Summary: Chrystal and Brian Johnson share their views of Uruguay after their first four months living in Uruguay.

Brian's Perspective:

So we've been living in Uruguay for just over 4 months now. We've had several people ask us about our views of Uruguay now that we've been here and it's a little more than a first impression.

From my perspective, Uruguay has surpassed my expectations from anything that I could have imagined. There is very little on the web about Uruguay. We came here blind. Meaning, we never visited, we just took the information we had in hand and moved here.

The city of Montevideo is beautiful. From the parts of the US I've lived in, you never see architecture like you do here. There are some amazingly beautiful old buildings. There are some run down areas too. The sidewalks may not be even, but they carry a lot of character… being that every tile was hand laid.

The city is very modern from what I was expecting. There are buses and taxis everywhere. You can buy a lot of US goods down here… It's very cosmopolitan here. It's funny that you see a lot of TV stars from the US on advertisements down here… Jack from Lost advertising cologne… The hot Desperate Housewives chick advertising hair products, it's kind of random.

The malls here are just like the malls in the US, except the food courts here tend to have better restaurants… but they do have McDonald's and Burger King here, they are a plague on the world. The movie theaters play the same movies that are being played in the US, except it's a fraction of the price to attend a movie in Uruguay (U$S 5 or less for a matinee). Even though the majority of movies in the theater are in English with Spanish subtitles, we watch all of the most current movies at home on Graboid… It's just easier because Zoë can't sit still for that long…

The bars here are similar to the bars in the US, except they are college town prices… A beer may be U$S 4, but it's a liter of beer… I have yet to see Captain Morgan in Uruguay, but hey… no worries.

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About the Author Brian and Chrystal Johnson -- and daughter, Zoë, live in Uruguay and started the site ExploringUruguay.com. They had trouble finding information on the web about moving to Uruguay, especially for young families not of retirement age. So, they decided to create the Exploring Uruguay Website, Blog and Forum to help other expats. In addition to their Website, they also wrote The Expat Cookbook designed to help expats cook favorite foods from scratch. A great option your favorite foods either aren't available abroad or are too expensive!

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First Published: Oct 13, 2009