Aprovechar Aprovechar

To start things off, I took a (unintentional) siesta from writing any entries which apparently don't get written on their own. Some updates though. First, I decided to cut my time short here in this lovely, tranquil country. The plan was to stay a year, as you're really just establishing a life for yourself the first semester and the second semester you really milk the country for what's it's worth (or to quote Jeremy's citric metaphor you "squeeze the orange"). The best translation in Spanish for this is aprovechar (to make the most of), and it has become a word I use even when talking in English.

Overall, I've really enjoyed my time and semester in Uruguay, and I want to "aprovechar" my time here. However, sitting in a three hour class after three hour class that could usually be condensed into a three minute lecture at Middlebury, I started to long for a stimulating class. More so, I was wondering if another semester down here was the best way to aprovechar my four year once-in-a-lifetime education for which my parents and Middlebury's endowment have scraped together about $250,000, which Ronald Liebowitz reminded me of with his inspiring "Welcome to Middlebury" speech. My conclusion? I have my whole life to return to Montevideo or another place in Latin America to work, travel or live if I want to. I have four years at Middlebury and "tá." That's it.

Now this is not to say the public university system is bad down here. On the contrary, it's pretty good with a lot of bright students, but it has a completely different structure geared more towards the long run. It seems very little emphasis is put on the "in-class" learning (most of what I've learned is from the readings), and much more on learning-by-doing. To graduate, students have an average of four to five years of class, sometimes an internship or two and several research projects of a range from 50-150 pages each (single spaced), depending on their own initiative. Essentially, on top of class, you have to write four or five theses. Add in a job, and the average student probably takes 7-8 years to graduate.

When you graduate, you have a well-respected degree, probably the equivalent of a Master's in the U.S., a good education and can get a good job. Supposedly, students graduating from the Econ school are recruited by the World Bank or IMF to work in Washington (unfortunately, Middlebury only lets us study in the Humanities school, which rumor has it is a century behind the other schools...I believe it). Bottom line, with a system geared more towards the long run in producing a person qualified to work in what they're studying, it's difficult to aprovechar if you're staying only a semester or a year, especially if you're studying something you don't study...I'm an International Politics and Economics major studying History down here.

Other news. A few weekends back I spent a short but packed weekend in Buenos Aires, and who would it turn out is studying in Buenos Aires? Alejandro Quiros, my long lost Costa Rican host brother. Turns out he got accepted to study at the University of Buenos Aires (one of the most prestigious universities in Latin America) where he's studying Economics. I met up with him and we got to catch up like old times, although he's become quite the aspiring intellectual. Within two minutes of seeing each other he moved the conversation on to discussing economic, political and social ideas, theories and policies, Neoliberalism, Marxism, etc. It was great to see him and catch up on our lives. Unfortunately I forgot to take a picture, but rest assured, he looks just like he did in Portland except for a lone dread that is embedded in his curls.

Non-news. Life in general has settled into a pretty regular routine. Classes four nights a week. Internship two days of the week. The rest of the time is filled with studying, getting together with friends for some mate and cookies (a mother of all Uruguayan traditions) or getting caught in a conversation with my host Mom. Yesterday I sat down at the table with her for some coffee and my daily fill of dulce de leche (caramelized condensed milk aka crack cocaine) and we ended up talking about everything from family and relationships to crime, suicide and depression (all while watching two hours of cartoons).

Despite being such a laid back country, Uruguay has one of the highest rates of depression and suicide in the world. I've started to wonder if it's because it's such a laid back country. Things are so laid back here that frequently there's not much going on. Some are juggling work, school, learning English and budgeting a monthly $250 salary that they have little time to get together with friends. The sense I've gotten from some people people is that there's too much solitude in their lives. Being from the U.S. and recognizing an opportunity for exploitation when I see one, I do so by talking to people who are usually more than eager to engage you in conversation and drill you about what you think of Uruguay. Many are often puzzled that someone from the U.S. would ever want to come to their country and they talk about how they hope to one day live in the U.S. or Spain. Nevertheless, while a significant portion of the country's youth is abroad (it's the oldest country in Latin America), most find their way back here to settle down.

Relating this all back to my host Mom and family, I'm very happy to be with a family down here. Sure there lots of familial customs that strike me as odd or inconvenient, such as the prep-school open door policy when someone of the opposite sex is in your room (friend or more). When my host Mom established the rule at the beginning of the semester, she said her son usually went to a hotel which seemed to work for him (thanks for the advice Mom!). From what I've gathered, it's a pretty universal rule in this country. A friend was complaining about the policy that she had no privacy when she was in a relationship, but she's resolute and implementing the exact same policy when she has kids. In general, my family has been incredibly nice and I always have some one there to talk to if I want. My respect for them has only grown with time too, both in the sense that they are a tight family and took me right in, but that they give me plenty of independence while still looking out for me.

On that note, let me leave you the top ten favorite dishes a friend of mine here excitedly rattled off one day:

1. Rice, tuna and mayonnaise
2. Beef milanesa (battered and fried/baked in oil) with mashed potatoes and mayonnaise (on everything)
   
3. Beef milanesa with rice and mayonnaise (ditto)
   
4. Chicken milanesa with rice and mayo
   
5. Chicken milanesa with mashed potatoes and mayo
   
6. Ham and cheese milanesa with rice/mashed potatoes and mayo
7. Fish milanesa with rice/mashed potatoes and mayo
8. Milanesa with rice/mashed potatoes dulce de leche and mayo
9. Dulce de leche (straight)
   
10. Mayo (straight)

Robbed. But not really.

Usually when you get robbed your just grateful to come away unscathed. Things were a little different this time. Here's the scoop: I (a group of us actually) got robbed, but then we got our money back. Here's the story, and pardon my digressions.

Friday night I got out of my dictatorships class at ten and went to a bar near campus for a grappa miel. Grappa is something of a liqueur made from the crap left over after grapes are pressed to make the juice that becomes wine (skin, seeds, etc.). Throw some honey in it and it's a tasty way to start off a cold night. As we were paying our bill, we had amassed 200 pesos (ten bucks) thus far for our grappa miels and pizza, and a woman walked up to our table. I assumed she was a waitress as she was acting as if she was going to take a plate away, but instead snatched the 200 pesos and took off running. Actually, more like swerving. I didn't really want to follow someone who had just robbed me down a dark street, but my friend Mauricio did, so I followed Mauricio. We quickly caught up to the woman a block away as she was clearly on one or many substances, one of which was likely pasta base (side note- pasta base is a drug made from the leftovers of everything else (crack, heroine), mixed with household chemicals (ammonia, bleach, whatever is at hand) and turns your brain to mush in about three months. It's something of an epidemic down here.).

Mauricio and I each grabbed one of the woman's hands, and told her to give us the money back. We turned up a couple of coins in her pockets, but couldn't find the dough. The next half hour consisted of us and the owner of a small open air fruit market who knew her from the area asking for the money, while she would lie down, put her legs up in the air spread wide open, get back up, say she was getting the money and then lie back down again. At one point she suddenly lurched towards a bin a tomatoes from the market we were next to, grabbed one and crushed it with her hand as she bit into it, then threw it away and spat it out. The whole situation was a mess. Finally, when the police were about to arrive and the rest of the group had paid the bill and caught up to us, she reached down her pants, gave us the money and we were on our way.



The rest of the weekend was less eventful, minus an asado (barbeque) on Mother's Day (yes, it's down here too) during which I ate plates of sausage, ribs and steak, with leftovers for dinner (picture on left, my host Dad Carlos prepares the barbeque, on the left the first round of meats). One of the selections I think is called blood sausage in English, because when the slaughter the cow, they collect the blood, cook it down, mix it with some other stuff and form it into sausages. Word is that it's great for anemia! Luckily my physical for my soccer team included a cholesterol test and I don't appear to be in danger of a heart attack yet after vats upon vats of grease and deep fried meat, so I can continue with my Atkins-approved diet.

Photos from Montevideo and Córdoba

Check out some photos of Montevideo and Cordoba, Argentina, where we recently had a program trip for a long weekend:

Montevideo

"Live and work in the U.S. for one year!"

Such a phrase is not hard to come by down here while surfing the internet. None of that "Click here to claim your prize!" In a country that feels something between pity and ire towards the hard worker, it's odd to see an advertisement encouraging work. I'll save a few of my other peculiar observations for later. I'm trying to include pictures now, excuse any formatting irregularities. Onto more important things.

Classes. Since I also have an internship and Middlebury's "Cuaderno," a course that consists of keeping a blog in Spanish and doing a cultural project, I'm only supposed to take two classes that both meet six hours a week, which are 20th century History of Uruguay and an interdisciplinary course with the official name "Around the socio-political history of the Southern Cone of Latin America and Uruguay: Democratic crises, dictatorships and transition processes. Interdisciplinary focuses." I suppose instead of a class description below the title they prefer a descriptive title. Needless to say, the classes started off with a bang and I was really excited for them. Uruguay seemed to have an interesting history full of dictatorships, social and economic reforms/movements, etc. and the dictatorship class was covering interesting revolutions and political turmoil in Chile and Argentina, the latter which is a roller coaster ride of coups, "elections," left and right political movements, and oppressive dictatorships from WWII until the mid 80s. Albeit a brutal three hours, classes were small, teachers and reading were good, and there was a lot of class discussion (most of which I didn't understand). I could usually follow the teachers, but when students spoke up, forget about it. For being such a chilled out country, people (in particular the youth) feel compelled to talk as quickly as possible and enunciate as little as possible.

Picture break of the economic union Mercosur (Common Market of the South), where I began an internship about a month ago, and "Espacio Libre Bob Marley" which sits across the street from my house.




Classes are certainly different now. First, to say that having only three hour classes is brutal is
an understatement. The good readings for the most part stopped being assigned, and have been replaced by bibliographies with 30-40 books that are "recommended" to supplement the course. My ass that the professors have read all the books on the list. One of Ruby's classes has a 25 page bibliography. Worse is the class format. Words like "organization," "conscise" or "lesson plan" don't exist here. The professor shows up with the intention of talking most of the time and letting the students chime in when they want. One of our professors could condense his three hour classes into five or ten minutes with ease. Another class we spent three hours summarizing four assigned readings. Never mind analyzing the articles, sharing opinions or using them as a starting point for a discussion, these were just synopses. One student spent literally over an hour summarizing the article he was presenting. My dictatorship class has a good ten professors listed, and while the first two were good, the last two have excelled at talking in circles, going down tangents, talking about nothing and then repeating it all over again. The main teacher of my Uruguayan history class looks like a more grizzled Richard Gere who just reads for three hours from the notes he wrote the first time he taught the class. Let's just say it has certainly been a different academic experience from Middlebury. Next semester I'll be in a private university that follows the U.S. model...so they say.

Although classes have become less than stimulating, other facets of life have continued to get better and better. Friendships continue to get stronger with Uruguayans, and I've definitely noticed my Spanish improving a lot. Just two weeks ago I had a good talk with Jeremy about how I didn't feel like my Spanish was improving, and decided I needed to make more of an effort to engage Uruguayans in conversation as much as possible. I think largely what happens is the change is gradual, but I feel like redoubling my efforts to talk and listen to more Spanish more has helped too. While there is no campus for the university (each "school" i.e. humanities, social sciences, engineering, etc. is located in a different part of town, meaning my campus consists of this one building above), I've spent more time hanging out around the cafeteria where classmates can frequently be found studying, drinking mate or grabbing lunch. Mauricio, a friend from class, talks so fast it used to sound more like he was the world's fastest gargler than speaking a language. Now it still sometimes sounds like he's speaking with a bar of soap in his mouth, but I can usually follow most of what he says. Some students in class used to impress me because they would talk very dynamically and clearly for ten minutes or more in a discussion, but now that I can usually understand them most of what they say seems to have very little to do with the class and at best, would be better left out of the discussion.

Smoke from Buenos Aires 400 kilometers away and a couch hanging out in a plaza...weird things happen down here.















Despite my occasional sarcasm, Uruguay is an amazing country. There really is no other country like it to compare it to, and for such a small country, it has its own unique flavor. Not only are people nicer here than anywhere else I´ve been in Latin America, I also love discovering new oddities every day about this country, such as that the country went to the trouble of declaring it illegal to drink mate while riding the bus or driving (probably for the better).

Lastly, a few things I've learned down here from Uruguayans or just observed in general:

• Water is bad for you
• Oil does not have fat in it
• If you sleep without socks on you'll get sick
• If you don't drink enough whiskey you'll get sick
• The Chinese are dirty (not a general observation. All the Chinese I've met—Chinese here usually means from east Asia—have been very nice and one "Chinese" person from Taiwan invited me to drink tea at his house sometime)
• Fanny packs are in- leather, denim, corduroy...just about any fabric
• If you have a sweater and don't want to wear it, the stylish thing to do is tie the sleeves around the front of your neck and let it hang behind you...something of an improvised scarf

And some tasty new dishes...

• Some type of pastry stuffed with tuna, mayonnaise and ketchup, left to ferment on the kitchen counter for 10 to 12 hours. I gagged before the first bite was down. The rest went straight to the dumpster outside since I wanted to sleep and not spend the night offering my dinner to the Porcelain God.
• Chicken, rice, peas, carrots and a bag of mayonnaise (mayonnaise is quite the popular cuisine down here, sometimes when I'm offered it my response is "why?" for example, if I'm having eggs for breakfast.
• The best way to make coffee is to leave the grinds in the coffee to brew for several hours, chill it overnight, and heat it up in the microwave the next day.
• Re-deep fried vegetables. To give you some perspective, these make tempura taste and look like steamed vegetables. If you want to try it, saturate a sponge in oil and take a bite. Those... vegetables, along with milanesa (fried chicken) and hard boiled eggs was dinner one night. Talk about throwing a curve ball to your digestive system.

On that note I'll leave you with this picture of Montevideo's self employed recycling service:

Life in Uruguay: Hella chill

Jeremy's amazing ability at cranking out an entry per day this last week has inspired me to cough up something of my own. If you happen to pick up a copy of the first issue of Middlebury's very first IPE newsletter, you may realize this post has been 100% plagiarized from an article written by someone currently abroad in Montevideo. However, I don't think it's a violation of the school's honor code to plagiarize yourself on a personal blog, so I think I'll be okay. Sorry for anything you may find repetitious, but I didn't want to upset the "integrity" of this work of literature (that has very little to do with International Politics and Economics). I jest. It's late and I'm going to bed.

The pace of life is one of Montevideo’s most prominent qualities after a month and a half down here in Uruguay. This tiny South American country of just over three million people is nestled in between Argentine and Brazil on the Rio de la Plata, the world’s widest estuary, and the Atlantic Ocean. Commonly confused with the much poorer landlocked Paraguay, Uruguay is another world with one of Latin America’s most stable democracies and a large middle class flush with strong German and Italian heritages.

The beverage yerba mate, a South American infusion of hot water and the dried leaves from the yerba mate plant, is drank through a metal straw from a gourd and is the foundation of life here. People go about their day gourd-in-hand cradling a thermos between their arm and chest. The most popular activity in Uruguay is spending hours on end drinking the bitter beverage with friends on the Rambla, the boardwalk along the Rio de la Plata, to discuss politics (many are following the American primaries closely), socio-economic woes, soccer or just nothing; I had a 45 minute discussion the other day with a friend about the school’s photocopier.

While mate is certainly a very chill activity, the culture of tranquility does not stop there. One of the most common expressions is “todo tranqui” which is probably most appropriately translated as “everything’s chill.” I recently began an internship with Red Mercosur, a branch MERCOSUR, the economic union of South America. Red Mercosur is supposedly a network of institutions dedicated to economic research on regional integration, although my duties thus far have consisted of translating a few pages. I asked if there was a current project I could help with and was expecting to get a stack of TPS reports or something pertaining to economic development, trade or poverty in the context of regional integration. My supervisor’s response? “Todo tranqui.” I took that as a no and took another sip of mate while looking out over the waterfront from my desk by the window. Todo tranqui indeed.

There are certainly some trade-offs to todo tranqui. This country has got chilling down pat, but todo tranqui has probably resulted in a less productive and dynamic economy. Would Uruguayan’s give up some todo tranqui for more economic growth. I think not. People seem content to arrive at work anywhere between 10 in the morning and three in the afternoon to do their thing for a few hours before retiring to some mate. Could todo tranqui have a role in why Mercosur receives a lot of mixed press many people think it is inefficient or useless (many Uruguayans are in this boat)? Perhaps. If I can ever figure out exactly what it is that Red Mercosur does, or for that matter, Mercosur in general, I try and give you a better answer. Before I do that though, I need to take a break to chill and drink some mate.

Pictures!

Check out photos from Cerro Plomo in Chile by clicking on the picture below or the link the right dashboard. More are on their way with a few from from Brazil and Chile on the right dashboard as a preview of those to come.

Cerro Plomo

Montevideo and my new fam

After quickly settling into my room on the night of March 5 and having dinner with my new family, I had the intention of hitting the sack like a rock, but my bed didn’t make it so easy for me. With a short bed, my feet didn’t even touch the bed, so my bedside table became an end-of-the-bed footrest. The searing pain in my back the next day told me this would take a bit to get used to. Dad, you can have this laugh, as I’ve been known to make the wise comment or two about your back. The next morning orientation began, and after our long trip back to Montevideo that included a sleepless night in BA, I was not eager to sit in a hotel room to have eight hours of logistical information thrown at us. A quick recap of the highlights of orientation...a couple of our meals were on Middlebury.

I quickly settled into life in Montevideo. I live two blocks from Jeremy, and Ruby Bolster, also from Middlebury, lives on my block, so we´ve spent a lot of time together. The pace of life is certainly slower here, which is frequently for the better, but can also translate to long, slow moving lines, and a more accurate translation for “ahora” (which literally means “now”) to mean anything from a few minutes from now to sometime before the world comes to an end. One of Montevideans (I don´t know if that´s a real word, but it works) favorite activities is to go the Rambla (the waterfront that stretches from Montevideo to Brazil) and drink mate for hours on end. It´s probably my favorite way to spend an afternoon here. For those who don’t know what mate is, yerba mate is a plant grown in the southern cone of South America and used to make a beverage similar to a tea. In a nutshell, to make the drink you fill a gourd up most of the way with herb, add hot water and drink the mixture through a metal straw with a strainer at the bottom so you don’t get a mouthful of leaves. Down here it is much more than a drink to most people. It is something to share with family and friends, to have as a study buddy (yes it does pack a bit of a punch), and there are a lot of traditions, customs and rules that go along with the preparation and consumption.

I´ve settled in well with my family, am live with an adorable old couple and their daughter in her late 20s or early 30s. They also have a son about the same age who left for Spain the day I arrived to visit friends and work for a while. They were quick to take me in and welcome me into their family. There have been a lot of things I´ve had to get adjusted to. First off is television. My family loves it. It´s on for about 95% of waking hours, and is the center of attention in the kitchen and where we eat. It´s one in the morning when I eat breakfast which is a short tangent to get sidetracked on now. They don´t eat breakfast other than coffee and milk, and say their stomachs feel bad if they eat in the morning. Back to television. It´s on all morning while my host dad and mom are around, usually watching it at the kitchen table. After my host dad goes to work around noon, the rest of the day my host mom is around with not much to do, and I think she mostly watches tv. Come evening when my host dad returns from work, he´s at at it again with the tv, and it´s on throughout dinner keeping us company right next to the table (we still have conversations, but it´s always right there if we want it), and they watch it until going to bed anywhere between midnight and 2, depending on what´s on.

Another difference is food. The staple in my house is milanesa, which is just battered and deep fried meat. We have chicken, veal or ham milanesa most nights of the week, accompanied with a type of fried or baked pastry, and sometimes a tomato salad smothered in vegetable oil and a little vinegar. Coke is the main beverage, which is "good because it helps hydrate you." They think it´s unhealthy to drink much water. Hmm...I guess between the coke and grease you get enough liquid each day. When we don´t have milanesa (we´re currently on three nights in a row), it´s usually either pasta or ravioli that´s been cooked for 30 minutes and left in the hot water until serving time, which can sometimes be a while. Needless to say, it usually disintegrates when you try to eat it. Since my other meal there is breakfast, they assumed that all Americans only eat fruit loops and frosted flakes, so they invested in a few boxes of the former and 4.5 pounds of the latter. They were blown away and think I´m a professional chef after I made an omelete, and couldn´t understand why I would want to eat something like granola, which they had never seen and were so puzzled as to why someone would want to eat cat food.

Although predictable, the food is alright and sometimes we have a good surprise, such as Gnocchi on the 29th of every month, which is eaten with money underneath your plate (old tradition to have a month of good money) or a good stew. It could be worse, so I´m not complaining (or am I?). Plus, I´m on my own for lunch (which is almost always milanesa for them), so I made a trek to the supermarket to buy non-deep fried foods and vegetables.

Although I miss Mom´s cooking, I still like my family and they´re really nice. They´re happy to answer any questions, we have some good conversations, I have my own room, they let me have friends over (but, like prep school, if it´s a girl, friend or more, they want the door to be open) and they sometimes ask what I want to watch during dinner! To boot my host mom always makes a delicious fresh juice mixture that may include any of the following: orange, peach, apple, carrot, melon and vermouth. They can be intense sometimes, as every night before I´ve had a bite of dinner, my mom asks in her booming voice(almost demands): ¨Eric! Do you like it? Is it good?¨¨Yes, this milanesa, it´s something special.¨I don´t need to try the food anymore to know what it´s going to taste like.

Enough for now, more on classes, university life, internships, etc. in the future.