Monday

Today is my very first day in Uruguay! I'm so excited to see, smell, hear, feel, and taste everything here! I finally got off of my plane at about 12:30 p.m., half the day, gone! Well, I guess the first thing to do is eat (I hate airplane food!). Gladly there was a café right there, so I dropped in and got a pancho because it looked just like a hot-dog and after that flight I wasn't feeling too adventurous.

I arrived in Montevideo, and I thought that since I only had about 5 hours before I got super tired from jet lag and had to check in at my hotel, I'd just wander through the Plaza Independencia, which directly means "independence place." It was mainly just a big plaza in Montevideo, but I had a fun time looking around at all of the buildings and wandering into some of the shops.

One shop I went into was a little trinket shop full of, well, trinkets. There were a couple of keychains in the shop, and one had a really pretty picture of the statue in the center of the square. I asked the shop owner what it was, and he told me that it was of General Artigas, who is considered the father of Uruguay. José Gervasio Artigas is basically Uruguay's hero; to my understanding, he basically saved Montevideo from the "Unitarians." I guess that he's kind of famous in the same way that Martin Luther King is, but, obviously, for different reasons. That's why his statue is in the center of the square.


I thanked the man and bought the key chain as a souvenir, then left the shop. I was getting pretty thirsty, so I stopped in another café to have a drink and found that they had yerba mate. I got some and sipped it to find out that it tasted a lot like tea, and I guess it was. It was very cool and refreshing and I'm glad that I had it. The man at the counter asked me how it was and I told him it was great. Then he told me that most cafés and even restaurants never have yerga mate, and that it's usually served in private gatherings. I thanked him for it and then left.

It was pretty late, and I still had to go check into my hotel and unpack and everything else that comes with traveling, so I went into my hotel, and when I got up to bed, I was exhausted do to jet lag and fell down on the bed. I was asleep before I knew it, but ready for a great tomorrow.