Some animals of Uruguay

La Yerba Mate, a national beverage of Uruguay

Mate, mate everywhere! Uruguay, Argentina and Paraguay are well-known for mate, a hot beverage similar to a tea. It's actually an infusion of yerba mate, leaves from the mate bush.

The thermos is filled with hot water and the mate (container for the yerba leaves, historically made from a dried gourd) is constantly replenished with the water.

You drink the tea through a bombilla, a strainer spoon that is unique to the Southern Cone region of Latin America.

It is very common to see people walking with a thermos under one arm and the mate container in the other hand as they walk down the street, get on the bus, at a game, everywhere.

This is a typical vending machine at all gas stations. Put your thermos under the spigot, pay about 50 cents (U.S. equivalent) and your thermos will be filled with hot water.

Do you see Alcito near the spout??

At the open-air market. Typical leather carriers for your yerba equipment so you can always have the bombilla, thermos, yerba leaves, sugar, and mate container with you. 

At the hotel where we stayed, everyone dropped off their empty thermos before breakfast and on their way out, picked up their thermos full of hot water for their day's supply of mate. It costs about $.50 to fill up a thermos.

A common yerba mate container for the table or carrying around.

The purple hot water thermos at school, in the teachers' break room. (the break room was actually just the kitchen.)

You can see the mate container filled with the yerba leaves. They fill the mate almost to the top with the leaves and then pour the water over the leaves and let it steep a bit. They stir it with the bombilla as it's steeping.

You can see some dulce de leche in the bowl to the right of Alcito. They often spread this on bread for morning snack time.

Mate containers for sale at a local market. They are sold everywhere.

Bombillas for sale, straw-like strainers for drinking the yerba.

This is in the chambers of the Maldonado government house. (similar to a state house). You can see the man in the middle with his thermos, drinking mate. 

The pages in the Chamber were busy running back and forth with thermoses, filling them with hot water for the representatives. A bit different from  our visit to the Augusta Statehouse with Ana in February 2013. We didn't see even one mate drinker in Augusta.

More Animals of Uruguay

Animals of Uruguay, Part II

Lots of sheep. Here's a museum display related to preparing the fleece to spin for wool. In Colonia de Sacramento, Uruguay.

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Alcito on a school field trip at the Museo del Mar (Ocean Museum) in Punte del Este, Uruguay. We went with the students from Maestra Ana's school.

This PEZ LUNA was on display at the Museo del Mar. It's a HUGE fish. Do you see Alcito in the photo? He's on the bottom right, behind the description of this Moon Fish. 

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One student at Escuela Nº 72, the rural school we visited in Calera del Rey, Maldonado, rides his horse to school everyday. His horse stays in the field during the school day.

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Hornero birds are very common in Uruguay. Their nest is made of mud and it looks like an old-fashioned oven. El horno is the Spanish word for the oven.  Thsi bird's name, hornero, is derived from their nest.

In two of the photos below, you can see an Hornero pair in a nest they built on a statue of Artigas in a plaza in Punte del Este.  In the third photo, there is an hornero nest atop a sign post in the Nature Reserve that is right next to Maestra Ana's school. (in Solís)

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The snake in these photos is called a Víbora de la Cruz, Snake of the Cross. This preserved víbora is on display at the Reserva Indígena in Solís, a 5 minute walk from Maestra Ana's school.

This snake has its name because the pattern on its head looks like a cross and on its body, the pattern looks like the letter "C".  The guide talked about this snake at the beginning of our tour to remind students that it's a venomous (it's a pit viper snake) so they should be careful. It was winter (July in the southern hemisphere) and the guide said that they are hibernating so rarely so you see them during this season.

Alcito thought this snake was cool!

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During another school field trip in July 2013, I saw this mass of moving worms on the grounds of the Sculpture Park of the famous Uruguayan artist Pablo Atchugarry.

They moved forward very slowly, all as a group, and they were so interesting. The mass was about 8-10 inches long with the larvae all piled up on top of one another.


I asked my daughter about these (she's an insect / cool bug aficionado) and she discovered this about them:

"Based on descriptions online, my guess is Perreyia lepida or Perreyia
flavipes for the species. Either way, they're toxic to livestock,
causing illness and/or death when ingested.
 
Apparently the reason they form big masses like the one you saw is to
move faster ("think of the bottom caterpillars as an airport moving
walkway for the ones on top")! Here's a neat youtube video someone
made to explain the phenomenon."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kbFMkXTMucA

Foods of Uruguay, Part 2

Chivito and Papas Fritas - Chivito is a national dish of Uruguay, usually served as a sandwich, with a side of french fries.

It contains beef, ham, bacon, mozzarella cheese, hard boiled eggs, tomatoes, peppers and lettuce.

Alcito is enjoying his Chivito meal here, on the first day of the trip, during our orientation week in Montevideo. It was one of his favorite Uruguayan dishes.

    

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Beef is the most common dish in Uruguay but due it's Atlantic coast, there is quite a bit of seafood too.

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Flan is a typical dessert in many Spanish-speaking countries. It's an egg custard type of pudding.

In Uruguay, it's often served with Dulce de Leche, a caramel type sweet. It has the consistency of nutella and is very common.

The students at school have a mid-morning snack of dulce de leche spread on bread.






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Beef, beef, beef everywhere. Here Alcito is eating some meat with Maestra Ana and me.

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¡POSTRES! ~~ DESSERTS!

  Breakfast buffet in Montevideo, including an apple tart.

Ice cream sundae dessert

Alcito was invited to a birthday party in Pan de Azúcar, Uruguay, and this was one of the cakes.

These round cookies are very popular. They are called OJITOS and the center is filled with quince or dulce de leche. Can you figure out why they are called Ojitos?? (hint: el ojo = eye)

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Almost every single house has an asador, a bar-b-que type pit for roasting meat, usually beef but sometimes chicken.

You can see the asador at the end of the small building, with the chimney. This building is on our school grounds, right near where the children have recess. She said they have "asados", a special grilled meat bar-b-que gathering, at school, for special celebrations, fundraisers or just for fun.

This is an asado that Ana's family prepared for me on my first day at her house in Pan de Azúcar. The beef is from her own cattle. She and her family have a shared family house in the Uruguay countryside and her brother tends the animals.

 

This melted mozzarella dish was one of my favorites! The cheese is placed in a cast iron skillet, covered with herbs and drizzled with olive oil, then put on the asador, as in the photo above.

It's served with bread and it's a delicious appetizer.

Homemade paella on the asador at Ana's house. Her sister prepared this big pan of paella for the Pan de Azúcar Lion's Club dinner that we attended.

This was a cool squash that was a typical ingredient for the students' lunch at Ana's school. Here I am in the school kitchen. 

School meals are home-cooked every day. There are about 140 students in Ana's school. Lunch is provided for all students (and teachers) in all Uruguayan schools; students do not have lunch accounts or pay for lunch. It's funded by the national education budget to assure that all students have access to a healthy meal.

Somewhat related, every school has a weekly visit from the Policlínica, a federally-funded health clinic built into a coach bus. All students have free medical / dental care available once a week.

Visiting a rural school, Escuela Nº 72, Calera del Rey, Maldonado

We spent the day at a rural public school on Thursday, July 25, Escuela N° 72, outside of Pan de Azúcar. Beautiful, rugged countryside with lots of sheep and cows.  There are five students in the school, age 5-11, and two walk to school, one comes on horseback, and the other two on moto. School is from 10-3 and they eat a homemade dinner at school. All the children have an X-O laptop, part of the national Plan Ceibal program and there is internet at the school, with a strong signal. The school is heated solely by the fire in fireplace. We played some games I use in class and the students had insightful questions about life in U.S. and Maine. Precious children, eager to learn. They were curious to learn about anything related to the U.S. and they shared their traditions and culture with me.

All the students, Maine Moose Alcito, Maestra Alejandra (she's the English teacher) and Maestra Susan from Cape Elizabeth, Maine.

Maestra y Directora Sara, Ana, y Susan

With all the students, in front of Escuela Nº 72, Uruguay

                                                      

                             I liked being in front of the fireplace, the only heat source in the school. Remember that the seasons are reversed in the southern hemisphere and it was cold in July. VERY few homes and buildings have central heat.

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 The road to the school, lots of sheep and cows grazing.

                              

                        The school's entrance is off to the right. 

   

                                               

                                    Escuela Nº 72, in Calera del Rey, Uruguay

         

                A student's horse to the side of the school

Introductions, our first activity

Looking at Sra. Dana's photos of Maine and the snow.

                  The trailer video of Maestra Ana, from Pan de Azúcar, when she stayed in Maine, Feb. 2013. Her first time seeing a snow plow. Here's the video of shoveling on our snow day, a no school day!
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An English class notebook. All the students, from kindergarten on up, learn English with the Maestra Alejandra.  We practiced a bit in English and made a simple video. NOTE: Still editing the video, will add the link soon.

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Lunch time at the school. Almuerzo is the main meal of the day in Uruguay so it's a hearty meal. We all sat together and talked during lunch, the daily routine. After lunch the children had recess. Teresita prepared delicious chicken, potatoes and salad, followed by fruit for dessert.

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We hope to have a digital classroom exchange when the school year starts in Cape, our fall of 2013. Can't wait for our students to learn from one another via internet and letters.

Animals in Uruguay

I've seen a lot of different animals in Uruguay. The most typical are dogs, cats, cows, sheep, goats and chickens. Some Uruguayan animals that we don't have in Maine are the carpincho and the teru-teru.

I already posted a photo of the carpincho (capybara) but will post a few more. They are docile and seem content to just munch on grasses. Photos are from two different outings, one at the Reserva Indígena in Solís, right near Escuela N°14. 

 

  

Carpinchos at Área Natural Protegida Indígena.

Carpincho on a farm

Carpinchos hanging out in the background, at Área Natural Protegida  Indígena.

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The teru-teru is a bird that got its name due to the sound it makes. Their nests are on the ground and they often squawk if they perceive a threat. They sometimes fly around and create a ruckus in a spot that is not near their nest to try to trick you. The teru-teru is southern lapwing in English. It is indigenous to South America and they are often found near the Río de la Plata.

Here's a video I took of two teru-terus trying to scare us away when we were at the Fundación Pablo Atchugarry on Wednesday. They flew really close!

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