ad stuff. And I'm in a foul mood, so I thought I'd share my peeves today, lucky you:1. NOT GETTING MONEY: I went to the only ATM I have found that will take my ATM card in all of Montevideo today, and AGAIN it was out of money. So, I have maybe $5 worth of pesos to buy food for our supper tonight. Oh well… I'll go to the far-ish grocery store (Ta-Ta; for more juvenile comments about this and other name brand-names-that-don't-translate-well-into-English, see the comments under the blog entitled "Today I mailed a letter"), since I've walked this far already. No problem that I don't have cash, TaTa will always take my credit card.
Until today. After I had taken a long time shopping, waiting in order to have each vegetable weighed by the weighing-person, and after I had waited for the bread guy to bag my bread, and after I had waited in a really long line because everybody is buying back-to-school supplies, the checker rejected my use of my credit card. They always take my credit card with my photocopy of my passport. [For the record, we've been told, "Whatever you do, don't take your original passport out with you; after all, it could be stolen, and you'd be up a creek." Additionally, our passports are all being held hostage at the Brazilian Consulate for 3 working days while "processing" our visas.]
"No," she said, "You must have your original passport with you at all times." I told her I've always used it here with a photocopy. "No, you didn't," she informed me. Well! I WOULD have paid her with money, but remember, the stupid ATM machine had no money in it. I would have written a check, but forget about opening a checking account down here; ACU doesn't even have a checking account down here (a fact that astounds me), because it's so difficult for foreign entities to get one apparently. Stupid country.
2. OGLING, GROPING MEN: It is part of Uruguayan culture (actually, a large part of South American culture) to cat-call (piropos) women who are walking by on the street or whatever. If a woman smiles or responds at all, the guy or guys take that signal as their cue to up the ante. If you go to a club, like a couple of our students did last weekend (after checking out it was a good place for dancing, not all the negative stuff that can go with such places), you get groped and mauled and harassed against your will until you leave the club, and even then, you're followed, but fortunately one of the Study Abroad guys frowned them away. It may be cultural, but it's still BAD.
3. TRASH IN THE RIVER/OCEAN/STREETS: Many dogs roam freely around here, and I have to admit they're usually pretty friendly and docile. But they haven't learned to flush so to speak. The sidewalks are hazardous. You can routinely see people toss stuff on the ground as well.
And there's a general mistreatment of the amazing gift of water that this port city has. The river is so brown (yes, some of it's sediment, but much of it is pollution) that it was pretty gross riding across it on the BuqueBus ferryboat to and from Argentina this weekend.
4. CHOCOLATE -- They just don't get it.
5. LACK OF AIR CONDITIONING -- This one would be Ken's #1 and ranks pretty high on mine as well. Yes, we get that we're spoiled Americans, and yes, we use too much of the world's limited resources, but hey, it's hot, really hot, and this is an industrialized country in a major city, folks. Couldn’t at least a couple of places, like say a library, a classroom, or a common room, have air conditioning?
6. ORANGES -- The fruit here is fantastic, fresh, and juicy. The vegetables are equally delicious. The oranges—and thus the orange juice—aren't. Florida oranges really are better.
7. ITTY-BITTY, STUPID NAPKINS -- Their napkins are terrible, weirdly-textured, unabsorbant, little useless things about the size of a playing card. You need about thirty to get the job done, which seems counter-productive if they're trying to save paper.
8. LOCKING EVERYTHING UP-- Here, in Casa ACU, where I live among friends and where we don't even lock the door to our apartment at night (it only opens to the student hal
lways), we lock and unlock doors all day and all night. For example, to go next door to the Spanish classroom, I leave the apartment (which, as I said, we don't lock because that would require using even MORE keys), go downstairs, unlock the wooden door that leads to the garage door, go through the door, relock the wooden door, go to the outside door, unlock it, go through the door, relock from the other side. Walk maybe twenty feet and then wait for either Ken or Rachel (who have keys to the church building, where the classroom is) to unlock that door, go upstairs to the classroom. If anybody is late, Ken or Rachel must go down the flights of stairs to re-unlock the door to allow them in.
VERY annoying.
But why do we do this, when basically we share much of this building with the church and when there are THREE ways (yes, count them) that we could go in there WITHOUT USING ALL THESE KEYS, without even leaving the building, or without inconveniencing anybody? First, there's a door that connects to the church in the hallway outside our bedroom. I repeat, there's a door that connects to the church outside our bedroom, approximately 10 feet from my bed; second, there's an elevator that opens to both Casa ACU and the church building, but we aren't allowed to use it; and third, there's a door in the garage/hallway that opens directly up to the church building. Stupid.
9. MEAT, MEAT, MEAT. We hear a lo
t about Uruguayan and Argentinian beef. "It's the best," people say, "and they eat a whole lot of it." 
In Argentina, both parts of that sentence are true; in Uruguay, only the last part of the sentence is.
10. SERRATED KNIVES -- I'm glad there are serrated knives in this world, and around here, since they eat so much meat, they need them. But there's not ONE regular, flat-edged knife in all of Casa ACU, to my knowledge, and I've seen none in all of Uruguay so far. Not one butter knife. Weird.
And some other things annoy me too, like crummy internet service, but I just don't remember what they are this minute. OK, I feel better now that I've vented, and I'll write much more positive entries henceforth. Thank you for listening.
6. ORANGES -- The fruit here is fantastic, fresh, and juicy. The vegetables are equally delicious. The oranges—and thus the orange juice—aren't. Florida oranges really are better.
7. ITTY-BITTY, STUPID NAPKINS -- Their napkins are terrible, weirdly-textured, unabsorbant, little useless things about the size of a playing card. You need about thirty to get the job done, which seems counter-productive if they're trying to save paper.
8. LOCKING EVERYTHING UP-- Here, in Casa ACU, where I live among friends and where we don't even lock the door to our apartment at night (it only opens to the student hal
lways), we lock and unlock doors all day and all night. For example, to go next door to the Spanish classroom, I leave the apartment (which, as I said, we don't lock because that would require using even MORE keys), go downstairs, unlock the wooden door that leads to the garage door, go through the door, relock the wooden door, go to the outside door, unlock it, go through the door, relock from the other side. Walk maybe twenty feet and then wait for either Ken or Rachel (who have keys to the church building, where the classroom is) to unlock that door, go upstairs to the classroom. If anybody is late, Ken or Rachel must go down the flights of stairs to re-unlock the door to allow them in.VERY annoying.
But why do we do this, when basically we share much of this building with the church and when there are THREE ways (yes, count them) that we could go in there WITHOUT USING ALL THESE KEYS, without even leaving the building, or without inconveniencing anybody? First, there's a door that connects to the church in the hallway outside our bedroom. I repeat, there's a door that connects to the church outside our bedroom, approximately 10 feet from my bed; second, there's an elevator that opens to both Casa ACU and the church building, but we aren't allowed to use it; and third, there's a door in the garage/hallway that opens directly up to the church building. Stupid.
9. MEAT, MEAT, MEAT. We hear a lo
t about Uruguayan and Argentinian beef. "It's the best," people say, "and they eat a whole lot of it." In Argentina, both parts of that sentence are true; in Uruguay, only the last part of the sentence is.10. SERRATED KNIVES -- I'm glad there are serrated knives in this world, and around here, since they eat so much meat, they need them. But there's not ONE regular, flat-edged knife in all of Casa ACU, to my knowledge, and I've seen none in all of Uruguay so far. Not one butter knife. Weird.
And some other things annoy me too, like crummy internet service, but I just don't remember what they are this minute. OK, I feel better now that I've vented, and I'll write much more positive entries henceforth. Thank you for listening.
7 comments:
You have to lock up everything because if you don't it will be vandalized, stolen, and destroyed in hours. Stolen in minutes. Why do you think there was glass on top of the nice people's walls in the philippines? There is not an inherent respect of personal space or stuff of other people that Americans have, IMO.
The part I disliked about Italy the most was the machismo, catcalling, and come ons. I mean, could those guys leave me alone for a minute!! Bug Tara for a change!
Well... we joke that now we are back in the US if we walk down the street/ across campus and we don't hear piropos... we think... man we must look like crap today.
The thing about having to go outside to get to the church building drove me a bit crazy too. We were always excited toward the end when we got to be better friends with Nestor and he would let us from the auditorium into the garage. It does seem silly... but apparently not all groups were as well behaved as ours... so they have to keep us out.
When you get home... remind me to tell you a funny story about the elevator.
I am sad for you that your butter knifes and orange juice are not what you bargained for, but I think you will survive. Would you like me to send you a butter knife? You must have lost some weight if you are getting catcalls, you could make this a good thing. No, I am sad because we are so spoiled here with our butter knives and pulp free, with calcium OJ. It is hard when you get used to something and it is gone, like when I go to Wal-Mart and they don't carry my brand anymore, I am really annoyed, I get your point. I do miss you and your interesting view of life. Whitney is staying with Lala tonight and we are in beautiful Horseshoe Bay.
Gayla
Gayla, yes, even I have received catcalls -- once. Ha! They must have been vision-impaired construction workers, because what the heck? Are you kidding me?!
Funny story about piropos... Caitlin and I were joking with about Eric about them. And we made the joke that we'd miss them in the States b/c if we didn't hear them we'd think we looked like crap.
And Eric in all innocence replies, "Oh well one of my friends feels that it is his duty to give all women to build up their self-esteem. It doesn't matter how old or young, ugly or pretty, thin or fat."
Caitlin and I both thought... um thanks Eric. :)
Karen,
Don't even complain about piropos. You know Ken has it so much worse than you....
:D
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