The Arrival in Uruguay

Sometimes life has really interesting twists and turns in store to spice up your life, to put everything upside down or just to over roll you with a wave of new impressions and experiences. And sometimes travel and living in a foreign country brings so much change at once, that it just feels like a giant flabbergasting slap in the face, that leaves you quite far outside of your nice and cozy comfort zone, pondering the motives and reasons behind such adventure, until you stand up and actually start embracing the new world . . .

Tres Cruses - Uruguayan Flag

 

Well I guess that´s kind of how I felt at least to some extent when I landed here in Montevideo after almost a day of travel (Salt Lake – Dallas – Miami – Montevideo) being at the airport all on my own, without anybody, not knowing where I am, where I would go and why I am here. That was actually the main challenge to find a place to stay, and not only temporarily, but a permanent place! Kind enough that my friend Basti from the Uni in Deg, let me stay at his place for the first couple days until I would be able to find something on my own, however that took a little bit longer than I expected.

Beside the overshadowing search for a place to stay (and feeling like a bum^^) it was really amazing and I love it so much down here. But the first days were really interesting and equally challenging … Just trying to figure out which bus to take and especially where to with my more than poor Spanish, was quite crazy, but I didn´t want to pay 930 Pesos (for the taxi as did my friend) but rather 36 Pesos and risk a little adventure by bus fully loaded with luggage. But I did make it on the right bus, nevertheless I did not at all recognize the place where to get off (supposedly a huge traffic station, but no sign, nada) and so I went way too far and had to take the bus back and forth … Well after quite some time and an exhausting 30 min uphill walk (with luggage) I arrived at my destination.

The place was really nice, but not available for long-term, and for South-America really expensive (400$/room), but that´s Uruguayan standard. Living costs are almost as high as they are in Germany, especially food and gas, it´s really crazy down here, but I love it. Even only after a week one is already able to feel the flair and the ambience of Montevideo sneak its way into our lives: Punctuality, being on time, traffic rules, waste disposal and logic don´t seem to exist down here, instead they have village like tranquility paired with frantic city life, beautiful trees and fine beaches, skyscrapers and old bourgeois houses. It´s a very interesting and divers place and with its almost 1, 5 million inhabitants about as big as Munich, nevertheless it feels like a cosmopolitan village. Trees and green everywhere you go, as well as dirt and torn up, broken sidewalks, new meets old, green meets asphalt and South America meets Europe, as almost 95% of the population is of European (Spanish, Italian) decent.
 

But enough of this and back to my story … So basically what I tried to do, was finding a housing accommodation with some members down here in Montevideo, and so I started looking up addresses of churches, institute buildings and the temple, in order to meet someone who could help me, well and of course then I started looking for these places in a completely unknown city! I can tell you that was quite fun and after an entire day going back and forth through almost entire Montevideo, I had gathered some contacts and of course prayers were answered and I met a nice YSA and my future bishop at the temple (and they even allowed me to do a session!) So first success!!! And my first Sunday also was just a blast, members were welcoming and friendly, and although I didn´t understand a whole lot, I felt that I belong here … And I met so many great young people and got invited right away to attend choir, an evening program, institute and activities: that felt really great and was actually what I missed most living in Deggendorf … I met Matias and his wife that invited me to dinner and who helped me communicate, when my Spanish wasn´t good enough and we became friends really quickly and then I met some more YSAs at the choir and they took me down to the Rambla (the street parallel to the beach) and later on a house – cake party!!! Pretty good start =)

Los estudiantes de Intercambio

And of course as I´m gonna have all my classes in Spanish, I better brush up on my Spanish and so I started taking intensive Spanish classes at the University with some other dozen people from the States, good old G. and the Netherlands. We all try to get our head around the Spanish language and have 4 hours with a Uruguayan teacher every day to accomplish that. Progress is slow, but I start feeling something^^ And I mean, they really do speak very fast and mumbled here and have a very distinct way of pronouncing several letters, that makes it sometimes quite hard to understand them …  But I start to understand people and even already had several hour-long discussions in Spanish Wooohoooo!!! People tell me my Spanish is great, but I know that my grammar sucks!!! Anyway, I´m gonna get there!!!

Beside that we went out to have dinner a couple times, they eat really unhealthy here special burgers, special hot dogs, interesting pizza (also available in meters!!!), of course steaks (super expensive) and Italian pasta, we visited parts of the town, a couple museums, marveled about the beautiful architecture, I´ve been to a Volleyball activity, and at the institute and we tried to get set up (oh, I forgot the initial struggle to get a sim-card … let´s just say, it took forever and we walked 5 miles back and forth, and ended up finding what we wanted right next to our house :P ).
 

The weather is also very particular, very nice warm and sunny and then a couple hours later it might be the biggest rain storm ever, or it just gets chilly almost unexplainable … very interesting, in general it´s really warm and nice, but we are approaching the end of summer and it´s supposed to get colder and colder (people act as if an ice age was approaching), and of course the Uruguayos love talking about the weather … as well as about soccer and politics! It´s been a very exciting first week, in an amazing city, with a very peculiar people and an interesting culture that I am going to explore …