Finally, my vacation photos from Rocha!

This weekend I celebrated mother's day with Adrian and his family and while the older brother was at the house with his computer I took the opportunity to download the photos he had taken from our vacation in Rocha back in February. So, they are about three months late but I can now finally share with all of you images of my vacation in Rocha!

It was such an amazing vacation! I had told Adrian that I wanted to visit the beaches of Rocha before summer ended and that I was planning to go during the festivities of carnaval since the school would be closed for that week. On the Thursday before vacation he called me out of the blue to tell me that he and his brother had rented a house to stay in the coastal town of Aguas Dulces (sweet waters) in Rocha and that Friday morning we would hit the road.

We spent 5 days exploring the beaches, there was rainy weather, sunny weather and perhaps the most beautiful rainbow I have ever seen in my life. The beaches and waves in every coastal town we went to were fantastic! The house was in Aguas Dulces but one of the days we took the car out to another town called Las Valizas, saw the beaches there and then the brothers and I headed on foot to Cabo Polonia, another beach town who's attraction is it's simplicity as there is no electricity in Cabo Polonia nor any real development such as restuarants, cars or streets. The way to get to the beach is by walking about 2-3hours along the coast or the sand dunes (as we did) from Las Valizas or you can leave your car in a parking lot about 5km outside of the beach and pay to ride in one of the famous big trucks that cart about 20 some people to and from the lot.

I hope you enjoy the photos!

Learning to cook Tortillas, Uruguayan style!

If you're from Arizona and you hear the word tortilla you might immediately think of the flat, flour or corn based pancake, but the Uruguayan tortilla is actually more like the Spanish kind that's made with eggs and is pretty thick! They're delicious, easy and even nutritious! You can just throw any ingredients into the mix---and for less cholesterol use egg whites! Last night, Adrián taught me how to make one using only egg whites and we threw peas, corn, bell peppers, olives, shredded cheese, and sautéed garlic and onions into the mix. It turned out great!

Vacation in Colonia and Carmelo

So I don't have the photos from my first vacation in Rocha yet but I at least have them from the vacation I went on recently with Adrian, his brother and Graciela. They rented a car so that their mom could take her own vacation traveling around the interior of the country in the boys' car.

On a Thursday morning the brothers, Graciela and I, set off for Colonia de Sacremento, a touristy colonial town established by the Portuguese in the 1600s---to this day the cobbled streets and ancient architecture have been preserved very well. In the photos you'll see various snapshotos of all of us in Colonia, and there's one of a random man drinking mate and I snapped the photo because to me, the moment was perfectly Uruguayan. After Colonia we set off for Carmelo and stayed there for three nights and four days. You'll see photos of the car we rented, the moto we drove around that belonged to the family we stayed with and various yachts, since many Argentinians also spend their vacation during Holy Week in Carmelo because it is so easy to get to from Buenos Aires.

There's no water!

On Tuesday morning I turned on the news to find out that 40 % of the neighborhoods of Montevideo had been affected by a main water pipe rupturing and were without water.

However, I was able to take a shower that morning so I thought that my building had not been affected but by the time I got home I was also one of the hundreds of thousands without water. Can you imagine it? I mean, not only did I have to walk around without taking a shower for about two days and could not flush my toilet but businesses had to close and emergency water had to be pumped into the tank supplies of hospitals!

A few things I learned:

Unplug the water heater--it could explode because it lacks water to heat up.

Washing your hair with cold, bottled water---not worth it, if you want to do it then heat the water up first

Wash your dishes every night---I could have had a lot less dirty dishes lieing around the house if I had done them before the water disappeared.

The New Zealand Group

I love my job, it's a lot of work but I love it. Right now I am working over 55 hours a week, 8am-10:00 pm, Monday-Thursday and on Fridays I come into plan lessons. But I don't mind all the work because I have so much fun and I learn as well. Of course, by the end of the week I am physically exhausted from creating activities, being energetic for each class as well as consistently translating for students. Sometimes I literally feel like a human Spanish/English dictionary as all day I hear, "how do you say avestruz in english?" "how do you say estoy agotada" or I hear the students talk in Spanish to eachother and I translate what they are saying and get them to use the English that I have just translated rather than the Spanish. For example, they will say "Me toca a mi!!" and I will say, "You mean you want to say, it's my turn" and try to get them to say that phrase, "it's my turn" rather than the what they have just said in Spanish.

I am teaching so much this month because there is a group of Uruguayan students who will be traveling to New Zealand in April and need a month of intensive English training before leaving. They are such a fun group! The boys hardly speak a lick of English and the two girls in the group are at an intermediate level. I have the boys for 2 hours of conversation class but how do you talk with someone who hardls speaks the language? So we end up playing games or I find creative ways to get them talking using the little that they know, and somehow, every class period we end up laughing so hard. The other day I was laughing so hard that tears began to fall down my face! Yesterday was wonderful as well because the weather is so nice right now that we decided to have class outside! The picture I've put up was taken in one of the bigger classrooms at the institute and is where I usually teach. I'm in the front surrounded by 7 of the 8 New Zealand kids and the other teacher who is also working with them is also in the picture, he's the tall, thin guy in the back, he's Irish and it's a blast listening to his accent!