Greetings from Uruguay

Ok, I thought it would probably take a thousand lifetimes before I ever write those words. I certainly never would have imagined one year ago I would be in beautiful Montevideo today. Another piece of evidence on the wonderful fluidity of life.

The formal piece of the CIEE program has been over for five days, so it’s back to tourist mode. I spent three more days in BsAs, came across the river to Colonia del Sacramento for a day and yesterday arrived in Montevideo. Tomorrow I begin the long sequence back to the states.

Some impresssions of Uruguay, though again I’m mindful of the limit of my own experiences. Beginning with the obvious, this is a small country wedged between two much larger countries (Brazil and Argentina). Just looking at a map you can easily conclude that Uruguay’s fortunes depend to a large extent on relations with its larger neighbors. Actually being here reinforces this conclusion.

Uruguay has an active tourist industry with many visitors coming from Argentina and Brazil. This place has two main draws: beaches and low prices. Of course today (June 17) is just a few days before the beginning of winter so that part of the economy is in a bit of a lull. Also while I've been generally pleased (from a very selfish point of view) about price levels in Chile and Argentina, we seem to come down just a little bit further when we crossed the River del Plata.

One final note for this morning, then it's time to get out and see more of this city. It has been a little crazy keeping track of money values while being in these three countries. In Chile the about 480-490 pesos equals $1. (so everything is in the thousands, tens of thousands, sometime hundreds of thousands), in Argentina the 3 peso equals a dollar (remember this is after several years when the exchange rate was fixed at 1:1), in Uruguayan peso is about 20 to 1 dollar. This means I've had to adjust to a new mental map on prices/currencies/value/etc every five days. It's been a challenge.