look for soccer jerseys and some other stuff. On our way home we stoped at a little cafe for Empanadas and watched about 20min of a soccer game. That's how life has gone here in South America most of the time, with only essays to interrupt that flow of time. We also submitted our fall break travel ideas to a travel agent here so she could come up with approximate costs for the trips.

Class Schedule and update...

This is my class schedule and it's not too shabby. For my Latin America and the Arts class we usually visit a museum or historic site and have to write a 500 word essay sometime before the next Wednesday. For Latin American Studies we have had to do different projects. Before going to Buenos Aires we all picked a research project out of a hat and wrote a 400 paper on it to get acquainted with the basics of the city and the country, past and present, before we went there.
Spanish is 8 - 10 hours a week and that about sums it all up. For class, sometimes our homework assignment is to go out and have a conversation with a local about something. This week I have to find out how Uruguayans feel about Argentineans and Brazilians, so we'll see how that goes. My Bible class is not on this schedule because it will only be for the month of October (as of right now). It is a short course because the professor who was supposed to teach it stayed home to be with his wife who was diagnosed with cancer 10 days before we left. That class will be online and will be split in half by our trip to Brazil which has been rescheduled for October 10th - 19th I believe... Anyway, this is my schedule, today we went to an English language teaching institute that is associated with the United States. They teach English and classes on American culture, history, etc and they are looking for volunteers to teach their conversation clubs and to be interviewed for classes, so I think I'm going to volunteer there. The clubs are once a week for one hour so the commitment isn't exactly severe. I am rather proficient in English if I do say so myself and I believe my middle school report card with all my demerits for talking in class would serve to validate this.

Buenos Aires and Soccer

So I'm back home and it's 12:05 here in Montevideo and "i like go far places BA". Thank you Aaron for that. Anyway, so much has happened since I last updated I'll just work backwards.

This last weekend we went to Buenos Aires and there is really not way to accurately describe the city as a whole but I'll try. We got there Thursday night and rode by bus to our hotel, the Posta Carretas. We took a charter-style bus from Montevideo to Colonia del Sacramento and then a ferry to Buenos Aires. We got dinner and went to bed and woke up early for our guided tour of Buenos Aires! Our tour finished at the Museo de Arte Latinoamericano de Buenos Aires and was followed by free time. For our free time, me, Earl, Arianna, and Jade walked back from the mall across the length of Buenos Aires. It was exciting and we got a good look at the city, but it took an hour and a half to make it to the hotel! We took a brief nap and went to see a Tango show displaying the history and evolution of Tango in Argentina and the world and it was outstanding!!
Curfew was 2am, and Cindy, Jessica, Abby, Tanner, Aaron, and I still wanted to stay out and see the city and we were looking for something cool to do and one of the hotel workers directed us to an Irish Pub in Buenos Aires! We looked really cool when we ordered a round of Cokes for the table, lol! We enjoyed live music that was half the best of the 70s-90s and half spanish music.
The next morning we went to the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes (National Fine Art Museum) for our Latin American Art and Culture class and stayed there until we went to lunch. As a side note, some of the best Italian food I've eaten was in Buenos Aires. We got a change of clothes and went and spent the rest of the evening with a local youth group and went to their Saturday night Bible Study to meet some local Porteños (people from Buenos Aires). We traveled by Subte (subway) all the way across the city. We finished the night by playing soccer with them at a local rec center. We divided up the teams with some Americans and Argentines mixed together so it wouldn't be too lopsided... we all slept well that night. The next morning we again took el Subte to the Church for church and met the 60 study abroad students from Pepperdine University in California and spent the rest of the day with with until 6:30 when we left, caught the bus at Colonia del Sacramento, and rode the bus back to Montevideo. It's weird now because when we get here it feels like home.

Before we left we went to a World Cup Qualifier soccer game, Uruguay vs Ecuador and it was AMAZING!!! I posted the pictures, and they show crowd shot, but it was nothing short of incredible when we all walked out onto the stands and saw the field for the first time surrounded by 50,000 Uruguayans out to support their team. They ended up tying, 0-0 which was depressing, but the whole experience was exciting and completely worth it.

PICTURES!

I finally posted pictures, go to: www.jordanrlowe.shutterfly.com, there are a lot of good ones! :-D

School Starts

Since my last entry, Jade has given me my Korean name: Tagunse Sutajanghee (that's purely phonetic) which means "Petite Bird and He Who Talks Alot" which should tell you about how chatty I am... that should come as no surprise to anyone. Most of the food has been great, bland, but good food. Prices of things are very different here, transportation and food are cheaper, but regular goods run the whole gambit of cheap and expensive with anything made in Uruguay being wonderfully cheap and everything imported being more expensive than in the United States (in most cases). An example is that in one day I spent $.60 on bus fair across town, $4 on lunch, and then $17 on the 1st Harry Potter book in Spanish...

Yesterday, Sunday, we went to La Chana church for the first time. We share the building with them, so the walk was not far. We went with the Walkers, our sort of parents away from home, and greeted everyone in the small church. One Uruguayan custom I forgot to list earlier is that they really do greet everyone with a kiss. The custom is to press your right cheeks together and make the kissing sound without really kissing them. EVERYONE does it when they meet friends, guys and girls, guys and guys... everyone. The worship was fine because I can read the Spanish, but I found myself building a headache during the sermon and hiding behind the pew in front of me when he asked students to answer a question because I didn't even know he was asking one until he said, "¿Estudiantes?" and started looking around. The youth group is small, but they invited us to one of their favorite past-times: walking La Rambla. La Rambla is the winding road along the coast that in some places is a side-walk and, in others, a boardwalk. It runs along the coast from the Old City to somewhere outside Montevideo and we walked probably 15 min to get there and we walked for probably 30 min on La Rambla itself. When the sun started setting we took some great pictues and then got off the beaches because night isn't the best time to be there. We went to Punta Carretas, an upscale mall, and had dinner and, even though I promised myself I wouldn't, I ate BurgerKing... ahhhhh! I know, but hear me out: we agreed to pay for the Uruguayan's dinners because they had spent all day with us and were infinately patient as we tried to converse, and they wanted McDonalds and BurgerKing because that's a pretty good meal here! It's more middle class here and the price is like you just ran a currency converter from dollars to pesos ($1USD=$20UYU). We rode the bus back, and I think we covered maybe 10miles on foot easy.
One thing I am loving is the sense of community. There are only 15 of us and that means that either all, or half of everyone goes everywhere together. We have only one fluent Spanish speaker, and that means that EVERYONE gets to try and buy/barter/communicate everywhere we go. Sunday night is Worship night with just the Study Abroad kids, we sang together, and got our schedules for today, Monday el Primero de Septiembre and it is absolutely the most wonderful schedule I have ever had! I'll post a picture on my Flickr account, but today I had 4 hours of Spanish class: 2 hours of instruction by our Uruguay professor who is amazing and crazy, her name is Amelia; and 2 hours of language lab by another Uruguay mother/daughter team. I'm just starting to get a grasp on what Soccer really means to the other 90% of humanity because there is a World Cup Qualifier coming up in a week and we are getting tickets!!
As a side note, the dialect is funny... really funny... the "ll" is usually pronounced with a soft "y" sound like in "yard". Here it is pronounced "j" as in "jump", only the letter "y" is also the same way. Because of this they are not Uruguayans, but Uruguajans (that's phonetic) and you don't go to the beach or playa, you go to the plaja. In the same way, a bombilla is pronounced a bombija. It's wierd.

PS I didn't get a flickr account in the end because they wouldn't hold all my pictures, I got a shutterfly account and I'll put the link here shortly.