The Boliche

Hmmm. It's been a couple of days since I have written anything on here so let's see what we can do.

Friday was our last day of orientation. We took a nice little bus tour of the city, you can see some of the pictures below, and we also took a Spanish placement test. In addition to the tour and tests we got a little sheet of paper telling us that there would be an orientation party in Ciudad Vieja(the remnants of Spain's colonial fortress/city before Montevideo exploded into the medium sized city it is now.) To be honest, everyone was a bit skeptical about the party. I for one, was expecting one of those "meet and greet" things where a bunch of old people would tell us how happy they were that we were in their city eroding their cultural values with our american rock music and clothes. Whatever, we all decided to go, if it turned out to be lame we were in Ciudad Vieja and it wouldn't be hard to find something new.

I was in for two surprised. 1)Hotel Ciudad Vieja was not what I was expecting. When a school rents something out named Hotel Ciudad Vieja I'm thinking it's an old establishment-you gotta get a name like that early on right? I can't actually vouch for the age of the place, but it was much smaller and shoddier than I expected. The food they offered was prepared in a kitchenette, claro?

2)The party was a lot more fun than I expected. There was no faculty present, which was good, just the same students I had been hanging out with the past couple days and a few people staying at the hotel more or less. There were a couple other foreigners who weirded me out a little and I didn't inquire too much about who they were, but I suspect they were exchange students from a previous semester still here.

So we hung out for a while at the hotel. There were three English lads there, 2 from Newcastle and one from...somewhere else, the 3rd guy kind of sucked. The other two were quite funny though and we had some good laughs. They were surprised by my knowledge of 'The Toon", the soccer team from Newcastle upon the Tyne, so that gave me a bit of street cred I think. Our grading system is pretty strange here, it's only used in Uruguay(The rest of the world will catch up soon I'm sure). Basically though, the passing grades have numbers attached to them but we were told not to worry about that, you will either get a 'Bueno','Bueno Muy Bueno','Muy Bueno' or 'Supersaliente'. Now, needless to say I have begun placing everything I can into this scale-think Thomas' "tier-ing phase". That Chivito I just ate? It was good, not great...Bueno Muy Bueno. You get the picture. The Uruguayans don't really get the comedy here, but the English blokes really picked up on it quickly, so there was a lot of Bueno-muy-bueno'ing going on.

The Mexican girls gave me a little crash course on salsa dancing which took me back to my days(can you call one night "days"?) salsa dancing at El Rancho. I'm thinking I need to continue working on this because I have the feeling dancing is much more important in this culture than back home. One of the Austrian girls also introduced me to 'The Waltz' which I don't think will be so useful in Uruguay but whatever.

At some point in the night a classical guitar showed up. I haven't played the one at the house yet because something is wrong with it, so I eagerly embraced this opportunity. This brazilian guy, who was a bit of a creepster but a nice guy, was hammering out some Nirvana tunes. Now, when I say 'hammering out' a mean 'struggling through'. I ask him if I can see the guitar, partly to put an end to his performing and because I'm a bit curious about the classical guitar. I strummed on the thing for a little bit before my new Brazilian friend asks me to sing. Since I speak English I guess I am automatically qualified to perform any American song. As he keeps requesting "Ehh, Pearla Jam, Pearla Jam" I run through Elderly Woman Behind the Counter in a Small Town. They loved it! I guess it is that easy. As long as you speak English you're set. I then pull out Rocky Raccoon and Coldplay's Dont Panic for the small crowd that has gathered, Don't Panic happens to be one of the English guy's favorite songs so that works out well.

I'm not sure if it was the Patricia(cerveza) the brazilian guy was pounding or the fact that he didn't speak English but they genuinely enjoyed my playing which was pretty cool. My 'set list' is quite short though as I only know a handful of songs all the way through so this didn't last too long. Some German girl I had never met was apparently a singer but couldn't play the guitar. She requested a couple of songs, but I didn't know any of them.
A snippet of the conversation is below:
German: "Aghh, you don't know that? Well, where are you from in the United States"
Me:Mississippi
G:"Oh Mississippi, well how about Uncle Cracker-Follow Me?
Me:Absolutely not
G:"Oh, you should know that, you are from Mississippi"

uhhhhh...

At this point it's about 4 a.m. and the little party is dying down so we decide to go to the Disco. Actually, that needs to be rephrased, the people I am sharing a taxi with decide to go to the Disco. I'm ready to go to mi cama. So we roll up to the Disco, which had a cover fee which sucks. Guys have to pay twice as much as girls, which really sucks. Luckily Uruguay's economy kind of sucks so it wasn't very steep.

Uruguayans use the words boliche or disco, but apparently this is Spanish for fire hazard. The place is quite dark with a few strobe lights going off, packed wall to wall with small, sweaty Uruguayans. It is, needless to say, quite different from anywhere in Oxford. We quickly head upstairs to the sort of wraparound balcony where we bump into the English blokes. We exchange Bueno Muy Bueno's briefly. The experience as a whole was fairly entertaining, except for the intermittent fog machine bursts. Apparently disorienting fog in a hot, crowded place is someone's idea of fun? We return home some time around 6 am, incredulous after our taxi driver tells us they don't really have 24 hour restaurants in Uruguay. Really Uruguay? Your clubs stay open until 8 in the morning but you can't find a bite to eat? Someone is dropping the ball here. I will be writing an email to the Waffle House corporate office shortly.

Got to run now, I'll have a short post up about my first days of classes up soon. The search for a gym and the quest to get on a soccer team continue, but I feel I am making some progress.

Hasta Luego