Travelogue: Uruguay

5/24
Woah, the universities I've visited in South America are...not ideal. I seriously need to appreciate just how beautiful and affluent Stanford is.

6/2
When Uruguayans and Argentines talk to me in Spanish, they refer to the US as allá, meaning "over there," that place where you're from. It's an interesting word choice.

Several people have reminisced to me about a seminal experience they had traveling or living abroad, and how it really "opened up their mind" (as one woman in Montevideo said, me abrió la cabeza). So I have to wonder, has my mind opened up at all?

Computers and other appliances apparently cost more in South America because they have to be imported from the US; maybe that explains the comparative rarity of household appliances and gadgets I noticed here. Nearly all movies come from North America, and are shown in English with subtitles. It's funny how people here are so familiar with American culture because they see it all the time in movies.

I'm from the primer mundo ("first world," rather than third world).

I'm fascinated by the idea, expressed by several Servas members, that it's beneficial for older people to spend time with people my age in order to keep themselves young (mantenerse joven). Not that this is such a revolutionary concept, but for me it's a new attitude.

6/3
Staying for a few days on a farm in Uruguay. It looks just like any farm in the Midwest would, except for the South American addition of palm trees and parrots. Working dogs on the farm seem to have a good life. They run, they roll in the grass, they have all the space they want; they seem more animal than pet. The farm is owned by Hugo C., whose lifestyle seems Mediterranean, as if he were some farmer in Tuscany. Hugo was president of Rotary for a while in Montevideo, which reminds me of that famous Roman farmer Cincinnatus (Cincinnati is indirectly named for him), who left the countryside when Italy needed him to lead in Rome, but happily returned to his farm afterwards. Hugo had me help him out on the farm a little, and it turns out I'm a disaster at farm chores, although I do like working with my hands. It's beautiful here, unreal: I should never forget that I love the country and a life that's simple. Trucks go by, tiny in the distance, so far away you can’t even hear them. The clouds look huge and puffy the way they do in Dutch landscape paintings. The cows are kind of ugly and dirty; the horses are elegant. I'm thinking nostalgic thoughts about how there's just something missing in the current way of life, where you buy what you want at a store using money instead of having to make it yourself. Pretty naive, but it's what I'm feeling here.

6/6
Each individual is dense and layered. Inside one person, there's a lot of room for interesting experiences, accomplishments, adventures. You can just keep piling on so much stuff that you're proud of. Over a whole lifetime, wow, a single person can do so much!

6/9
Staying with Viviana A. and Aramis L., funny incident where Viviana was scolding her son Maceo for putting too much ketchup on his food, because “it’s not healthy.” What American mom would tell her kid not to eat ketchup because it’s unhealthy? It's okay, though, since Uruguayans make up for the loss of ketchup by pouring on large quantities of mayonnaise.

Some comments I've recently heard (originally in Spanish):

"No Protestant country is a member of the third world. The problem is our Spanish inheritance of the bad influence of Catholicism, which says you should be humble and accept fate.”

“Living in South America will cure you of this idea that being efficient and productive is good. We say, don’t plan and organize your whole life. Those business and self-help books on how to be productive or become successful arrive at bookstores here, too, but no one buys them. If they published a book called ‘How to Get a Lot of Money Without Much Effort,’ people would buy it. If someone becomes rich or successful here, they have to hide it because people will assume that they acquired their money by unscrupulous means.”

"Large countries with a lot of land [like Argentina or the US] tend to be arrogant."

6/10
Sometimes it seems like Uruguay and Argentina aren't so different from North America. It would be instructive first to live abroad in a country much less developed than the United States, then to live in a country that is arguably more developed: somewhere in Europe, maybe?

In the view of one Uruguayan, physically large countries (like Argentina or the United States) tend to be arrogant. When it comes to countries, size does matter.

6/13
A lot of aggressive pandhandlers. You pull up to the bus terminal in a taxi, and someone outside opens the car door unasked, pulls out your luggage, then holds out a hand for you to give them some coins. When you ride long-distance buses, too, many times the guy who puts your luggage away immediately sticks a hand out for a tip, even though he's literally done nothing except move your backpack a couple feet. I think maybe it's easier to be generous in a restaurant than on the street; as the guidebooks say, "if you can afford to eat out, you can probably afford to leave a tip." I've also noticed that Uruguayans and Argentines seem more generous than many Americans would be. In Montevideo, buskers strumming guitars and vendors selling trinkets frequently hop on the city buses, and a surprising number of people cough up some change. Sometimes when you return to a parked car in Montevideo, a person will be there "guarding" it, expecting a few coins from you in exchange for their service.

6/14
There is no magic key to greatness. Travel is not a silver bullet, nor is a gap year, nor is an exchange program... Plenty of people have spent a year in a foreign country, or traveled extensively, or had great adventures, but those experiences don't necessarily convert them into influential people. We put a lot of emphasis on being famous, but being influential seems more worthwhile to me: the important part is to change the world a little, not whether people know it was you that did it. And since very few people in the world achieve influence, maybe you don't have to influence the whole world. It's enough just to be influential to a few people. That's what parents do, isn't it? They change the world a little by shaping the lives of children.

6/18

There's a funny phenomenon I've noticed, where some people's voices sound warm and appealing when they speak Spanish, but when they speak English their voice sounds nasal and annoying. It totally changes the way you perceive them. Or the change can go the other way around: one woman I met seemed sort of frail and elderly in Spanish, but in English she had this compelling authority, and for the first time I noticed the graveliness in her voice. In a way, speaking in another language transforms you into a different person: since you're unable to express yourself fully, only a portion of your personality comes across.

I'm not sure what the protocol is when you enter a restaurant in Argentina or Uruguay. Do I wait for a waiter to direct me to a seat? Or do I just take a seat and then they come to the table? Weird how you never think about these things when you're in your own country.

Memorable sounds:

Dale vacas vacas vacas...

"Come on cows cows cows..." (this is what Hugo C. yelled when herding cows)

Paraguas vendooooooo! Paraguass paraguass paraguaaaaaas!

"I'm selling umbrellaaaaaaaaaaaaas! Umbrellas umbrellas umbrellas!" (yelled by one of the many street vendors)

I love to watch salsa dancers, or people playing candombe: drummers with smiles or with their mouths open, intent, focused. Behind the formation of drummers and dancers, a slow crowd of beautiful young listeners moves down the street, some clutching beer bottles or wine in paper packages. The sharp smell of smoke drifts from someone in the crowd every now and then.

It's a strange feeling when you wake up in bed and at first it's quiet, and then suddenly you hear your first Spanish of the day: maybe your host is calling to you from another room, or the radio's on, or someone's talking noisily in the street outside... Suddenly it hits you that you're in a different country. That's how every day begins.

Do I have a right to be offended by South Americans who treat Americans with suspicion and dislike? I need to learn the history of my country, how it affects and has affected other countries. What is the place of the United States in the world?

You know you've settled in abroad when you can eat at McDonald's without a trace of shame, ordering a "Beeg Mock" instead of a Big Mac.

Since I'm in Uruguay during a World Cup in which it performs spectacularly, I get to see the city after a victorious game. It's loud, chaotic, almost what I imagine Mumbai to be like. This is the day I get mugged. I get off the city bus a few blocks from the Plaza Independencia, where a gigantic screen has been set up for Montevideans to watch Uruguay play against Ghana. As I'm waiting to cross the street, I feel something touching my hands. It's three kids, probably my age or a couple years younger, who have walked up behind me out of nowhere, and two of them were prying my hands open, trying to see if I was holding anything valuable, I guess. Next thing I know, the third kid has punched me in the forehead. I'm down, they take the coat I was carrying (lent to me by my host family), and they're gone. I yell an unkind word in English, they yell back hijo de puta, and I watch the game against Ghana with a bad mood and a big bump on my head. For a while, I'm suspicious of all the sketchy soccer-hooligan guys I see (which is what the muggers looked like), and it occurs to me that prejudices based on appearance or nationality aren't right, but they're understandable. I'm no longer invulnerable; after that, I always look around carefully, because not paying attention is asking for trouble.

7/22/10
Walk slower, what's the rush? Slow the @%!# down and enjoy the moment more.

I'm preparing to leave Uruguay and spend a few days in Buenos Aires. In my imagination, Buenos Aires is a city full of well-dressed women in somber colors, black coat, fitted dark jeans, gray scarf, black leather boots (popular, maybe, because of the city's proximity to Argentina's cattle plains). Don't expect people to be friendly in Buenos Aires, I tell myself. When I get there, though, I'm pleasantly surprised after all the ominous warnings I'd heard in Uruguay.