First Rotary Meeting in Uruguay

About a year and a half ago, I found out that I received the Ambassadorial Scholarship for Rotary and was going to be studying in Uruguay. Coincidentally, the year I found out was the year that another district in the Tucson area of Arizona was hosting Rotarians from Uruguay on a Group Study Exchange. Through connections with the Rotarians in that district of Arizona I was able to obtain the contact information of one of the visiting Rotarians from Uruguay, Daniel Pagliano, who helped me tremendously with information about the Universities here and much more.

After two years of emailing back and forth with Daniel, I finally got the opportunity to meet him in person! He contacted me early last week to welcome me to the country and offer his help any time I needed it. He invited me to my first Rotary meeting last night and sent Walter, another Rotarian from his club, to come pick me up. Walter gave me a tour of Montevideo along the Ramblas which lines the beach of Montevideo and then we picked up his wife and headed over to the meeting.

At the meeting I was greeted with such a warm welcome and surprised faces because I could speak Spanish---Spanish that still gives me a way as a foreigner (even more than the red hair) because here they pronounce the LL words and words that begin with y differently than other Latin American countries. We ate a lot of meat cooked on a Parilla. There was blood sausage, chorizo and steak, and believe it or not, the once almost vegetarian Erin, is adapting to the carnivorous habits of Uruguayans.