As I mentioned a few weeks ago, one question I field frequently is “Is Uruguay what you expected?” The other, not surprisingly, is “Do you like it here?” It’s easy to provide an unequivocal “Yes!” (exaggerated head nod, bright smile) but then I get asked: “What do you like?”
I get caught on this one because it throws me into the role of outsider and urban critic. Enumerating the things I like about Montevideo becomes an exercise in demarcating difference or cleaving to stereotype, and most of the time I just want to fit in to the point where I’m not comparing things anymore. The question “What do you like?” in most conversations asks for a simple reply, but most simple replies are cringe-worthy and trite: “The people are so nice” or the “The city is so cute.” In reality, it’s true and untrue here, it’s true and untrue elsewhere. Somehow, I suspect that answering “I like curling up in the ray of light that beams into my living room around 3 p.m.,” is not what people are looking for.
I also know I’m starting to forget what my friends at home don’t know about here, and how to articulate the little things that I don’t like or dislike but make this city that I’ve grown to love what it is. I spent last week in Europe in another medium-sized, middle-income country with a walkable downtown. It reminded me I’d forgotten about the smell of the sidewalks in Montevideo, an odd combination of construction dust, peanut oil, tenacity, and sea salt that isn’t always pleasant but is ineluctably there. The gastronomic homogeneity has driven all of us to hoard curry powder and the spiciest peppers we can find in our cupboards, but I’ve learned to cook and when I don’t feel like it I know I can get a great chorizo.
The English conversation class I lead consistently proves how well-connected to the world Montevideanos are via media and ancestral ties despite a physical isolation that can make traveling exhausting. Twelve hours to Europe by plane, twelve hours to Porto Alegre (Brazil) by bus, only three hours to Buenos Aires by boat but that is an interminable ordeal when the waves roll high. “I’d never fly to a wedding!” joked one of my friends here. After doing it last week, I don’t know if I’d have the energy to try again. A different paradigm of space and time, here in the south of the south.
Six months in, three months to go, I panic about leaving far more often than I spend marveling where the time went. I know I’m bracing for a return not only to the U.S., but also to a lifestyle that is not exclusively dictated by my clock, as the Fulbright year was. In of itself that has nothing to do with Montevideo, but it certainly is complemented by a city that consistently is referred to as muy tranquilo. A few tourists I’ve met have despaired, when tranquilo meant nothing to do on a rainy winter day. But tranquilo has taught me to be okay with slowing down and letting fewer activities expand to fill a day. It’s hard to successfully overschedule when you need to take bus waits and meeting delays into account. So nowadays I usually answer the “What do you like?” question with “It’s calm here.” Trite but true.
Flora Lindsay-Herrera is currently a Fulbright Fellow in Montevideo, Uruguay. For more about her experiences, check out her blog.
Latest posts by vidauruguaya
- Goodbye, Uruguay (for now) - December 30th, 2010
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- Volunteerism in Latin America: The Big Picture - December 9th, 2010
- Buen Vivir, or Rewriting Development - December 2nd, 2010
- Wanted: Brut Strength - November 26th, 2010
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- Now Comes the Hard Part - November 11th, 2010
- Have a Happy (anti) Halloween - November 2nd, 2010
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