Friday

Yesterday (Friday night) I went to a work asado (Uruguayan barbeque).  After work I rode with my boss and 2 other people from our department to her house.  She lives outside of Montevideo in a city called Ciudad de La Costa (city of the coast).  Its about 20 minutes from Zonamerica which is in Canelones.  The car ride was sooo typical Uruguayan.  The front passenger seat in her car has a seatbelt, but nothing for the seatbelt to click into.  However, the tickets for no seatbelts are super expensive, so she made me wrap my seatbelt around my body and tuck it behind my back so we could trick the police.  THIS IS SOO URUGUAYAN.  They try to get away with everything. I had to hold in my laughter, because they don't even   notice that they do these things.

 My boss is married with 2 kids, about 9 and 7 if I had to guess their ages.  They were sooo cute, speaking at a rapid pace in Spanish.  They kept asking me to say Speedy Gonzalez in English...for them it sounds hilarious how we say it.

We all got to her house around 730 (we get off work at 7) and then the guys went to go buy the food.  The barqueque was on their back porch...it was an enclosed brick area with a parrilla.  A parilla is a Uruguayan grill.  These are not gas or charcoal grills, these are wood stoves.  The firewood industry is huge here because Uruguayans LOVE grilling out.
 Here is a picture of a Uruguayan grill: http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2117/2261416926_5bd97031b4.jpg

Notice in the back of the picture there is wood burning?  The coals from the firewood drops from the hanging metal basket.  Then they take those coals and disperse it underneath the metal cooking racks.  This way, the meat/veggies are cooked slowly and evenly over coals.  Essentially, with large cuts of meats, you can eat the whole day with your friends...cooking it slowly and eating as you go.  Its AWESOME.

Last night we only made hamburgers, something simple.  We ate around 10:30.  Our hamburgers came with Uruguayan fixings: bacon, onion, tomato, lettuce, hardboiled egg and mayo.  EGGS AND MAYO ON EVERYTHING I LOVE IT.  No ketchup.  It is very rare to use ketchup.  At McDonalds you have to ask for it special on the side.  Their mayo...is SO GOOD that I dont ever miss ketchup anyway.

After dinner we hung around and talked until about 1 am.  This is very typical, and actually kind of early for a Friday night.  Alot of people from my work were going to go out for a drink after with some friends.  It is completely normal that people are up late, any night of the week actually.  And I'm not talking about young poeple.  I see elderly people in restaurants at midnight drinking coffee and tea...WHAT??  I feel like I'm the boring one here, too exhausted after work to barely do anything, much less leave the house.  (Don't worry, I still have plenty of energy to go dancing on the weekends).  I just really need to make sure I get sleep or my Spanish is AWFUL!!  Its funny because people from the United States who speak both Spanish and English tell me my Spanish is good.  My Spanish is functional, yes, but in no way is it at the level it needs to be.  I want to be able to express myself as clearly and as rapidly as I do in English.  It took me 22 years to get to the point of fluency in English, and I have a lot of catching up to do in Spanish.  Uruguayans are brutally honest.  They tell me my Spanish is OKAY but they can definitely tell I'm foreign by my accent.  My goal is to lose my United States accent COMPLETELY.  This may not be possible, but we'll see.

The ride home was equally Uruguayan.  6 of us crammed into a 4 person stick shift car from the 80's and zoomed home to Montevideo.  It felt like I had been out of the city for a month (even though it was just a day!).  I think I was just glad to be home so I could go to bed and stop speaking Spanish for a few hours.

Everyone at my job speaks fluent English, but obviously communicate in Spanish when not doing work things.  If I don't understand something, they explain it.  But it gets really tiring to have things explained all the time.  The things that are hard to understand are when I don't have a context to put the conversation, or they are using special vocabulary.  For example, if I randomly walk into a conversation, I don't know what they are talking about so its hard for me to know what they are referring to if they don't explain things.  Also, if they talk for an hour about soccer (which happened at dinner) then I'm out of luck because I don't know anything about soccer in English, much less in Spanish!

Anyway, my host mom just yelled it was lunchtime so I'm going to go eat!

Today I'm going to a soccer game for my Uruguayan team, Penarol!! It is going to be awesome! They are notorious for rowdy games...they start fights, and shoot off fireworks from the stands.  YES PLEASE!!