Montevideo: South of the Equator

April 15 is the day chosen by the Paul McCartney to come and play here in Montevideo, Uruguay. More than 50000 people will be hearing him singing songs from The Beatles, Wings and from his solo career.

The entire country is excited and full of expectations. The first 28000 tickets sold out in 45 minutes, a week later 5000 more tickets were habilitated to be sold, they also sold out less than 45 minutes. The rest of the tickets were sold by travel agencies and by Paul McCartney’s web site.

Personally, I am extremely happy and I still can't believe that I will be attending. After the concert I hope to be sharing some pictures with you.

This is going to be, for sure, the biggest musical event in the history of the country.

St Patrick’s Day was celebrated all around the city, many parties took place. It all started during last Saturday afternoon and it lasted until morning.

One of the most traditional parties is the one of the "Ciudad Vieja", the old town. Some Irish Pubs are situated there; so many shows took place, ending with thousands of people partying on the streets. The celebration was a success and now we can only wait to see what happens next year.

Like a Guinness Storehouse sign at Dublin says: "Everyone's Irish on March 17th".

The Uruguayan Carnival ended this month. Many parades took place and we were all able to see creativity and imagination in its most pure way.

What makes special our Carnival is the presence of the "Murgas" a special kind of music group, their lyrics make reference to the events that took place during the year, making humorous comments and inviting to reflection.

This year’s winner of the Murga Category is "La Trasnochada", but that does not mean that it was the only good one. Actually, this year all the groups reached a really high level and competition was very tough.

I will share some old videos with you to make you feel more familiar with this music. I hope you enjoy them!



Agarrate Catalina - Niño del fin del mundo

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dw61qzcNDYE&feature=related



Agarrate Catalina - La Niebla

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=njK70ffjIkM

The Anual Mitting of the Inter-American Development Bank (http://www.iadb.org) has been taking place this year in Montevideo, Uruguay. Many events and meetings took place all over these days, for example the lectures of Julio Bocca, Director of SODRE National Ballet of Uruguay, Oscar Washington Tabárez, Trainer of the National Soccer Team and Luis Alberto Moreno, President of the Inter-American Development Bank.

One of the conclusions reached during the activities is that Latin America expects a satisfactory 2012 with a regional growth of 3,6%, based on the results achieved on 2011.

The Mitting involved the entire city and it was an opportunity for all of us to share and enjoy. During the weekend, many sports activities took place, finishing with a free entrance concert where many national artists performed.

After days of searching for the right topic to start with my posts, it was today, searching at a local site (www.montevideo.com.uy) that I found something that I consider to be really interesting.

The article I read made reference to an index made by The Heritage Foundation (http://www.heritage.org/), it explains what is nowadays the situation of Uruguay, both in a local and international context. (http://www.montevideo.com.uy/notnoticias_160961_1.html - Spanish) (http://www.heritage.org/index/pdf/2012/countries/uruguay.pdf - English)

It also has a lot of general information about my country which might result useful if you want to know more about Uruguay.

Probably this post turned out to be too serious and impersonal, that’s not the idea of this blog, but I thought that this general information would be a good starting point. In the future I will make more posts about news, but also about our daily life here in Montevideo, Uruguay.

Montevideo, Uruguay

-Gabriel Najman