"Checking for Understanding: determination of whether students have "got it" before proceeding".-Madeline Hunter
I want to like Uruguay.
Honest.
I really do. After all, half of my time in South America is going to be spent here.
But the wind.
It never quits blowing.
It starts the moment the airplane door is flung open as we land in Montevideo. We blast across the tarmac to the terminal like thistledown sails in a typhoon.
The gale follows us to the hotel, as we disembark from the van facing the Rio de la Plata, which looks more like Lake Superior on a bad day. I swear I see the Edmund Fitzgerald out the window. Nobody believes me. Whitecaps threaten anyone who dares to set sail on the menacing water. Of course, no one is out there. No one is walking the beach. Too windy. Too cold. Gordon Lightfoot won’t get out of my head.
The wind here is a temperamental, hormonal living entity: one moment tender and soothing, the next frigid and violent. But always cold, cold, cold. It slashes straight through us just like the abandoned farmhouses back home in FoldintheMap.
It is is our constant companion. Even when inside, it threatens. It rattles at the single pane windows like a dog seeking shelter during a thunderstorm. It whistles down the hallways of the hotel and distracts all but the most dedicated of us during our briefings. Even at its softest, it wails like La Llorona at night while we are trying to get to sleep. We are told the wind is a part of life here.
It bays from 22 miles away on the other side of the river in Argentina and picks up screaming speed and force across the icy whitecapped Rio de La Plata. It ruffles the tips of the beach grass like a mother stroking her child’s hair. I wonder aloud if they know about wind chill factors here like back home in FoldintheMap. No one says anything.
The locals stay indoors, in Montevideo’s shopping malls and movie theatres. The lines for the cinema stretch halfway down the mall. The only people here that are outdoors for any length of time are the gringo tourists and those that have to be. We have the sidewalks to ourselves. I’m hoping the rest of our week here will be calmer.
Or indoors.
