Watching Videos in Montevideo...

Monday, February 23, 2009 9:52 AM
Che Lagarto Hostel, Montevideo, Uruguay

Well, it continued to rain all day and the museums are closed on Sundays, so I was a little bummed we couldn’t go out and explore a bit of what makes Montevideo unique. After spending a relaxed morning chatting with the people in our hostel, Amanda and I finally decided to head out in the rain to find somewhere for lunch. When we passed a grocery store, we decided on a whim to just buy a few things there for a cheap lunch, and, if you can believe it, the rest of our group was in the exact same store! So we grabbed some bread, a tomato, yogurt, and fruit before heading back to the other hostel to eat our lunch. We all spent a cozy rainy afternoon drawing and watching movies. Our first attempt to be cultural and watch a Spanish movie resulted in awkward bonding experience over what I will label a ‘sexually-graphic musical.’ (Some of our favorite songs were ‘¿Qué vas a hacer?,’ and ‘Las chicas son guerreras’). Needless to say, we quickly changed the movie to a highly scratched, bootlegged version of the movie ‘Crash’ with subtitles.

We then had the brilliant idea to have an asado in the rain so we all sloshed several blocks to the supermercado. It was rather humorous to see a large group of Americans trying to figure out what kind of meat to get and how much to use for 14 people. Luckily, a guy from Brazil that we had met gave us his infinite wisdom and we headed back to the hostel with our groceries in tow. We spent several hours cooking a feast of meat, veggies, mashed potatoes, bread, etc and finally sat down like it was Thanksgiving dinner. It was a wonderful meal with our big, crazy ISA family.

After dinner, we headed back to Amanda’s and my hostel since it had a lot more room and a pool table. We spent several hours playing cards and just hanging out. After a very frustrated girl came out of her room in her underwear and screamed for a couple minutes about noise (ironic after all the noise and partying going down till the wee hours the night before), we decided it was time to head out to the boliche.

We went to a different boliche this time, but it was also free and we had a blast. There were lots of powerful fans this time too, so it wasn’t so hot. The music was mostly fun upbeat carnival/salsa songs and everyone had a great time dancing the night away. Five of us stayed until the club closed at 6 am (woo!) just to say we did it (although the closing time was rather early anyway). We then had the brilliant idea to stay up for the sunrise over the water, which was really pretty. Rather chilly, but pretty. Then when we realized it was 7:30, so we ventured back to our warm cozy beds for a solid 3 hours of sleep.

And now we are off for another day and night (of not sleeping!).
Looking forward to celebrating Carnival!
Coli