I❤Uruguay

View from La Rambla

18 de Junio, downtown Montevideo

The intricate beauty of the average house in Montevideo is unbelievable

Neighborhood up from La Rambla

Typical Montevideo street

I am going to start this post by apologizing to anyone reading this in the Northern Hemisphere that is slushing through March, hey at least it's better than February. I had to preface this blog post with an apology because I just got back from going to the beach. Almost everyday for the past two weeks, thanks to the great weather, I have had a chance to go to the beach after La Obra, which for me is something I really enjoy.  Having the chance to go on a run to the ocean is something that just hasn't been a part of my life before. (Ok, so the geographer in me wants to point out that technically it is the Rio de la Plata and it's an estuary and is a mix of freshwater and saltwater but there are waves and it's kind of salty, so I'm saying it's an ocean)

However, aside from being a beach bum, there are just lots of things that I have come to really appreciate about my life in Uruguay. When people find out that I am from the United States, they always ask if I like Uruguay and I always have an enthusiastic reply.  As of today, I have been in Montevideo for about seven months and sometimes it amazes me how much at home I feel here. One of my favorite things to do here is simply take walks and see what is around. I don't plan where I am going, I just walk out the door and see where I end up. Of course, I usually end up at my favorite place in Montevideo, which is La Rambla.

However, the most interesting thing about my love for Uruguay is that I somehow ended up living here.   At one point when I was in college I was debating graduating early. I had enough credits but I still hadn't gone abroad, which was something I had always dreamed of doing. I thought I could take the money I would save from graduating early and go travel somewhere. At the time I was reading a book about Montevideo in my Spanish class so I actually spent a lot of time looking into traveling to Uruguay because it seemed interesting.

As it turns out, I didn't graduate early and I did study abroad (which was the right decision) but I still ended up in Uruguay!  Funny how that worked out, eh?