“It isn’t a science, Chris” (but, yes it is).

8 months after moving to Uruguay, I sat in my room tonight and drank my first solo mate–prepared by a team effort between my roommate Oriana and me. She assured me that the there was no science to the preparation, but watching her deliberate movements as she shook and leveled the mate, adding cold and [...]

25 years is a quarter of a century.

My friend Rebbecca asked me what it felt like to be 25. I said in jest that it felt a lot like being 24. She pressed me, “Come on, Christina” (which sounds much more compelling when said in a Kentucky accent). She wanted me to mark the day. It was big she said, and not [...]

Colder days, racing minds, and warmer food.

The warm spring weather of last weekend has vanished as quickly as it came. I am back in my wool: cardigans, socks, hat, check. The cold woke me up this morning; that or my racing mind. It’s 7:16am and I am up earlier than expected, earlier than desired. I have been reading Banker to [...]

Sometimes you wake up at 5:56am and you look like this:

Needless to say, I didn’t go to class. Instead I slept and took antihistamines. And to respond to Nick’s initial question: no it’s not permanent. It was mosquito induced. Clearly, I’m getting a bed net for the summer.

The night that started with a strike and ended with a crash.

It had been a great night: I discovered a bowling alley in MVD. My first roll of my cosmic pink 10-lb ball was a strike. We played two games and I won both. I then celebrated the 25th birthday of Teresa, my professor friend, on the top floor of her apartment building. And so it [...]

From North to South Again

School began today and my head is abuzz. Today marks the beginning of the second half of my scholarship year. What’s more, my feet are replanting after a vacation to the north–a vacation to see my nephew and host a trunk  show, to sunbathe and dream up the years to come. And here I am [...]

NWM

Nick Moore recently came for a visit. On foot, on bike, on train, and by sea we explored. Hitchhiking happened. Twice. He is of the ever-curious breed, meandering down streets to get a better view of a door frame (a window, a chimney, a…) of a house he’d peep from two alleys away. He will [...]

Wet shoes make a day long.

This past week my dear friends (Becca, Elise, Thyra, NWM) and I took a trip to Bariloche, Argentina (to be read: Patagonia). We got to Buenos Aires by ferry, to Viedma by bus, and then trained it to Bariloche–in total, a 36 hour and 1,000 mile journey. Bariloche was part Switzerland, part tourist trap. [...]

Becoming friends vis-a-vi domesticity.

July has been a month of change. My first semester is done. The translation project I had been working on for Rotaract Paso Molino is completed, and well, my roommate told me that she and her boyfriend are pregnant. She told me as we were passing the internet modem through the door which separates our [...]

Things I see, 2

On Friday I saw my second concert with Pata, who knows the best of Uruguayan musicians. I ate raviolis in the taxi, having not eaten dinner yet at 10:30. Martin Buscaglia, the singer, used children’s toys ingeniously as instruments. After his show he spun the best (and only) hip-hop music I have danced to here. [...]