You guys are ready?
Yes!
Hi!
Hi!
Alright, I'm Thomas. I'm from Montevideo, Minnesota as we call it the sister city of Uruguay.
I'm Katie. I'm from Montevideo as well.
We're both seniors.
This class is where those seniors are.
How is it called though?
Juniors.
Juniors and seniors.
Like half of juniors, half of juniors and yeah.
Don't ask.
Um, we have a question.
Do you guys have like amusement parks with rides and things like that?
You can't call them that amusement parks if you compare them to ones in the US.
Yeah, like they're trying over there.
The scary thing about the roller coaster here is that you just care that you will fall down.
It's scary.
We ended up Skyping these kids from a school in Montevideo.
Fifty years in the past, you know, that wasn't possible.
Sometimes you wouldn't even have a picture or, you know, a mindset of what's across the world.
With technology now, you can find out what a city you've never heard of looks like.
So it's really cool to have that privilege to connect and learn something about somewhere other than where you are.
We also got a chance to talk to students from an American school and that was interesting to see the stereotypes.
Question.
Can you guys think of S?
What do you guys think of?
I think of guns.
I think of a McDonald's sign over Machu Picchu.
No evolution at all.
I mean creationism.
What's his name?
Donald Trump.
Do you guys have a Costco?
I love Costco.
I love Costco.
Okay.
And hey, you have to, stuff simply doesn't exist.
Yeah.
Like, you want to go bowling.
Have fun going 300 miles.
There's four times more cows than people.
Damn.
What do I do?
The most amazing thing that I always experience whenever I go to the United States is whenever
I go into a supermarket and I see the cereal lane, like the amount of cereal, the variety,
who consumes that much cereal?
Some of the stereotypes were that we eat McDonald's, we drive big trucks that say, like, America
on them, and that we all have guns.
Oh, I have a question.
In the U.S., there's, like, you can make the stereotype of, like, weapons.
How common are, like, weapons?
Guns, firearms.
A very high percentage of people, especially around here, own some kind of guns.
That is incredible.
I thought that was a stereotype.
I thought that was a stereotype.
Besides the Internet, we don't really know how life is in other countries.
But I don't know if mass communication is a bad thing.
I think the opposite, because it opens the world to everybody.
I grew up with social media, so it hasn't affected me, but it has, like, coexisted with me.
I think gaining knowledge of the world and exploring different cultures shows you how small
the space you occupy in this world it really is.
If you learn these things when you are young, you can adopt them for life, and that will
help everybody to create a better world.
We're all the same.
There's a huge connection.
Maybe cultures don't look the same when you first glance at our music, our activities, our sports.
We all want a good future, and we're just growing up and just living.
So have you guys ever seen snow before?
No!
No?
I've never seen it before.
I've never seen it before.
Do you have snow?
A lot, a lot.
Is it a good thing?
It seems.
Can you make a snowman?
I want you to make a snowman.
Do you want to?
Do you want to go with us?
Every trip.
Usually from, I'd say, November, probably November to March, we have snow for that entire time.
Here in winter we just get the cold and the rain.
We tend to think that we are a small country, nobody knows us, nobody cares about us.
It could be frustrating because sometimes they mistake our country with Paraguay.
Uruguay is a little country in the middle of a whole piece of land.
Brazil is huge, Argentina is huge also.
And then there's a little piece of land that's Uruguay.
And you will never think that people know where Uruguay is.
And they say, oh, Europe, that's so great.
No, not Europe, Uruguay.
Do you only think people know about Uruguay?
Football.
You mentioned you're from Uruguay and there is football.
We have really good artists and filmmakers and photographers and painters and musicians.
But football is the only thing that really moves money here.
It's different like Montevideo, the city, with all the rest of the country,
because the rest of the country is basically campo, farms.
But I would say that what describes Montevideo best is de mate,
tordafritas, techivito, barbecue, de asado, and music.
You will need first a mate, straw, and some grass or herb, hot water also.
Take your grass or your herb and fill your mate.
You have to bounce it this way so that the grass comes to one side.
You start pouring it in the empty side.
You have to wait until the grass absorbs the water.
They are progressive.
They decided to legalize marijuana, one of the first countries in all of South America.
As a way of heading off, the drug cartels, they have socialized medicine.
So anybody can go to the doctor and no matter how poor they are or how sick they are,
they're not going to be afraid of not being able to pay the bill.
They have a strong renewable energy sector and they have strong environmental protections.
They have a grass-based agriculture system.
Rather than raising corn and feeding them on feedlots, the cows are raised on pasture.
And it's a different type of meat. It's a healthier type of meat.
What is interesting about the country is that they aren't afraid to try things.
How many people live across the population?
Probably up to 6,000, I'd say.
How many people live in the amount of video you're away?
It's like the country, so we have to help people.
Yeah, my definition of small just change.
We are this world connected now through YouTube, through Facebook.
And that's why these person-to-person exchanges are so important.
Because you get past the stereotypes and you get to see people for who they are and their values.
And you make a connection that goes beyond the stereotypes or the preconceived notions of who somebody was.
And you connect on a heart level.
How many people live across the world?
I do think this is quite new to our generation of connecting around the whole world.
Especially because of the technology boom that we're having.
And I think it will change the world because people will understand not to be narrow-minded
and thinking just about themselves and the people around them, but also just encompassing the whole world.
When you are growing up, you are more open to modify your personality.
So you are in a stage of life that is very, I know, you suck all the experience
and suck all the behavior from the people and you are more open to modify yourself.
You have Montevideo, Minnesota, which is like a really small community.
And you have Montevideo, Uruguay, which is a big city in South America and a huge population.
What do these two have in common?
There must have been something that the founders saw in these two cities that made the relationship what it is.
And clearly it's been something important if it's lasted this long.
I think it will change the world.
Maybe if you want me then all of these will go away.
Maybe if you want me then all of these will go away.
Maybe if you want me then all of these will go away.
People think that a city is just a big concentrated area of people and there's not much between them.
But if you look at this community, for anyone who's a part of it, they realize that we're more than just a city.
You could call us a family.
Like our scholarships, we go around to all the small businesses and ask for donations and everyone gives to it just because we're just a small community like that.
A lot of outdoor activities, like hunting, fishing, that kind of stuff.
But then again we're also really proud of our sports teams.
I have gone three times there. We're the first time with the choir in 1990, the second time in 2002 to begin my work as a president of art and culture committee, and the third time to visit my friends.
It is difficult to define a culture from a country that big.
We don't really know how people actually live, we know what films tell us.
I love Star Wars. I'm expecting to see the seven episodes.
When I was at Eastwood, John Fard.
As a photographer I try to satisfy my curiosity and I just make this trip to Montevideo, Minnesota.
But when I arrived to the area, arrived to the rural area of Minnesota, it was very similar to the rural area of Uruguay.
You know, U.S. and Uruguay, we have maybe a similar age since the independence, like 200 years.
We are full of immigrants from all parts of the world.
For me, it was not only to talk about a tiny town in Minnesota or the U.S.
I was talking about more how the identity is completely, all the time, building and how the humans' behavior are in a cultural space.
It always happens the same. They want to be together, they want to have some sense of community.
Uruguay is not a big country. It's about as big as Washington State in the U.S.
and proudly boasts a population of only 3.3 million people.
About the same as Berlin, Germany, and uncannily resembles the shape of Utopia, as mapped by Sir Thomas Moore in 1895.
A country with well-aligned priorities, which are firmly based on family, community, and quality of life.
A country that in 2008 had the second highest literacy rate in Latin America after Cuba.
The idea of connecting with another culture and learning another language, seeing the world for the eyes of another country, is really essential today, going forward.
As a result, when you travel, you see your own home more clearly.
When you come back, your own home does not look the same as it did before you left, because you have seen the world with other eyes.
In the past seven years, let's say I've moved three times from Switzerland to Argentina to here, and now I have friends all the way from Singapore to Australia to the United States and even here.
And I know that there can be a lot of culture shocks, but it can teach you how people in other places live, and it can teach you just how to respect others, and it can make you a better person as a whole.
The world is not just about the culture you live in, but all the cultures that encompass it.
Our mother is Rubea, and our father is Polish.
40 years living in New York.
There is where they meet.
So your mom is from here?
Yes!
I love the U.S. I like very much, but the roots are something strong.
Understanding and peace, trade, entrepreneurship, all that can benefit from this more expanded world view that comes about through sister city exchanges like this.
What's the point of having a... I have no idea, because I don't know what's the relationship between the two sister cities.
Maybe because you know that names relate things to concepts, so maybe there could be a similarity in the warmth of people, maybe, or that is what I would like to think.
Did you know something about us being like sister cities, because I think most of us found out today you have an Artigo statue.
Yeah, we have like a fiesta day, which is like honoring our sister city relationship when we have queens and princesses that get voted for.
We are the Uraguay and Montevideo, Minnesota.
Gilda Bata-Glice is the president of the Uraguay-Minnesota Partners' Organization in Montevideo, Uraguay.
And basically, she's a professional educator, and so she came into classrooms and talked about the history, the culture, the music of Uraguay.
It's been such a wonderful exchange. Our eyes have been opened to different ways of looking at things, different ways of doing things that I don't think we would have seen any other way.
The interchange offers the opportunity to know how people live in our countries and to compare and interchange cultures, to make friends, to have a lot of opportunities to learn and to increase their humanity qualities in the interchange.
The sister city relationship between Montevideo, Minnesota and Montevideo, Uraguay began in 1905 when the city of Montevideo, Uraguay sent Montevideo, Minnesota a flag.
And so we returned in kind and sent a flag down there and began to correspond.
Things started to kind of gel, though, in the 1940s with the development of fiesta days as the town's celebration, and it took on a decidedly Uraguayan theme.
Then, in 1949, the people of Uraguay gave us the Jose Artiga statue.
When I get to the city, I start to see the Artiga statue of the national hero of Uruguay in the middle of the square.
And a very intense identity approach because these Minnesotans who live in the city start their own interpretation of the identity without any Uruguayans.
So it's very special.
Because we are not only a small country, but the national character is, we, how do you say, humble.
The idea that there's another city which other people consider very important, though we are something to appreciate in strength for us.
You know me, one thing I can tell you is you got to be free, come together, right now, over me.
Artigas is, like, when you were younger, they told you he's perfect. We centered in history and other, like, social sciences. And you see, like, both sides. And you see, like, he was human, and he had a thousand problems, and he still did what he could, and I think that's the most amazing thing.
Not that he was perfect, but that even though he wasn't, he really tried it.
Right now, over me.
Montevideo, Minnesota and Montevideo Uruguay have been having an exchange since 1905, so 110 years. It's one of the largest, longest exchanges between two cities in the world.
And you are here, Victoria is here because of an organization called Partners of the Americas, Minnesota Uruguay Partners of the Americas, which funds travel exchanges.
Come together, right now, over me.
Minnesota Uruguay Partners is a chapter of Partners of America, and that was started by the Kennedy administration. It was right after Fidel Castro took over Cuba, and there was some concern that we needed to have more soft diplomacy, more interaction.
There was a fear that communism would spread throughout Central and South America.
Kennedy, when he was president, said, kind of the same time he was creating the Peace Corps, let's pair up individual states with countries in Central and South America and create a Partners of the Americas.
It's basically soft diplomacy, it's people-to-people exchange, and the way it works is that the federal government, you can apply to sponsor travel exchanges and get airfare to go to Uruguay, where people from Uruguay can apply and get airfare to come to Minnesota.
And different states have different relationships, so you have Wisconsin as a partner with Nicaragua.
Well, this kind of partnership is in several fields.
Population in risk, art and culture, education, veterinary, forestry.
And we exchange around everything from agriculture to technology to art, policy, prison reform. It's basically designed to have professionals in fields exchange with each other professionals in those fields and learn from each other.
It kind of made me question more and think about more like why we have a sister city and how we're connected and that kind of stuff, because before I never thought of it even.
I think it's definitely changed me to look into just like the small things. It's kind of cool to dig deeper into things that you just think are everyday things.
Everyone has their certain perception of different places in the world, and usually they stick to it until they've experienced it for themselves.
Friendship, connections, serving to the communities that are the most important things of partners are very essential to find behind the under complication, the problems, the war, all the things that happens in the world now.
So as much as we can do, the better.
Well, we have another class coming up, so we have to go right now.
The benefit of a sister city relationship is that the ability to have another part of the world that cares about you, where you're welcome, and where you're learning.
The way siblings learn from each other, growing, and then when you're in trouble, you help each other out.
It's that kind of feeling that this world is not such a dangerous place, that there is friendship across continents to be had.
It's that kind of feeling that this world is not such a dangerous place, that there is friendship across continents to be had.
It's that kind of feeling that this world is not such a dangerous place, that there is friendship across continents to be had.
It's that kind of feeling that this world is not such a dangerous place, that there is friendship across continents to be had.
It's that kind of feeling that this world is not such a dangerous place, that there is friendship across continents to be had.
