Tomorrow I’ll go back to Montevideo to catch my flight to
Argentina. I’m exited to be going
somewhere and settling down for a few months, because I’ll actually get to know
people that live there and make friends with people I’ll see for more than just
a few days. And I’m excited to be going
to a warmer climate! It’s been so cold
for most of my time in Uruguay that I’ve been wearing three sweatshirts most of
the day. Most building here don’t have
electric heating, so when the high of the day is 60 degrees that doesn’t sound
too bad, but it doesn’t get warmer than that inside. People use fireplaces and wood stoves to heat
the main room (which doesn’t make it nearly as warm as I would like), but the
other rooms are absolutely freezing! I
went to sit by the fireplace at the hostel today, and I stuck my feet nice and
close to the flames to warm them up.
After a little while I realized that the fire was melting the glue that
held the soles in place, and that they were falling away from the rest of the
shoe! So I quickly stood up and stayed
standing for about 20 minutes until the glue had redried and the soles were
firmly secured again. In other shoe-related
news, I found a posting online to stay with a family in Ecuador that has a shoe
shop, and live with them and learn to make shoes in exchange for room and
board. I’m keeping that in mind for
January.
Overall I have really enjoyed almost everything about
Uruguay. It’s a really calm, safe
country and everything is well-organized, the bus are on time, and the people
are really friendly (although their Spanish accent is really difficult for me
to understand). But there’s one thing I
don’t like: dogs. For those of you who
aren’t familiar with my feelings about dogs, let me explain. They can be cute to observe from afar, and I
find being in the same room as someone’s clean, well-trained pet acceptable as
long as the dog doesn’t smell me, slobber on me, or basically come anywhere
near me. So the fact that they are
everywhere here is greatly disturbing to me.
They roam the streets everywhere.
Sometimes they ignore you (which I can tolerate), but sometimes there
follow you (which I abhor). They wait at
the entrances of hostels and restaurants, and if you’re not careful they follow
you in. Most of them belong to people,
but spend most of their time roaming about, but some of them are strays. When I was in San Gregorio last week three
large dogs started following me at one point, and they were getting a bit jumpy
and nippy around me. To make things
worse, I had just read a blog the night before about someone who got bit by a
dog and had to get 5 stitches, and I was getting somewhat scared of these dogs. It wasn’t until a few blocks later when they
finally left that I realized how terrified I had actually been of them. My muscles were all tensed and I just wanted
to sit down. Probably kind of how my dad
felt after he went on a roller coaster, but maybe not quite as intense. Anyway, maybe I’ll appreciate dogs in the US
more when I get back after dealing with all the dirty, untrained ones here.
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