Semana de la cerveza!

It has unfortunately been a bit of a while since my last full post, so there is much to tell! I will devote this post to going over the events of 'Semana de la Cerveza,' or Beer Week, also known as Holy Week (since it is Easter week after all), also known as Tourism Week, as it has become in Paysandu. Next post I will go into detail about everything we are doing for work at the schools, and more about our typical every-day life.

In my last post the vacation week had just started... oddly enough, this week came one week after the beginning of our work here in Paysandu, so it was hard to really appreciate having a vacation. The first work week here was a bit overwhelming, meeting so many new people and getting a sense of what we would be doing for the next three months, so in that sense it was nice to have a breather after that first deluge. But, in reality, I think all the ETAs were feeling the anxiety of just wanting to get started. Nevertheless, we had a very fun week. After spending the weekend in Paysandu, where every night we would go down to the beach for the festival, look at the artisan and gift stands, food stands, and sometime go into the amphitheater to listen to the various shows going on, we moved on to Salto. We took a bus late Tues morning, which took far longer than it should of since it got stuck behind a slow tractor-trailer or something. Lucky me, I got stuck sitting next to a woman who had a toddler and a baby on her lap. So much for personal space.

There are three ETAs in Salto: Beth, who has a Master's in Folklore and is from the Midwest, Meara, who went to Smith and spent the last year teaching English in Turkey and is from the West Coast, and Wesley, the lone guy, who is interested in teaching and is from the Washington D.C. area. Meara and Wes met us at the station and we all took a taxi to meet up with Beth at their hotel, La Gran Concordia, where they will be living for the next three months. However, during this busy holiday week, the hotel had them in rooms that are rarely used and will not be the rooms they will permanently be living in. This unfortunate circumstance had some unforeseen side-effects; one being that everyone was somewhat allergic to the mustiness of the rooms, and the other being that I'm pretty sure the bites that I ended up with all over my body after our two-day stay were from bed bugs. Eww. On the bright side, the hotel is a very cool, funky, historic hotel (take a look at the pics on Flickr!). They have several outdoor patio spaces that have an amazing secret-garden-esque feel, unique features such as a pottery studio, and a room that serves as a shrine to where Carlos Gardel used to stay (sorry, no picture were allowed... haha I have no idea why... the Uruguayans are very protective of their relationship to Carlos Gardel!). You can definitely feel that it is the type of old hotel that is haunted.

Then we all went out for a huge lunch. A few of the choice items here, most of which I don't eat: chivito, which are HUGE flank steak sandwiches piled high with egg, veggies, olives, ham, you name it; milanesa, which is fried meat, and often comes piled high with cheese or other toppings; pizza, which when ordered plain is just sauce on bread but is otherwise dripping with cheese; pasta with various sauces, sometimes made with tasty unusual things like beets or squash; hot sandwiches, usually containing ham and cheese, cold sandwiches, hamburgers, hot dogs, etc etc. And everything, but I mean EVERYTHING (including pizza) is eaten with mayonnaise. But you can also find chicken sandwiches, salads, and an assortment of things that are more Allison-friendly. After lunch we had a bit of a rest at the hotel, and decided to wait until it got cooler to go out to one of the natural hot springs. These thermal baths were quite the experience. They have them all over this region, but the ones in Salto are apparently better taken care of than the ones in Paysandu, as well as easier to get to from the center of the city. Unfortunately, the baths were PACKED. I have never seen so many people crowded into a place like that before, so that made for an interesting experience. They look like normal pools, but some of them are warm, and some are very hot, and it's fascinating how they just come naturally that way. There are also lots of sprinklers and showers of the water streaming down from different places. They were not so relaxing when you had kids jumping in and out and splashing you with hot water though... we were compelled to move into one of the hotter, smaller pools mainly populated by older people. As Beth pointed out, we had to laugh a bit at the decor; the place definitely evoked a strong 50's resort-kitsch vibe, what with colored lights illuminating trees, etc.

However, as a group, we do stand out. Hearing us speaking English, we ended up with a crowd of kids around us asking lots of questions about where we were from. People truly are surprised to have people from the U.S. here; we really are somewhat of a novelty, even in such a touristy place. After the springs we walked around for a bit, headed back to the city, had some dinner, than crashed in the hotel. The next morning, we went for a long walk by the river... my impression of Salto is that although it is very comparable to Paysandu, it has been better maintained over the last few years, so that they have more touristy things like a better walkway along their part of the river, and that there is more aesthetic upkeep for public spaces.

*Side note: Unfortunately for Paysandu, it was a huge industrial city that therefore attracted lots of people and was very lively, but slowly the factories have all shut down or have been taken over, and the city has really been hurting over these last 10 or even 20 years. *

As we walked along the river, Beth and I discovered you could search for agates and other really beautiful semi-precious stones, and I became pretty consumed with this venture. We took a long, meandering walk, eventually headed back to the hotel, and had a picnic of empanadas and fruit in one of the patios. That afternoon we decided we were going to do our own wine tasting of local tannats, so we went to the store and bought fruit, wine, cheese, and crackers. That evening we set up in one of the hidden garden areas, and drank wine and ate snacks and talked for hours until the sun had completely set and all we had was the light of the bright full moon. Eventually we moved inside, had a quick dinner, and went to bed.

The next day, we all traveled together back to Paysandu. Later that afternoon, we were joined by two other Fulbrighters who have research grants in Montevideo; Lars, who is working on his dissertation, and Kate, who is the only other recent grad besides myself, and she is studying the Uruguayan prison system.

*Note: There is one more research-grant Fulbrighter in Montevideo, Flora, who is studying the aqueduct, but she went somewhere else for the week*

We walked around for a bit, tried the regional dessert 'Chaja' (a meringue, cream, and fruit concoction), and then later that night went to the fair. Everyone camped out on mattresses, couch, or floor, and settled in for the night, EXCEPT Elizabeth and I, who let ourselves be dragged out at 2 am to a party at the Golf Club hosted by the rugby team, with our friend Yosanna and her cousin. (We thought of it as an investment in our social life.) It was quite the dance party, kind of reminded us of a cross between high school parties and prom, and was fun but made us feel a bit old. The next day we failed at getting tickets for a tour bus, but were able to meet up for lunch with Mieke, a professor from American University here on a three-month Fulbright grant, her amazingly sweet 11 year old daughter, and her husband, who is a labor-law lawyer who lived in Africa for 7 years and didn't get his law degree until his late 30s. They are such interesting, warm people, who made a point of visiting us in Paysandu on their way back from a stay in Tacuarembo. We all made and ate dinner in our apartment that night (see pics) then went back to the fair and saw a Murga show, which is a colorful musical tradition centered around political and social satire and criticism. It was really interesting and entertaining, but most of the jokes went way over our heads.

The next day everyone went back to their respective places, and that night Elizabeth and I went back to the fair one last time to see the end of a concert by Jaime Roos, a hugely popular singer who has been around for quite some time, often referred to as 'a classic,' and the concert for No Te Va Gustar (translation: you aren't going to like this, haha), a really popular, young pop-rock band in Uurugay. We met up with Yosanna and her boyfriend, and then went out for a midnight meal (as people do here, and they consider that 'dinner'), where we were joined by another student from the institute. Finally on Sunday we took it easy after running around all week, missing out on a few last concerts but gearing up for the work week ahead, which I will talk about in my next post.