For our orientation week here in Montevideo, we are lodged in a lovely hotel right on Las Ramblas, basically on the beaches of Rio de La Plata. As we trickle in from our separate flights, we slowly get to know the other American teachers as they arrive. The first ones we meet are our roommates.
And I have the most delightful roommate of all. At least the best smelling one. She comes sailing in on a sea of Lancome perfume, the stuff we can’t even buy in the US yet, and introduces herself in the most charming French accented English I have ever heard in my life. Matilda twinkles. She sparkles. She is ageless, timeless. Showing no trace of jetlag after a brutal flight from the US, she shrugs off the fatigue with a joie de vivre that would rival most twenty-somethings I know.
She just finished a beach vacation at her family’s summer cabana in the south of Spain. Matilda teaches elementary school in Virginia but grew up in France and Spain. She is at the bare minimum, trilingual. I think she speaks a few more languages I don’t know about. She pulls out a full size bottle of good red French wine and proposes a toast. We have a corkscrew? Where did that come from? Matilda is magic.
Our room has been transformed into a perfumerie. Scented candles perch in the bathroom. Full size shampoo and body wash with exotic French labels fill every space in the shower. How does all this stuff fit into a suitcase?
We toast to Uruguay, to each other, to the Fulbright program and to just about everything else we can possibly think of until way too soon, it is time to go downstairs and meet all the others.
I struggle to put on my sensible walking shoes. Matilda effortlessly tosses a scarf over her sweater. Tres Chic. She finishes the ensemble with a pair of knee high leather boots with heels. Where do all these clothes come from? I look like schlumpadinka. She casually runs a comb through her perfect blonde hair. Not one out of place. A spritz of Lancome, and, voila, we are out the door.
