January Newsletter - KD in Uruguay

KD’s Uruguayan Adventures
January 2008 Issue

It’s A Small World After All
Celebrations and holidays in other cultures are something you can read about in books or see on the Discovery Channel, but little compares to being physically present for them. There is nothing like putting your head on your pillow on December 24th at 11:59pm and realizing that Uruguayans break in Christmas Day with fireworks more numberous than the 4th of July. To fully understand it, you have to experience it!
On the flipside, there are many universal staples when it comes to celebrating. There is almost always food, many times there is music and, most importantly, celebrating is done in company! I encountered such similarities between my traditions in the States and the celebrations of Christmas and the New Year in Uruguay. It was a blessing to be able to experience traditions of another culture and to understand that it really is a small world. Between cultures, we’re not all that different from each other.

Cultural Corner

Get to know Uruguay
Nuestros domingos/Our Sundays
Sundays have always been a day of familiar routine for me: going to church, hanging out for fellowship after the service and going home for a family meal and some Sunday afternoon football. My life in Uruguay is different in many ways, but I have been very fortunate to have a near-identical Sunday routine in these past five months. Carla, Carlos and their daughter, Alejandra, is a family from the Lutheran congregation who have taken it upon them to make family lunches on Sunday a weekly routine, during which we have been able to grow in our relationships. These lunches have been blessings that will stay with me for a lifetime.

Son de Fierro – my guilty pleasure
Watching television and listening to the radio are great ways to work on language, but I never thought I would be enhancing my Spanish this year with an Argentine soap opera. When we’re not otherwise occupied, Dorothea, my German roommate, and I have a 9:15pm that we work hard not to miss; I don’t know how it happened, but we’ve been sucked in. Son de Fierro is comparable to any other soap (love, hate and plenty of drama) so it is hardly educational, but if it serves for nothing else I have learned lots of new vocabulary and I am just that much more Uruguayan.