Tuesday, September 22, 2009

Teatro Solís

Hello Readers?... Come in?... I can (schhhhh) hear you... In a (schhhh) tunnel... come in?...

That is my subtle way of reminding you that I cannot indeed read your thoughts as you read my blog, so I would love to have some comments and/or votes on the poll to let me know that there are people out there still. :)

Anyway, yesterday was a great day for us here in Montevideo. We started off the day with another wonderful breakfast of eggs, bacon, fried banana bread things, and coffee, etc. and were ready for the day. Then we had chapel and our family meeting where we talked about our upcoming trip to Buenos Aires. We are going to be there from this Friday through Tuesday of next week. Although it is not very far away physically, it is a whole other country so things like customs and passports and such do come into play. We are going to see most of the big sights and have some good times with the whole group, and then have some free time on Monday (my birthday) and Tuesday morning until we load up to come home. I am sadly going to be out of touch during that time because I am not going to bring my MacBook along for the ride.

After chapel, I went on a little adventure to get some accessories and such for the our night at the theater. I got some tights to wear with my dress, a flower for my hair, and some earrings that were pretty exciting. All for about US$11. Better than Walmart, definitely a further walk though. When I got back, I had some down time/study time for our Biochemistry test tomorrow and then ate lunch. After Biochem, we had our culture class and had a guest speaker. This man is a sociologist here in Montevideo, but got his doctorate at the University of Texas in Austin and lived there for 3 years. He related some of the cross-cultural differences that he felt while he was there. That was a really cool reflection of some of the things that we are experiencing and some of the opposite. One thing that he talked about was how all of the girls in Texas smile at you and are helpful to you even if they are not interested in you romantically. We laughed at this because our reaction is, "Why not smile and help and laugh?" which was the question in the first place, just in reverse. He was really nice and interesting and provided great insights into our culture and his own.

After that we had about an hour to get dressed up to go see the philharmonic here in Montevideo at the famous Teatro Solís. It is downtown off the big Independence Square Plaza. After a few pictures, we got into groups. No one volunteered when Wimon said he needed a group of three, so I just got the tickets and Matt and Jaimie followed. When we got to the doors, they directed us upstairs and then to this lady who would seat us. We walked down this hall, not knowing where we were until we got to these sweet little double doors. We had our own little balcony with three seats! It was so beautiful inside that Jaimie was almost in tears. We sat down and then a few minutes later, we realized that another part of our group was directly across from us in the balcony opposite ours! Naturally, we goofed off with pseudo-sign language until it started.


The lights went all the way down and it was amazing. The orchestra was quite good and nothing sounded overly-Latin until the pieces after the intermission. They were talented artists though. The building and the music were beautiful and I was thinking how impressed I would be if a guy tried to pull this off as a date. In that moment, it was brought to my attention why that would not happen. Matt leaned over and said, "Let's play a game. It's called Find-All-of-the-old-guys-that-are-asleep. I already got five!" Oh boys! So ridiculous! Anyway, we played the game and I think I got up to 11 before a major crescendo woke most of them up.



During intermission, I walked around the theater to stretch my legs and talk to Taylor, but when I opened the doors to our little compartment to get out, the little old lady sitting in the next balcony over, exclaimed all in Spanish something about how beautiful and angelic I looked. I kind of nodded and walked on. But after the performance, I learned that she was not quite done. She leaned over to talk to Matt (picture to right: Matt in a body guard seat) about how pretty and precious and what my name was and if I was Uruguayan and all this stuff. She relived the moment that I walked out of the doors and kept going on and on and on. She even reached over to touch my cheek at one point. We just nodded and such and then she finally finished and walked off. Then the lady behind her quietly said, "I don't know her." It was really funny. Especially when the second lady was like, "I don't know her." Anyways!


We walked home and about halfway back, we got ice cream at La Cigale, my new obsession. It is amazing. Overall, though, the night was just amazing. I needed something really fun and upbeat and it was definitely that!

Thanks for reading and hope to hear from you soon.

3 comments:

momandlucy said...

I haven't been able to comment because Lucy and I have not been able to sign in. i couldn't remember how.
Sound like a good time. You are angelic! We've alsways told you that you looked like a doll and not real.

Anonymous said...

Ah, that sounds like when that Syrian man proposed to me in Greece.

Or something like that...

You're going to have so many stories like that by the end of the semester. I'm glad you're having fun!

Katherine

deatra said...

Ok, so you will not be smiling and laughing and being helpful to any men in Uruguay, right? And I do hope you had a lovely South American birthday, sweet Kate! I did think about you turning 20! Love you, Aunt DeDe