La llegada

It has been almost two weeks since I arrived in Uruguay and already I have come to love and appreciate all of the people and their rich traditions.

Arriving here was quite the experience though! There where complications with my paper work and I was not allowed to board my connecting flight from Houston to Buenos Aires. Thus, I had to stay in Houston for a while and I got to know the airport quite well until I finally departed the next day at 9pm. When I finally arrived in Montevideo, Uruguay, I was so fearful there would be no one there to meet me as the language school had sent someone the day before to pick me up and I was still in Houston. But thanks to the Rotary family and its strong connections worldwide, I was able to call Rotarians in Tucson who then used their connections and got the District governor of Rotary in Montevideo as well as the District governor elect to greet me with a big Uruguayan welcome and help me cart all of my luggage to my host family’s house.

At first, their way of welcoming caught me off guard. In the United States we usually extend a hand to shake and there seems to be, as a Uruguayan rotaractor put it, “una distancia” (a distance) between strangers. In Uruguay though, the custom is much different: men usually shake hands upon first meeting and then from there, once they have developed the friendship, they greet each other with a cheek to cheek kiss. The women always greet strangers, men or women, with the cheek to cheek kiss and I wasn't expecting that from people I had never met. The way they greet each other says a lot though about how warm and inviting the culture is here, it's easy to feel at home.