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? :)