Monday, Sept. 14

We started the day off with a feast of croissants, dulce de leche, and other breakfast pastries at the hotel. Fully satisfied by our hearty breakfast, we took taxis to the renowned Buenos Aires Lawn Tennis Club, one of the oldest private tennis clubs in Argentina. This club has hosted numerous Davis Cup and Fed Cup tournaments where greats such as Jimmy Connors and John McEnroe have competed.

We were warmly welcomed and given two beautifully maintained red clay courts to use. After an entire week on red clay, we started to get the hang of the sliding, consistency, and finesse that thrives on red clay. As an exciting addition to practice, we trained with the #1 junior player in Argentina, 14-year old Carla.

After our 3-hour practice, we took a tour of the prestigious club including all 25 clay courts and the main stadium court. Luck seemed to be on our side as Kendra’s quick eye spotted a familiar face sitting next to the court – Argentina native Gaston Gaudio, 2004 French Open Champion with career-high top 5 ATP ranking.

Gaudio happily agreed to take photos with us and stuck around to talk with a few of our girls-especially Carmen because of her fluency in Spanish-even going so far as to offer a tour of his favorite places in the city. Ecstatic that Kendra recognized this decorated professional tennis player, we left the club having witnessed something every tennis player dreams about.

Still on the high of today’s excitement, we enjoyed dinner at local restaurant El Sanjuanino. Beginning the meal with some of our favorite empanadas, we enjoyed authentic tamales and humitas (sweet tamales), and topped the day off with ice cream. With such an eventful first day, there is no imagining what more excitement Argentina will bring.

- Chrissy Hu

Sunday, Sept. 13

On Sunday we packed our belongings and headed to a ranch in the countryside called San Pedro de Timote. It was a completely different experience from anything that most of the girls had ever experienced before. Just imagine a secluded place surrounded by miles and miles of grassy fields that is inhabited by all sorts of animals. There were chickens, cows, horses, dogs, sheep, goats, and donkeys, among so many others.

When we first arrived, we toured the whole ranch with other guests that were staying there. Our tour guide only spoke Spanish but thanks to Carmen, we were able to understand everything he had to say.

After the tour, we went to the dining room for lunch. Lunchtime in South America is the biggest meal of the day contrary to the customary dinner that we’re used to. When we walked into the dining hall, we were greeted by an incredible display of authentic Uruguayan food. All of us filled our stomachs with all sorts of meats and breads until we absolutely could not eat another bite.

Afterwards, even though we were all stuffed from the main course, none of us could resist all the homemade cakes and pastries that they offered us. Later in the afternoon, we all went down to the stable area for a horseback ride. There were around 30 to 40 beautiful horses in all different colors and sizes. None of us had really ridden a horse before so the gaucho had to help each of us mount onto the horse and show us how to steer it.

When we finally were able to get settled on the horses, the gaucho led us on a beautiful scenic trail around the ranch. The ride started off smoothly however, we quickly found out that not all of the horses feel the need to obey our commands. Some of our horses would not slow down, others would not speed up, and one of us had a horse that liked to nibble on your toes. Yet, all in all, the horseback riding experience was extremely entertaining and enjoyable.

After the horseback ride was our “tea time”. “Tea time” is around 4 or 5 o’clock when everyone usually enjoys pastries and tea. The amount of pastries that they had for us was unbelievable. There were so many things to pick from including different types of croissants and cakes. After our “tea time”, no one felt like they would be able to eat dinner later that night. That turned out to be true for just about all the guests except for us and a few other Americans. In South America, “tea time” is usually the last meal of the day so by dinnertime, people don’t eat anymore. As a result, we had a quick dinner and retired for the night.

The next day we packed up again and departed for Buenos Aires, Argentina!

- Tiffany Nguyen

Saturday, Sept. 12

Today was our first relaxing day where we had the opportunity to explore Montevideo on our own.

With no set itinerary, we decided to have lunch at a popular pizza restaurant before heading to the annual Montevideo art festival. This was a unique and interesting experience as we had the chance to look at all the different goods each local vendor had to offer. With fruits, leather goods, shoes and clothes, jewelry and artwork from local artists, each of us found something we wanted to take home with us.

Afterwards we all decided to go to a nearby shopping mall named ‘punta carretas’, where we feasted on some delicious ice cream while exploring the mall. Exhausted by our day of shopping, we headed back to the hotel where we relaxed before going to dinner at another local gem.

After a mouthwatering meal, we all ordered dulce de leche pancake , recommended to us by Valentina. This dessert, was comprised of a pancake filled with dulce de leche, an extremely popular milk based sauce similar to caramel, which in English translates literally to “sweet milk”. The pancake was topped with glazed sugar and served with vanilla ice cream on the side. Delicious! After dinner we went back to the hotel to pack up and get to bed early as we have an 8 o’clock start tomorrow morning.

- Aswini Krishnan

Friday, Sept. 11

We started off today by returning to the Carrasco Lawn and Tennis Club to practice with Valentina and some of her friends who are coaches at the club. We continued to adjust to the clay courts here in Montevideo as we practiced today. Several of us played singles while two of our doubles teams were able to play doubles for the first time since our season ended in May.

When we played against Valentina and her friends, we quickly saw that they were all very adept at moving on clay and had great touch. One of Valentina’s friends also let several of us try mate, a kind of tea that is popular in South America. After practice was over, we gave Valentina and her friends some UChicago tennis t-shirts as gifts and took some pictures with them.

For lunch, we went with them to the club’s restaurant where we ate milanesa, a thin, fried steak covered in bread crumbs. After lunch, we went to Bouza Winery, which is a boutique winery in Montevideo. The owner of the winery took our group as well as a few other visitors on a tour of the vineyard.

During the tour, she explained in detail how their wine is prepared and how they select which grapes will be used for the wine. She also showed us where the grapes are grown, the lab where they experiment with the taste of the wine, the room where the grapes are eventually made into wine, and the room where the wine is stored after it has been prepared.

After the tour, we went into an elegant dining room where we tasted three different types of wine as we ate snacks, which included bread and cheese. Thanks to Tiffany and Carmen, we stopped for ice cream on our way back from the winery. Since they had beaten him during practice, Marty had promised to let us all get ice cream later in the day. The ice cream was delicious so I think we are all glad that they won.

Later, we plan on having dinner with Valentina at the same restaurant where we ate last night. The service there was great, and our waiter was very friendly. We also enjoyed the laidback atmosphere as well as their wonderful food. So, we decided that we would go back tonight, and we are looking forward to another great meal.

- Jennifer Kung

Thursday, Sept. 10

Hola from Uruguay!

Today was our second day in Montevideo and it was full of several activities. Our first activity was a thorough tour of the city itself. We learned a lot about the history of its origin and other historical figures that have influenced Uruguay's culture.

One of our favorite sites was the burial site of Artiga. Artiga was known as the "father of Uruguay's independence." It is here where we got to take a picture with the soldiers that could not show any emotion and guarded the remains of Artiga in this gold capped cup.

As we continued the tour, we ended up stopping at the Uruguayan Parliament building. It is basically the center point of the city itself. Here we took a myriad of pictures again. Other sites that we visited were the Cathedral, the ambassadors houses, the Uruguayan World Trade Center Towers, and the new and old towns of Uruguay. We thoroughly enjoyed all the sites the city had to offer, and it brought us a lot of insight in to where we want to go shopping in the next couple days. Haha.

After the long tour, we were all hungry for some good Uruguayan food, so we met up with a friend of ours, Valentina. She took us to a place that was called Garcias. Garcias is known in Uruguay as the most famous place for beef. It sure did not let us down. We all ordered "baby beef" and lamb chops to share with rice and salad. So far this was our favorite meal because we have never had better meat before.

When we finished our meal, we headed straight to this five star tennis club on a full stomach. The club was called Carrasco Lawn and Tennis club. By far it is one of the most beautiful clubs in the country. It is here where we all got the opportunity to play on the Uruguayan red clay.

We played with much of the local talent there and made great new friends for the rest of our stay. I believe this was our favorite part of the day because we got to play against many young players with a variety of skills. It is fun to play against them because people in America do not play with the same type of tennis style. They have great touch, spin, and movement.

All in all, we are looking forward to see them again and play tomorrow. In the meantine, "estamos hambriento,"so we are headed to a late dinner at another local favorite with Valentina.

- Kendra Higgins

Wednesday, Sept. 9

After a year’s worth of anticipation and a long bumpy flight, we finally landed in South America.

Traveling with one coach and seven ladies on the tennis team right out of the Buenos Aires Airport in Argentina, we were thrown into an experience we never could have imagined. We soon realized that despite already loving Carmen, we loved her even more for her 100% fluency in Spanish.

While the members of our team who took Spanish through high school and college struggled to pick up words in the quick speech of locals, Carmen effortlessly bargained the price of our taxis and made conversation with our taxi driver on our way to women’s tennis team alumnus, Katie Dulmage’s apartment. Katie Dulmage welcomed us to Argentina by taking us to a cute café right by the apartment, where we made friends with our waitress who had recently picked up some English.

After a long, South American-style breakfast topped off by flan and a side of mouth-watering dulce de leche, we were off to the beautiful capital of Montevideo.

Thirty empanadas and a three-hour ferry ride later, we were greeted in Uruguay by our lovely assistant coach and native Argentinean, Valentina, and took a brief driving tour of Montevideo (thanks to Carmen’s translation) while listening to Spanish classics on the radio.

We topped the night finishing off some of the best pizza I have ever had, looking forward to tomorrow.

- Chrissy Hu