This is it...or is it?

Last time I couldn't end it, but this time I'll come through; beginning the ending is tough. Rather than endless photos, (un)inspiring music, and generic adjectives like "incredible, unforgettable, etc.", I think the best way to sum up the experience is to kick the tires and light the fires the way my Spanish professor, Scott Larsen, always did, "sum up Don Quijote in 25 words or less". I went to uruguay with the intense desire and vague intention to work in development. While there, "lo vague" faded away as I met and began to work with others with an equally intense, if not more so, desire to help. We all learned about the talents we have to share and formed more-solid ideas of how to use them. Everyone has something they can share. As they say, a candle feeds the flame, and together we started something that god-willing won't burn out. Work and Fun, many times hand in hand. Then come the airplane and the goodbye at the airport along with mixed emotions, knowing that I will miss and be missed, knowing at the same time that I'm no longer needed.

Clearly I used more than 25 words; trying to sum up Don Quijote in so few words was always a task un tanto quijotesque anyway. My professor also used to say that one of the most important things is to be able to put a finish to an asunto. Start it, work it, and you've got to end it. Take for example the Beatles song "I want you(She's so heavy)". No one ever discovered the way to end it. So here goes,

I not only Yankeed them, they Uruguayed me. Watch the video on the Youtube bar to the left. Click on the top video or search "Axl Rose cantando cumbia". If you like it, you might be a little Uruguayan as well. If you don't, drink some mate, eat some asado, swear off fruits and vegetables for life, and stay up until 5 in the morning more often than not. Then try again!

I'm back stateside?

I've been sitting here for twenty minutes, stateside de nuevo, trying to find a way to sort through all of the work, places, emotions, people; how do you sum up an entire year? And I just found my way out of the conundrum...I'll put it off. I'll take you on a quick trip through Brasil, one moraleja.
After shutting up shop in Montevideo, I went to see what I could see in Rio Grande do Sul and Santa Catarina. Rain plagued me 10 days, more or less in a row. This is the view of a spectacular canyon just before a 20 kilometer hike, Itaimbezinho.Don't despair, when there's no way to appreciate the big stuff, it might just be an opportunity to take a look at the little.

These are fotos taken throughout the trip in different places. Enjoy them and the fact that your socks are not soaked and muddy =-D (Arriba Itaimbezinho)

Outside of the city Bage, o galpao de pedra. (Arriba y abajo.)

Back in Itaimbezinho. I watched the little? guy cross the way. He also was not very impressed with the excess of water.

This is another foto that may not fit the theme. There is a little something you should see. Look to the right of Gabriel (his name is Gabriel as well) and there is something a little larger than a basketball in the corner. !Avispas! There is another insect, Marabondi that is an aggresive bugger that packs an arsenal and flies around with long legs like a helicopter. Taking a picture of them is not recommended. The proper procedure is to close your eyes and pretend your not there.

Although you go in search of the big, keep an eye out for the little as well. I promise that next time I will put a close to the scholarship year for you as soon as I manage to do so myself.

Merry Christmas! !Feliz Navidad! Feliz Natal!

It's time to close up shop, at the moment

Dos encuentros

The year is coming to an end and we have put together some fun activities. Everbody should get a round of applause for their continous support and good work. Last week we brought the 5th and 6th graders from Los Caramelos to La Plaza Tomas Gomensoro to play chess with the kids from the Merendero in Maracana. Maracana were all angels, and they played very well. Los caramelos were terrors; they played, and then ran completely wild. I fear there may be some sort of hormonal imbalance or something...seriously.

In the back you will see a tall character (a familiar face by now), Brandon the Mandon hooked us up with the enormous chess pieces.

Above: Ines and Milagros play in teams. And Che, Ines deserves a medal; we had a meeting to see about working with her company a while ago to sponsor activities in the Merendero and to speed up the process she bought us 10 chess sets out of pocket on the spot! She is also taking the initiative and pressing for her company to participate in the work in the Merendero as part of a social responsibility program.

Alright, these two fotos are just to break up the monotony of serious faced, time pressured chess placed players caught in the fierce struggle for time, space, material, and position. Above: a few hams. Below: Nicolas getting Charlie Browned

This "encuentro" was put together by Roberto Osores (back right)from the Uruguayan Chess Federation. Maracana and La Teja showed up for a friendly tournament. Even though we had quite a range of playing levels we all had a great time, and we played some good chess.

Roberto and Camilo (green shirt) taught me how to run a tournament. Below could be a scene from el chavo del ocho (who is regularly scolded) !!No Chavo, ta ta ta ta!!
And this foto is great, this duel is intense.
To be honest I would give a medal to all of these guys; the Maracana boys, the other Rotary scholars, outside sponsors, Rotaract, the youth counselors, and the kids themselves. They are all going to great lengths to create opportunities and to develop potential.

The next blog may be late in coming, but it will come :)
Oh, P.S. Uruguay has a new president and vice president! Jose Mujica and Danilo Astori from Frente Amplio. Election day was pretty crazy go nutz!

Acceptance Speech, Proyecto Pan de Azucar and ?Where's Waldo?

Proyecto Pan de Azucar! We did it! The torrential downpours the week before had us worried.
I believe it was my second year at the university of Wyoming when I took a public speaking course (por fuerza). The first speech we had to make was an acceptance speach; we're about to see how I fared.First off, thanks to the Uruguayan sun, we've had our falling outs but in the end he came through for us. Thanks to all the Rotary scholars Braden, Brandon, and Jessica and Rotaract, here Mauricio, Natalia, and Fernanda. Everbody recruited, organized, and got Dirty.

Thanks to the scouts and their leader Ruben of Piriapolis that came packing all kinds of equipment. We're missing a few of the littler ones but this is before we went to the top, so don't worry. Thanks to all of the Rotarians that participated (including those that sent the Rotary scholars down, i.e. you), provided transport to and from el cerro, and gave a cookout afterward!

Thanks to la Juventud Artiguista, o sea, !Team Maracana! They mercilessly berated me for walking around taking pictures and shamed me into working as well. Thanks to the Couch Surfers, las cuales (they were all women, that's interesting) came to lend a hand. Here's where the Where's Waldo comes in; ?Can you find Yours Truly?

You'll have to look behind, through, and in all 53 bags of trash (some smaller than others) to find me. Don't spend to much time looking...I'm not in there, !te engane! :P I took the picture. So we'll play again. This time I'm in there. Ready go.

And the best for last, a very special thanks to my mom! You can find her in the picture as well. This one is a lot tougher; try finding her in the 1st picture on top of el cerro first. She came to visit and allowed me to drag her up the hill to help realizar Proyecto Pan de Azucar!

The bad news is we were only able to clean up about half of the trash on el cerro, and we threw all of it away due to the difficulties involved with recycling in the area. And faltan todavia signs that say "NO TIRAR BASURA". But it's one step towards a greater awareness of the environment.

I think I thanked just about everybody so it's time to wrap up the speech. Conclusion. Evaluation: Ah! The entire premise is off; an acceptance speech is for accepting something, and my purpose was to thank everyone, and to talk about the great work they did. I'm going to get an 'F' roja! Ah well, I never liked that class anyway.

Back to the chessing board

The other day, with the support of the University of Montevideo and their volunteer organization (VUM), we put together a two day chess workshop. The idea was to present the methodology created by the US Chess Center in D.C. to recruit volunteers willing to teach chess. We had a few takers, and we made some great contacts with la Federacion de ajedrez. The younger guys had already been thinking about teaching chess in their neighborhoods (Camilo and Roberto have taught them for some time already), and were looking for a program to use. Two friends, Braden (otro Rotary scholar) and Diego might have been sold on the program as well. A shout out to you guys, thanks.

The best result that came out of the workshop was a contact with another student in the UM, Alberto. El senor Sanchez is part of a group of students called "los jovenes artiguistas" (Search Artigas) that are working in a needy area in the perifery of Montevideo, Maracana. For some time they have been supporting a merendero (a place where kids can go after school to "tomar la leche" o sea, eat a little something. Their idea has been to bolster the impact of the Merendero in the community, making it the axle of change in the barrio. Fase one, create an "after school club" with activities supported by positive role models. So where does this take us?

That's right! See the title. These are the chessboards that a friend, Ines bought for the merendero out of pocket. The idea was to get her company/employer to spring for them, but it would have been a lengthier process, and she wanted us to have them right away. Ines is also going to try to get her company to support the merendero on a more permanent basis. Thanks Ines!!

To the Merendero!

On the left (My other left!) with the kids, Jessica, otra Rotary scholar (we run in packs), and Carlos, a joven artiguista. On the right, a funny foto, the brothers Guillermo and Marcos. Behind the camera, Braden. And we are missing fotos of the others, Joaquim, Marcos, Jose, y Alberto. And we hope to keep the manpower, and the kids, coming. And for the littler ones, we just tested out a reading session with the kids on Friday, and it was a big hit.

Alright, Game on!!

Battleship and

September 26 and 27. El dia de Patrimonio. In an offhand attempt at a translation, I would say Montevideo Frontier Days, maybe Montevideo Jubilee Days. :P History Day is probably more like it. On this day (26 and 27) all of the museums in the nation are open to the public for free! Everybody hits the streets. You are a little late but I won't charge. Let's go check it out! Before we begin the tour, look at this aging relic, old but still running.


I was talking about the bus. Not the tour guide.

Notice the time-tested break system in the rear right wheel. Nice. First stop, la plaza de independencia.


Some characters in front of la casa del gobierno are performing a traditional dance. 100 yrs ago, they had their wallflowers too. Next stop, Carnaval! El dia del patrimonio is a great chance to relive carnaval for a day.

Notice the computer there. Just yesterday, the very last laptop was delivered to the very last school. Every child in elementary school in Uruguay now has a laptop. That is something for the history books.

Did you know Montevideo is la capital iberoamericana de carnaval? Sem duvida o carnaval aqui e muito melhor do que Brasil. Todo o mundo sabe. !A capital disse! Sim, sei que Iberoamerica nao inclui o Brasil. Por que sera que eles nao quiseram o Brasil tambem? Provavelmente porque o carnaval ali e so meio legal.

And the last stop on the virtual tour (sorry we didn't let you take any pictures in the museums)

El puerto. On this day the Uruguayan navy practices the maneuver that some may have tried with varied degrees of success in "Battleship".

It is the "put all of your eggs into one basket" strategy. In any case, not only the winners get to say I- 1.

Como e grande o meu amor pelo Rio Grande

Here's the scoop. I take a quick trip north to try and escape Winter. Where better than Brasil?, supposed land of sun and beaches. After an overnight bus ride of 12 hrs, I found myself in Porto Alegre, capital of Rio Grande do Sul. I hopped off the bus, and thought that someone had made a wrong turn. It was cold! And everyone drinks mate! ?Where was I, Uruguay?
Above are bahby (fonetically spelled) (ta bem bom bahby)and Alexandre. Muy, pero muy buena gente. Alright, I'll confess. The weather was a little bit better in Porto Alegre, but you still spend a lot of time shivering. And it's not mate, it's chimarrao! Below, you'll see those two characters along with Leandro y JR. (I'm pretty sure that everybody here is an INTER fan)

Everyone is sporting a hat with the uruguayan sun, (desaparecido hace varios meses). Something interesting, a large proportion of the people I met were some combination of the following: doctorate student in mathematics, climber, vegetarian, and speaker of english, spanish, and portuguese, and !trilegal! These guys bring a real buena onda.
Above: !Cool beans! Taking advantage of a sunny day. Below: Floresta Rotary Club banner exchange. This may have been the most fun Rotary meeting I've attended. The rotarians give a great welcome, and didn't make fun of me as I brutally, and mercilessly, destroyed their language. =-D It may never be the same.

And the final shot, the picture of the gas-heated water system in the hotel where I stayed for a few days.

!All in all, it was a blast!...or could have been.

e tudos sabem que o carnaval uruguaio e muito melhor do que Brasil. Tambem o futbol. O futbol uruguaio ganho a Brasil no ano 50 e foi campeao do mundo! Alem disso, INTER, Campeao de tudo!

Gummy Bears and Un Techo para mi Pais

!!LA REVANCHA!! Take a quick-see in my blog, and about 5 months ago an entry regarding UTPMP will appear. UTPMP (A roof for my country) is an organization that builds houses with volunteers several times a year. If anyone remembers, I was pretty bitter about the 4 day ordeal, scarred due to minimal sleep and food. Although I had sworn to have nothing to do with the organization again, my friends talked me into it. UTPMP had planned the largest construction ever; in two days, volunteers would build 107 houses. They were short on volunteers, and I grudgingly placed my name on the list. Al final de cuentas, we had a rematch, and ?you know what happened? It was a really great experience! :).

My cuadrilla worked with a tireless family. Everybody helped out; these guys can dig. Together, we pulled boar-sized rocks and blocks of concrete out of the earth. Above, you'll see Maury and I on saw detail after a day in the "quarry". With our powers combined, we were "Team Serrucho". !Esta todo el mundo!
A foto of the ever present hammer. The more appropriate simbol would be "la pala". I don't have a foto of the palas we used, but it looks something like this.See those rocks?...go dig 18 holes with this thing. =D

I threw this one in for the animal lovers :)

Gabe, why are you playing video games instead of working? These laptops are really exciting. Uruguay is one of the first countries, if not the first, to give laptops to every single child in the country as part of a youth development and education program. Over 300,000 laptops, and they pulled it off just recently. Teachers give homework which require use of the computer. Every teacher has a master laptop which can remotely shut off a laptop that doesn't show up to class asi que a stolen laptop can serve only as a paper-weight. There is Wi-fi in the schools and in the surrounding area so that children and families have limited access to the internet. There are some "inconvenientes" with the idea but overall I think it's great. The laptops help to bring information and technology (news, geography, email, videos, camera etc.) that would otherwise be inaccessible to many marginalized families. An impressive project, props to Uruguay. And props to everyone who contributed to the construction of another 107 houses.

Where do the gummy bears fit in? Ah, like I was saying, the children have some access to the internet...if you know a child in Uruguay, by now you have seen this video hundreds of times. Click on the Osito gominola to the left in the video bar or search in youtube "Yo soy tu gominola". !No te lo pierdas!

las faces de ajedrez

Chess classes fired up again, and we doubled the number of future ajedrecistas! In addition to the class of 5th and sixth graders, we have a separate class of 4th graders with some younger kiddos mixed in there. Before, classes tended to degenerate into caos near the end of the hour. With these guys, !Caos! is the norm and always comes capitalized. Despite a noise level that borders on deafening, we still manage to get in a game or two of chess. Check out some of the new faces of chess in Los Caramelos :)

These two characters aren't new but somehow they squeezed their way into the class anyway :P

Most of the yunguns are hams in front of the camera.

And this foto is quality, calidad digo. Miren a Antony ahi atras. Does that face say something about my teaching methods? :P

I hope you've enjoyed yet another session of ajedrez. I'm sure there is a chess set lying around your place. Why don't you wipe the dust off and echar una partida? :)

Geometry and Trigonometry Season Opener

3 goals for this entry blog - 1. keep everybody up to date

2. motivate the rotaract group and above all

3. motivate myself

If you read the beginning entries, you might remember me saying something about a project to clean up a hill called "Pan de Azucar" in Piriapolis. The hill is frecuented by turists and locals, and, partly due to a lack of trash service and partly to lack of education, the top of the hill is a dump filled with plastic water bottles. We started working towards a clean-up date but the weather went south so quickly we put it on hold indefinitely until the weather shapes up. Well, the weather is still out of shape. Imagine the following rectangle at a temperature of 40 degrees:
Looking from that angle you need to shiver a little bit more. Shuffle your heavy, rain-soaked shoes out of the tempting circle in the center, and you are about there! Winter here has made it almost impossible to even think about the possibility of cleaning up the hill, and it has become all to easy to forget about the project all together. In order to motivate all of us, I decided to write more about the project and put up some fotos. When everyone knows about it, the pressure will be on, and maybe we can get into gear. The idea: bring together Rotaract in Montevideo, Interact of Piriapolis, and a group of school children. Make a day trip to el cerro and clean it up, providing positive role models for the kids while involving them in creating a greater social concious of the environment. A bonus would be to arrange something with the administrators of the land or the municipality to establish a permanent trash collection service. That said and done, bring on the fotos! (Don't be fooled, these fotos were taken in the summer...that sun is dead to me :P.)

At the beginning of the hike in the zoological section, there are some neat plants that I had never seen.

As the trail works its way up the hill, plastic bottles seed the trailside. At the top, there are literally deposits of plastic bottles. One picture is enough to get the idea.

Trash on the ground contrasts a lot with great views if one can forget about the countless bottles and raise his or her eyes to the horizon.
Great! Now I've talked it up. We've got to do it. Hold me responsable and ask about Pan de Azucar when I get back. Thanks for your support =-D

Now for the good news; the temperature is slowly rising, it's raining a little less, and sometimes the sun comes out to shine. I'm taking that as a sine that we're on our way up!

Dia de Independencia !Extravaganza!

Using TLFOS, (time lapse fotography of sorts), I will recreate the Uruguayan and estadounidense Independence day !Celebracion! Starting off with the host of the night, Brandon fired up the grill and made some incredible peanut butter bun hamburgers. At first I thought it was just the best tasting sticky bread I had ever eaten. Three thumbs up. PEANUT BUTTER!!Then comes the Utter Uruguay on Flaming Fuego! (That's the best I could do for alliteration; U's don't offer many options). Ready- Aim- Fire- Finale!!

So that was the first annual 4th of July celebration in Uruguay!! We'll see if they can pull off the second with such style next year :)