I am sitting inside
my apartment wearing two layers of Spandex, huddling under a down comforter,
and sipping on a mug of steaming tea that is alternating between being
delicious and scalding my tongue. It is
winter in Montevideo, and despite the fact that winter here is remarkably
warmer than winter in the United States (especially my last winter in
Colorado), the humidity and lack of central heating make the coldness cut
through to your bones and settle around you in an ominous cloud that refuses to
dissipate. I am fighting the urge to
turn on my space heater because both my roommates and my landlord have let me
know that I have been jacking up the electricity bill more than my fair share. They advised me to do like the Uruguayans do
and dress more warmly inside. When in
Rome, do as the Romans do, so I’m trying, but the cold is making my resentment
for all of them just sink deeper into my bones with the cold.
It would help if I could stream some
bootlegged movies from my computer, but the wireless internet is down. I called my landlord earlier about this
problem, and she merely informed me that one of my other roommates had already
called her about the same thing, but that the entire wireless network is down
right now in our area. Between my lack
of complete fluency in Spanish, her raspy voice due to a cold, my hatred of
talking on the phone in foreign languages, and my suspicion that she really
didn’t actually know what was going on, I resigned myself to accept the lack of
internet and hope that some Uruguayan engineer would be able to fix whatever
she meant by a ²fiber optic
network problem² soon enough. I settle in to distract myself by
alternatively playing more Candy Crush Saga (recent addiction that stemmed from
my family’s visit) on my phone and reading the second installment of the Harry
Potter series in Spanish.
I am bored and
frustrated with all of the resignation that has crept into my resolve recently,
but I try to accredit this to the fact that I have not really started working
in Montevideo yet. It seems complicated
because a lot of the schools still have mid-term exams going on or have strikes
going on, and in both of these cases, it would be pointless for me to go. Therefore, I am trying to distract
myself. I have started running more, I
have joined a Frisbee team, and I have looked into yoga, art, and Spanish
classes to try to keep myself busy. I
have made goals to try to start blogging and journaling more and to try to make
some preliminary post-Fulbright plans.
My only concrete plan come November right now is to go home and savor
life in the United States for the month that includes Thanksgiving and the
start of Christmas. My next goal for
this blog is to try to accurately describe how I actually feel about this
experience so far and what it really means to be a Fulbrighter. The conference we had with the ETAs from
Argentina has made me reflect back on a lot of the problems and experiences I
have had and put them in a broader perspective, but it is still hard for me to
describe how I truly feel about the overall experience when people ask. I will think about that during my run on the
rambla today. My resolve to not turn on
the heater cracked when my resolve to run hardened; now my room is filled with
a warm, red glow as I pull on running clothes to confront the gray, windy
shore.
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