Punta Carretas Shopping

During the application process and training for the EY CR Fellows Program they described an experience that necessitated a fair degree of roughing it. Tales of no air conditioning, dirty hotel rooms, sharing desks, being cheated at every turn, and the ever present threat of violence filled our heads. Uruguay is not a place I had ever considered coming to. I barely even knew where it was and could not pronounce Montevideo to save my life. In short, I had no idea what to expect.

You can imagine my surprise when I found that I am living in the best hotel in Montevideo with all the amenities you could hope for (including a bidet!!!). The food wasn’t the bad Mexican cuisine I had in my imagination. My office at Clausen is much nicer than my accommodations in Columbus. The people are friendly and only rarely have I felt that someone was trying to pull a fast one on me with money. This is anything but roughing it.

My hotel is connected to a beautiful three-story shopping mall with over 200 stores that could easily rival any nice mall in the US. Many of the stores carry familiar brands and anything I could need is there. A short walk and an elevator ride puts me in the mall without even exposing myself to the beautiful weather outside. There is a full grocery store on the ground floor of the mall where I can get my cookies, cerveza, y vino. There are three movie theatres in the mall, showing a total of eight movies at any one time, most of which are in English with Spanish subtitles.