3 month point

7068-  Well I have reached almost 3 months in Uruguay and I have done a terrible job of keeping this blog up.  My goal was to learn to relax and I have totally embraced the “manana” attitude of South America.  Since I last posted, I celebrated Thanksgiving with the local US expats and we had a dinner of Brazilian turkeys, very similar taste to our US turkeys but much smaller, potatoes and gravy.  Very similar to home, but it was in the 80’s as we ate.

I have made friends with several Uruguayan nationals and I spent Christmas eve  with a Uruguayan family which was very nice.  The family and close friends all get together on Christmas Eve for a big dinner.  They grilled up pork and lamb as well as vegetables for a huge meal at midnight.  Everyone eats much later here and it is not unusual to see little kids up at 1 am with their parents having dinner.  Of course on Christmas, the kids are staying up to see Santa, who arrives about midnight with one gift for each child.  The major gift giving down here takes place January 6th on 3 Kings Day honoring the three wise men’s visit to the baby Jesus.  The kids put their shoes on the window sill at night and when they wake up in the morning, their shoes are filled with gifts.  In any case, Santa arrived at midnight on the roof and dropped down gifts for the 3 kids that were at the party.  Everyone down here is crazy about fireworks and Christmas Eve is a bigger fireworks holiday that New Years.  The folks here may not have a lot of disposable income but they apparently spend all they have on fireworks as we were in the middle of a middle class neighborhood and at midnight, fireworks started off and continued for at least 30 minutes from everywhere.  You can buy any kind of fireworks here and it looked like the finale at a 4th of July show as about 8 to 10 aerial charges went of every second from every house in the neighborhood for at lease half an hour.  It was very impressive and everyone has a great time.  We started eating after the show and continued till about 2:30 when I decide to head back to Jerry’s chakra but people were still arriving and I was told it would go on till at least dawn.   It was very interesting to share that experience with a different culture and see haw they celebrate.

New Years was a little subdued compared to Christmas, but there were lots of fireworks for that as well.  We stayed at Jerry’s farm, but the sky was lit up with fireworks in the horizon all around us towards the City and I could see fireworks from Montevideo 60 miles away.  Other than that, I have been doing a lot of traveling around the country and I think my next post will be on driving in Uruguay, which is challenging to say the least.

 

Hasta la vista till then.

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