Weekend in Uruguay!

This weekend, my roommate and I traveled to Uruguay: first to Colonia, then to Montevideo. Colonia is a historic town established by the Portuguese in 1680. It’s super quaint and has loads of restaurants and cafes along the coast, cute cobble-stone streets and a couple small beaches. We arrived around 1pm after taking a boat from Buenos Aires and walked around the historic district and all along the coast. It’s a very small town and you really don’t need more than a day to get the full picture of Colonia. We climbed up the lighthouse, ate delicious food and watched the sunset over the river. I’m pretty sure I want to return to Colonia for a day during my (recently decided) South American honeymoon. Pictures are from the historic gate of the city, and watching the sunset over the river, and at the top of the lighthouse.

We stayed in a hostel in Colonia and the next day took a three-hour bus to Montevideo. Montevideo is the capital of Uruguay and it’s a pretty big city but definitely not as touristy as Buenos Aires. We walked from the bus terminal to our hostel in the Centro/Ciudad Vieja part of the city down the main street 18 de Julio. On Sunday, most shops and lots of museums were closed but we still checked out lots of the historic part. In La Plaza Independencia we saw the mausoleum of Jose Artigas, the father of independence of Uruguay. The mausoleum was super erie but definitely memorable. We then met a girl from Colombia, Andrea, who is studying in La Plata (small world!) and decided to spend the rest of the day checking out Montevideo together. She was super nice and it made us speak Spanish almost the entire weekend. We toured El Teatro Solis, the oldest theater in Uruguay (established in 1856)—it was GORGEOUS. We then walked down to the Rambla, the long road that goes all along the coast of Montevideo (I think about 22km). Later that night, we walked to the Palacio Legislativa and took a bus to Punto Carretas (kind of a nicer part of the city with beautiful apartments and an enormous mall). Pictures are from Plaza de Independencia, Teatro Solis, and La Rambla with Ruth Ann.

The next morning I rented a bike a rode all along La Rambla. I could have done this all day (it felt so good to ride a bike again) but we had to check out of our hostel. We walked back to Plaza Constitución and looked inside the Cathedral there. It was built in 1804 and is absolutely beautiful. We made our way over to Mercado del Puerto, a super classy food court with lots of parillas (South American barbeque with every type of meat imaginable plus a few that I’ve never heard of). I had an awesome chorizo and salchicha (both kind of sausages) and Ruth Ann and I shared some medio y medio, a Uruguayan drink that is a mix between wine and champagne. After this enormous lunch we made our way to the bus station and a bus, boat, another bus, and taxi later we finally returned home.

I really enjoyed Uruguay. The sense in Argentina is that Uruguay is just another province of Argentina and in Uruguay that Argentines are arrogant and think too highly of themselves. I loved seeing both Colonia & Montevideo and it was absolutely perfect weather all weekend. I really enjoyed the change of pace of Montevideo (much slower and more polite than Buenos Aires) and I’m glad that we were able to explore both cities.

Back in La Plata we have a normal week of classes before Semana Santa. I’ve narrowed my classes down to three choices: Sociology of Culture in Latin America, History of Culture and Political Communication and a seminar in the history department called “Far From God: The U.S. and its neighbors from 1776-1929.” Needless to say, the last one is definitely a different prospective than what I learned about U.S. history and foreign relations in high school. They are all about three hours once a week and basically have weekly reading with a project at the end of the semester for a final grade. I’ll hopefully figure things out in the next couple weeks (you can drop classes at any point in the semester so I really don’t have a time limit).

MY MOM AND AUNTS ARE COMING THIS WEEKEND AND I AM SO EXCITED! I’ll be sure to take lots of pictures and keep a hidden camera handy for the hilarity that I’m sure will ensue with the Clancy women invasion.

Lots of Love,
Caroline

Hugo Chavez on Tuesday, U2 on Sunday—Oh, What a Week

This week I was able to see both Hugo Chavez (current president of Venezuela) and U2 in La Plata. For being a pretty small city, it gets a lot of big names to stop by.

Chavez was in La Plata to receive an award from the school of journalism in the University for defending public expression and fighting for those who don’t have a voice in the monopolies that exist in Venezuela. I really don’t know much about his actions for or against freedom of speech but here is an article from the Washington Post… http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/argentine-journalism-school-honors-hugo-chavez-for-service-to-peoples-communication/2011/03/29/AFPTDAvB_story.html

It was such a unique opportunity to see Chavez speak—he certainly won’t be coming to the U.S. anytime soon. Because of this, we convinced our professor to let us end class two hours early so we could go see him. Chavez is a very vocal critic of imperialism, capitalism and pretty much anything the U.S. does. He plays up being a “man of the people” never wearing suits and talking about the power and voice of the “pueblo” (small-town) in all of his speeches. In La Plata, he clearly aligned himself with the current president Cristina Fernandez and the Kirchner-ists to mixed reactions from the crowd. He emphasized the solidarity of Argentina and Venezuela (and all of South America) against the influence of the U.S. and Europe. The most interesting thing I think he talked about was the situation in Libya. He was clearly against the U.S. invasion and went as far as to voice his support for Gaddafi for being a man of the “pueblo” and standing up to imperialism. Hmmm—interesting.

Chavez is a good speaker and knew how to get the crowd excited—lots of “Viva Bolivar, Viva Castro, Viva Che Guevara, Viva Kirchner, Viva Venezuela, Viva Argentina” and it was really interesting being an American in the crowd. There were lots of people there with flags and banners and chants going for almost the whole 3 hours that we were there (he spoke for about 2 hours and that is apparently pretty short for him). I love the political activism here—its so great to see so many students and young people involved.

Another funny note—when walking into the area that he was speaking we had to go through security. They glanced into our bags and asked, “Cuchillo (knife)?” I hesitated before realizing that they were asking if I had a knife and quickly responded that I wasn’t hiding a knife in my bag. While I feel like it was a step to have security (it’s the first event that I’ve been to that has had security), I’m not sure how effective simply asking whether people were bringing knives into the speech would be against anyone who actually had a knife. Just another reminder that I am not in the U.S. let alone in D.C.

After a pretty typical week of Comision classes, I went to the U2 concert last night at El Estadio Unico in La Plata. It was an INCREDIBLE concert and I’ve basically concluded that Bono is one of the coolest people on the planet. So many great songs (I think “With or Without Me,” “Beautiful Day,” and “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For” were my favorites) and Bono really talks a lot about human rights and the groups humanitarian efforts throughout the concert (including AIDS in Africa, Burma, Egypt, Japan and more). It was really an awesome show—one of the best concerts I’ve seen (I think Bruce Springsteen wins that one…).

I’ll try to put up some more photos soon—my camera is currently out of commission but I should have it back by next week.

Lots of love from Argentina,

Caroline

Ps. Shout out to the Grady family on their impressive showing in the Grady/Clancy Challenge NCAA Bracket, all 6 of us were in the top 8. Special congrats to Beth for the win!