Rest of the 'guay

So....back to Uruguay. What else happened? Henry and I didn't have a ton of time before his conference started, so we decided to take one of our free days and go Colonia. Colonia is a historic town about 2.5 hours from the capitol, Montevideo. It's also on the coast. While we were there, we climbed a lighthouse and could look out and see Argentina. It was recommended to us that we go with a tour company. After seeing what happens when a Thimm gets behind the wheel in a foreign country (ask Larry about the train tracks in zurich), we thought this was a right good idea. No random car rentals for us. Besides, since neither of us speak spanish, we wanted to minimize the number of things we would have to sign without understanding.

So we went with a tour, that was 10 parts Spanish to every 1 part English. That's just enough English to understand what is happening after it already happened. Case in point: we didn't realize the tour would be making stops on the way to Colonia. We pull up to a lovely place in the country, and everyone starts emptying out of the bus. We walk into a building, and find ourselves in this room:

What are all these key chains?

Everyone is looking around, listening to the tour guide intently, and nodding in understanding. I still can't figure out what I'm looking at. We walk into the next room, and it's pretty much the same cases, only filled with pencils. It is finally explained to us that the owner of this establishment holds the Guinness World Record for largest key chain collection and largest pencil collection. Okay....but why am I looking at it? Apparently he has turned his collection into a museum and this is the most interesting thing between Montevideo and Colonia. The collection included many other pieces (of note: a Crystal Pepsi can) and was interesting, once I knew what was going on. The owner/collector also has a business making jam. As any good tour does, this one ended in the gift shop. You could try a bunch of his jams, and of course they were for sale.

Need to find the dolche de leche again...

 Colonia is famous for it's bullring, home of 8 fights before it was outlawed.

Now the other tourists can't figure out what they are looking at...

In Colonia, our tour guide provided some information about the oldest area of town. This particular street has remained unchanged in hundreds of years.

Old.

We enjoyed a lovely meal outside. In Uruguay, no meal is complete without meat. So of course we had meat. We had seen others eating these weird fried balls, and we were determined to try them. They ended up being pretty tasty potato balls. They also served lemon with everything. I have never squeezed lemon on so many different dishes.

Papas Noisettes!

Back in Montevideo, Henry's conference began. That meant I was on my own. I did some work myself, went to a prison-turned-mall, and visited a museum. We did get to meet up with some of his coworkers for a spicy time in the ice bar in our hotel.

jello!

 Other notable moments:

This "sandwhich" was ridiculous, and apparently one of the national dishes of Uruguay. From top to bottom - red peppers, olives, unidentified white vegetable, eggs, ham, steak, french fries, potato salad, lettuce, tomatoes, beets, and carrots.

Lots o' food

We also joined a coworker of Henry's for a nice dinner out. We had some crepes filled with dolche de leche for dessert. They were so, so tasty.

More crepes!

Also, I had more clothes put in the bidet. Pants in the bidet once, shame on you. Pants in the bidet twice, shame on me. I just couldn't remember that the maid comes at 9 o'clock at night to sweep anything left on the floor into the bidet. I thought I was in the clear, but alas, it was not to be.

This I will never understand.

At one of our meals Henry also tried gizzard. It was a brave attempt, but better left to others. Of course, it too came with lemon.

Sweetbread = not tasty

Up to a month before going, I had no idea that South America was in my near future, least of all Uruguay. It was a really fun place to visit, and forced me to learn about a culture and country that probably wouldn't have crossed my mind otherwise. Between that and all the meat, the trip was a win.

Pants in the Bidet

For a hot second my original blog title (Tine Abroad) is again relevant. I am in Uruguay. Does this seem random? It is. Henry is here for work and I am fulfilling my life long destiny to be someone's traveling companion. Today is our first day here, after over 20 hours of traveling. Honestly, I didn't even know where Uruguay was before this trip. I had it pegged as South America, but just assumed it was skimming the top of the continent with Colombia or Venezuela. Totally wrong. Uruguay is nestled underneath Brazil, very far south, on the east side of the continent, and very far from Seattle. The time change isn't too bad, only fours different, but a night of three hours of sleep on a plane makes me pretty tired.


Some early observations: traveling abroad is always an interesting juxtaposition of foreign and familiar, especially coming from the US. Our culture is omnipresent, it seems, and it can be interesting to see what gets out. We were greeted with adverts for ice road truckers and a dubbed version of Pawn Stars. Something definitely got lost in the translation of that one. On the more foreign end of my experience so far: ordering food. My German skills have only allowed me to identify ham (jamon) and mushrooms (some version of champion) on menus.  Henry and I have a Spanish dictionary along, but even with that, ordering often comes down to identifying the animal and knowing no more. For supper tonight, I knew I was getting pork. After that, it was anyone's guess. I was pleasantly surprised with the outcome.

Also foreign: coming back to our hotel room to find the maid had put my pants in the bidet. No joke. I had left them on the bathroom floor after my shower. The maid had obviously cleaned up elsewhere by moving shoes to the side of the room, etc. Still, this seems like a bit of a leap. Am I missing some important cultural information about cleanliness/hygiene/use of toilets? Fortunately (?), the bidet is dry. Please cast your votes as to whether or not these pants are wearable again without being washed. We are assuming the bidet was cleaned before we came, and it has not been used since checking in.

Henry and I arrived at the hotel around noon today. We showed off our travel grime and then headed out for a walk around town and some lunch. The walk was a spicy adventure in dodging dog poop, but the weather was absolutely lovely and we had a gorgeous view. Technically, we are told the town is on the river, but it sure looks like the ocean to me. There is 22 km of sidewalk that winds around the outside of the city on the coast, with occasional beaches among rocky outcrops. We thought it was warm enough for short sleeves, but the locals all seem to be wearing winter coats. It's definitely in the 60's and may get into the 70's one day we are here. Something else for us to learn about perhaps.

Some pics so far:

Walking along the "rambla", the sidewalk along the coast.

Beautiful sunset over Montevideo.

Dinner: Pick your animal!

Birthday, Take 2

My mom and sister came out to visit me for my birthday week. If I do say so myself, we had an awesome time. It was a good combination of touristy/new city stuff and good ol' hanging out.

One of the new things we did was take in the Wooden Boat Festival. They had a bunch of cool wooden boats ranging from the type of speedboat Indiana Jones almost gets chopped up in in the Last Crusade, to an old navy patrol boat, to your average luxury sailboat. Depending on the owner, and with permission, you could board some of them. We were also given a wooden coin that we were supposed to vote on our favorites with. I voted for the Indiana Jones look-a-like boat.

 Lisa took up crabbing as part of the festival.

We also got an hour sail ride on one of the wooden boats. Our boat had been a fishing boat in Alaska. I think it was built in 1911. Our captain told us that it sailed in the same waters as the boats on "The Deadliest Catch". Given it's size, that was hard to imagine.

We also ate lunch outdoors before going to Pike Place Market. Mom actually found some fish she might enjoy eating.

Their visit happened to coincide with a "bachelorette" viewing, so they were sucked into it without a choice. It is my experience that regardless of a person's reluctance going into this, everyone leaves with the opinion that it was time well spent.

We had a mini-early celebration for mom, and of course were still celebrating my birthday, so party hats were in order.

The weather had warmed up enough that we could pretend it was reasonable to have brunch outside.

We also watched the fireworks from the roof of my condo. It's not often that I celebrate the 4th of July in pants and under a blanket. It was surprisingly cold, but a great view. So glad for their visit!

Early Birthday

My dear friend Joyce just left the country for a few weeks. Because she knew she would miss my birthday, she planned this amazing birthday surprise, consisting of an original birthday song for me, princess hat, and delicious chocolate cake (baked by master chef, Joy). It was a delightful early birthday surprise.

Sunshine

The past weekend in Seattle was beautiful and sunny, simply glorious. Everyone was doing their best to take advantage of it, Henry and myself included. To get ready for the warm weather, we both got our haircut. Mine was a corrective action for a very unfortunate student haircut I got last week. It was a little shocking to lose half my hair unintentionally, but I think it turned out ok.

Short hair!!!

We took our new haircuts for a walk and some outside dining. 

Last Christmas my dad made me a Kubb set, and I hadn't had a change to use it yet. On Sunday afternoon, Henry and I took it to Gas Works Park to try it out. For the uninitiated, Kubb is a lawn game that involves throwing sticks at each other.

Kite hill

As any sunny day, Gas Works was bustling. It is still on our to-do list to acquire and fly an awesome kite. Maybe next week...

View from Kite hill.

We got our game set up, and commenced the stick throwing.

I was still winning when this was taken...

The game consists of a lot of wooden blocks, which can be kind of awkward to carry around. Although I only live 2 blocks from the park, it's still long enough to be inconvenient. Enter the blue beast. The blue beast is an old suitcase that I brought back to Seattle from NE when I needed more suitcase space than planned. It was supposed to enter retirement at that point, but has been pulled out to serve as my Kubb carrying case. Henry was delighted to carry it around the park, needing to take a break halfway there. 

Blue beast in action

Of course, we weren't the only people in the park getting some looks. In our search to find a suitable field for our game in the park, we came across some "knights" in training.

Lancelot v. Galahad

My thoughts: it was way too warm to be wearing all that armor.

For Guinevere!

Funny times.

Restaurant Week

Last week was restaurant week. Henry, some other friends, and I took this opportunity to eat at the Columbia Tower Club. The Columbia Tower is the tallest building in Seattle, and the very top floor is a restaurant and club that you can only eat at if you are a member. Except during restaurant week, when the let the rest of the little people in. Pictured is the view from the restaurant, and the compelling reason for going. We quickly learned that the food and service are not the reasons to go...

Spring Break

This spring break was as expected, wild and crazy. To start it off, I spent a couple of days working, hanging out in a rainy Seattle. Everyone's dream, really.

Henry was doing a lot of work as well, but we decided we would take one day and go to the  happenin' town of Tacoma. For those of you who don't know, Tacoma's a pretty exciting destination, if by pretty exciting you mean the armpit of Washington and by destination you mean a 20 minute drive. To give you an idea of the excitement that goes on here, if only we had come a couple weeks later we could have seen Rammstein play at the Tacoma Dome.

Pictured: Tacoma Dome. Not Pictured: The aroma from Tacoma.

Tacoma does have some redeeming qualities, however. Most notably, it is home to the Museum of Glass. It includes a lot of work by Dale Chihuly, a pretty famous local glass blower who does incredible work. Henry and I were really looking forward to seeing it.

Of course, being so close to Seattle, we didn't get much break in the weather. Our day of exploration was cold and rainy.

Cold and rained on is our natural state.

We set off on our adventure only to discover that the Museum of Glass is closed on Tuesdays, the day we choose. Boo. Strike one, Tacoma.

We were able, however, to walk through an outdoor glass tunnel leading up to the museum, featuring Chihuly's work. It was gorgeous.

A tease for what we couldn't see in the museum.

Glass from the tunnel.

So pretty.

More blown glass artwork featured outside near the tunnel.

After suffering this disappointment, we decided to go for the third best thing, the Washington State Historical Museum (second choice was the zoo and aquarium, but it was raining so hard we didn't think an outdoor adventure would be much fun). This time we made sure to call the museum to make sure they were open. The voice recording for the museum assured us that they were open on Tuesdays. So we went, paid for parking, and walked up to the museum. Closed. Strike two, Tacoma.

By this time the rain had abated enough that we thought we could be outside and not be completely miserable. So we went to the zoo and aquarium, which we really enjoyed. They had a pretty cool fish tank, and some peacocks that roamed free (those kinda weirded us out though). The penguins were cute, but I think we were both impressed the most by the walruses. That is one large, ugly animal. They were fascinating.

After heading back to Seattle for some more work, the next leg of my spring break extraordinaire was to head home to Nebraska. This is always a welcome break. I hung out with family, ate well, and played some games. I even took in some bowling with my mom and dad.

On her way to 300...

The main reason for the trip was to celebrate my grandparents' 65th wedding anniversary. This is an amazing accomplishment and it was so nice to see the entire family. It was a lovely time at home.

Congrats!