mediocre montevideo

sorry its been a while since i've updated, i accidentally left my adaptor in the hotel in montevideo, and havent turned on my computer for the last week--but its been busy so there's a lot to say...

we spent a last week (actually 2 weeks ago at this point) in montevideo. although i know we didnt get to see the best of the city, i still wasnt very impressed.

before i start bemoaing montevideo, ill first note that i was surprised how culturally different montevideo was from buenos aires. i figured being so close to each other geographically, i assumed they would be more similar. the culture in montevideo was much more relaxed, slower paced, and casual than buenos aires, it was a nice change.

while we were in montevideo the weather was mostly gray and rainy (that might be part of the reason why i was not super impressed with it...) anyways some noteable things that we did while we were there....

we learned about housing cooperatives that are fairly popular in montevideo. we first visted the housing cooperative central office, which provides framework for all the cooperertives that are starting up. then the next day we got to actually visit a housing cooperative. the housing cooperative seemed very similar to habitat for humanity but more of a bottom up initiative. a group of people get together and create a the criteria for membership, it is typically a committement of both time and money. for example the cooperative we visited required an amount of money (i dont remember exactly, it was also confusing because it was in peso uruguayos, which i still dont quite understand. and then 20 hrs of work per family unit each week, most adults in the cooperatives have other jobs). ideally everyone puts in equal time into the houses, and they all come out of equal value.

we also got to visit a beautiful old theatre called teatro solis, it was very close to our hotel, so we went on a short tour in the morning.

we visited the mercosur building for an info session about mercosur. on the mercosur front...first of all venezuela has just been added as the fifth member of mercosure, their oil capabilities will be in interesting addition to the previous mercosure lineup. the other big issue on the mercosur front currently is the disequality in between the member countries. brazil is biggest bread winner, followed by argentina--and then paraguay and uruguay trail far behind. here is a picture of the mercosur building--it was beautiful. it was far more impressive than the partliament building (which we also visited). it made me wonder if the buildings were a symbol that it was more important for uruguay to connect with other latin america countries, than to focus on their internal affairs.

while we were in montevideo, we also had some short lectures on basic historical and political info