So I had a good, solid 8 hours of sleep last night, and I’ve
still been yawning all day long. Its been a somewhat furious whirlwind of
experience here in Uruguay, and it seems I’ll need more than a good night’s
seep to recover. And today was more of the same – a snappy pace, and lots to
see. Beginning with the morning, where I breakfasted with Pam, one of the other
Fulbrighters who are in the hotel with me. I hadn’t seen her in days, though –
typically we start early and end late, and if we see each other, it’s a bit of
a miracle. But it was nice to chat and compare impressions and share thoughts
on how it’s been so far.
Off at 8:00 to get to the liceo by 9:00 for Natalia’s 9:05 class, one which had
aready seen the presentation. On the way out, I noticed this sign, where they take advantage of the "@" to write both "-o" and "-a" on the end of "compañero/a":
I observed her class and took a lot of notes. A
good, focused group, they worked quite hard for the 45 minutes they were there.
And then Natalia turned me over to a colleague of hers, so I could go and talk
to her two groups as well.
Both these first groups had questions for me, so the
45-minute period was pretty much just question-and-answer. I never did my Power
Point “This…is Massachusetts!” show-and-tell. The first group, a small class,
were essentially what we would call juniors: they were in the 5th
year of the liceo (there are six) and
had chosen the “Artistic” career path for their last couple of years. If I can
recall correctly now, there’s an “engineering” career path, a “medicine” one, a
“humanistic / philosophy” one, and the artistic one. If you want to be doctor,
clearly, you opt for the medicine one;, which focuses on biology and anatomy;
an engineer, obviously, engineering, which is heavy with math and physics.
Humanistic is for future teachers and lawyers. And “artistic”? As the teacher
told me, these are kids who didn’t like math. Or science. Or reading. And they
were all pretty P.O.’d that this hadn’t turned out to be a cake walk.
See, that's the PowerPoint I never showed them.
They were good, but the quality of their questions wasn’t
the best. Still, they tried. And one of them had made some traditional treats
for me to try, and to share with the whole class. They were called trufas – little balls of chocolate, sugar, dulce
de leche, and crushed up cookie, and salchichón, similar, but in the form of a rolled-out log that
looked for all the world like a sausage. I took photos and thanked them, and
then was off to the second of her groups.
Trufas
Salchichón
This one, she warned me, was unfocused and badly behaved. I
breathed deeply and walked in, ready for anything.
They were the best group I’ve seen so far. All they did was
ask me questions – Question after question after question, most of them
excellent and probing. We got into a discussion about why I don’t like Luis
Suárez, and they do; about the legalization of marijuana, a topic of great
discussion here lately, as the government has proposed doing it; the merits of
soccer and American football, what I like about Uruguayan schools (respectful
students, the separation of sports from school completely, dedicated teachers,
equality across the entire country), what I thought of the Uruguayan people
(confident, proud, organized, honest, up-standing) – It was just a great talk.
Their English level was fine, but their level of interest and enthusiasm were
through the roof. They applauded me fiercely, and I them, and then the all
piled up to the front to take a picture with me, which I had not invited them
to do (I haven’t with any group; I probably should, but I just hate photos of
me). And then they wouldn’t let me go – they peppered me with more questions
once I said I’d answer them in Spanish.
They also told me I had a Cuban accent, which a lot of
people here have told me. They guess either Central American or Cuban. I guess
“Fresa y chocolate”, “El
brigadista”, any number of Silvio Rodríguez
interviews and songs I’ve listened to, and “Balseros” are rubbing off on me. Not to mention “Che”, which
I just re-watched.
From there, to the very last group of Natalia’s students to
see me present. And I have to say, these guys were kind of the polar opposite.
Two in particular sat right up front, and had a running commentary in Spanish
that they kept up over the top of my English. I got a bit peeved and told them
that I couldn’t hear myself talk, let alone everyone else, if they kept up like
this, but it got no reaction. And the rest of the group was a bit surly, too.
It’s so funny how the effect of one or two strong personalities can turn the
whole chemistry of a class for the good, or for ill; how that can then become
the permanent ethos of a group of students, without anyone ever voting on it or
deciding that it should be that way. It’s a funny sort of alchemy that we do,
teachers, with wildly volatile materials. Neither we nor anybody else knows how
it’s all going to come out in the end.
Natalia and I then bought some quick lunchables, and hit the
buses again, to the western outskirts of Montevideo, where we took a 45-minute
guided tour of the plant where El país,
the national daily, is printed. The tour is a mainstay of school groups – our
tour group consisted of Natalia, me, about 22 fifth-or-so graders, and their
teachers. It was informative and fun, and a gaggle of 10-year-olds in their túnicas is about as cute as it gets. (Baby donkeys
notwithstanding.) If they had still been wearing moños (the little blue bows that very young school kids
wear), I’d probably have blown a vein somewhere from all the cuteness.
Back on the buses to IECO, Natalia’s English institute,
where I waited and relaxed and organized myself (and wrote much of this) until
about 5:00, when I walked back over to the liceo. I was to meet up with Sandra, one of Natalia’s colleagues, and
present my spiel to her groups of English students.
Random observations about Uruguay and Uruguayans:
They prefer buttons to levers on their toilets.
Women tend toward being tall; men, not so much.
Many random-breed mutts are adored, pampered, dressed in
winter coats, led about on leashes, taught tricks, fed bits of hot dog. Lots of
breed dogs too, but I would not say a Uruguayan is more likely to own a
pampered breed dog than a pampered mutt. I like this a lot.
The breed dogs you DO see here are often golden retrievers,
Rottweilers, and German shepherds. Though I saw a gorgeous English bulldog
today, and I have seen a beautiful (and healthy in its breeding) Bassett hound.
They do not throw trash out their car or bus windows.
They do not cut in lines.
They do not haggle, except at open-air markets.
They are hard-working and honest. If the store says it opens
at 9:00, it will open at 9:00. And if Natalia’s any indication, 12- or 14-hour
workdays frighten them not at all.
If they smile at you or treat you warmly, you can be 100%
sure it’s sincere. When they don’t feel like doing so, they don’t. They appear
to fake nothing.
It is a very, very rare Uruguayan who does not look you in
the eye for the entirety of a conversation. More, in fact, than I look them in
the eye. They are a tremendously confident people. Even a woman who came up to
me in the street and asked me for money, looked me straight in the eye and
never seemed ashamed. Annoyed that she had to do this, sure. But there was no
shame or self-debasement in her demeanor.
Vanishingly small numbers of them do such things as ask
strangers for money.
The ideal of equality for all Uruguayans is something they
live and breathe every day. I have yet to come across someone (and discuss it)
who doesn’t feel that equality in fact, not in theory, even at the price of
individual opportunity, is the #1 goal of the society.
They do not argue about whether this or that departamento is better. Soccer team? You bet. But not departamentos (their equivalent to states or provinces). They have
no governments, after all, those departamentos. Very much on purpose – Uruguay’s political
structure is designed to be unified, and difficult to split asunder.
Every horse you see – certainly in the country, but even in
the city, the ones that belong to the hurgadores – is well cared-for. The hurgadores’ horses are lean, sure; they work all day. But they
are not the drawn, often skeletal, wormy sad-sacks I’m used to seeing in
Ecuador. No sores, no lameness. And they are not beaten or whipped.
Well-trained, even beloved animals.
(Puerto Rican horses were also beautifully cared for.)
In many of these, Uruguayans are like Puerto Ricans. I see
many similarities between the two all the time, though it might seem a bit
surprising. I certainly didn’t expect to see this level of affinity.
Here are some other somewhat random photos from the day:
Political graffiti. Not sure what it's about.
So, this neighborhood is called "Cerro", or "hill", after the big hill it surrounds. And "cerro" has two "r"s. Now, "cero", the number (zero), has one "r". And the show, Hawaii Five-Oh, was apparently translated as "Hawaii Cinco Cero". And now this person in the neighborhood called "Cerro" has named his or her store "Hawaii Cinco Cerro", because "cerro" and "cero" are similar, making for a play on words that is humorous.
You may laugh now.
They make sidewalks here out of this stuff:
Concrete squares that are set into a bed of wet concrete. They look like this close up:
They have a nice sort of corruated look that is good for drainage and traction, and is attractive. Not to mention therapeutic to walk on. Thing is, though, those squares are only about three-quarters of an inch thick. So they crack pretty easily. Somebody drops a bowling ball...
...and then, after a few weeks, it looks like this...
...and then like this...
...and then like this...
...and then like this.
You can see the bare ground - what little wet concrete went under the tiles, came up with them, and it's just earth now. The layer of concrete could never have been more than two or three inches at its deepest. Tree roots snap this stuff like it's dry spaghetti. It looks great when it goes in, but in some places where they haven't repaired the sidewalks in a couple of years, it's as if they'd never put them in at all. And yet all the brand-new sidewalks are still being made with this stuff. I don't get it. Pour more concrete once, I would say, and be done with it. Don't bother with the lego-style Brittle Brix layer over the top.
But no one asked me.
