Sometimes things happen.

As my Spanish teacher Nestor has been saying all along, when so many people live in the same house, conflicts are inevitable. I know, it's a really obvious thing to say, but things seemed to be going along so brilliantly when, suddenly, prejudices and personal insecurities struck down with an almighty ¡kaboom! Neither Monica nor I are personally involved in the hullabaloo, but the atmosphere in the pensión has been pretty high-strung all weekend.

Luckily, then, most of it was spent elsewhere. On Friday night, my co-worker Ana turned a quarter of a century, as she so fondly put it, and invited Monica and I to her birthday party. We brought along a horn for her, as yet, non-existent bicycle and spent the night partaying with her, her bf and their friends. As a side note, Ana happens to be another one of those people that make being in Montevideo so great; and like the rest of the Choike staff, has a really interesting background and insightful things to say (yeah, I'm a total suck-up... I know you're reading this, che*).

Saturday night and most of Sunday were spent with Leo, a co-worker of Moni's. He's involved in all kinds of grassroots organizations, as well as having been a militant opposer of the dictatorship (which has landed him in jail several times, as I understood it... I have to find out more), and is probably one of the most inspiring people I've ever met. The conversations we've had with him have been extremely interesting, and he's very encouraging and motivating when it comes to the potential that Monica and I have to accomplish things. On Saturday night, we hung out with him and his 1 year old daughter, Libertad (a real charm-troll, as we call such babies in Swedish) and later brought old clothes that he's collected to a community center he works at, where they, as far as I understood, provide poor people with food, broadcast community radio and - I think - have something to do with a factory workers' union. Later we were also given a beginner's lesson in playing tambore by him and his 11 year old son Nahuel. On Sunday, Monica and I cooked some food for Leo and his girlfriend Noelia at their place, and in the evening we went to watch Leo and Nahuel play in the candombe procession that beats its way through the neighbourhood every Sunday night. Though we weren't a huge amount of people, the music and the atmosphere was really lively and uplifting, and we met some fun people that we'll hopefully get to hang out with some more in the future. Monica and I have been trying to do some informal research about the Afro-Uruguayan population and culture, of which candombe is an important part, and the more we learn, the more excited we get about being here, especially when being invited to partake in such a vibrant expression of it (take a look at the photos under 'Tambores'). This, of course, goes to say for all aspects of society here; the more complexities we discover, the more fascinated we become, and with that, also more attached to the place and the people.


*I'm working hard on appropriating the slang down here.