Ahoy Mate!

Let me take a minute and tell all of you about one of my favorite things in this country...mate.  Mate (pronounced MAH-tay) is a drink sort of similar to tea.  It is a very social drink (not alcoholic, for all you baptists who just gasped) and almost always is included when friends get together.  It is served in a gourd usually, which is called the mate.  The actual leaves are called yerba (SHER-ba), meaning herb.  So the full term is yerba mate, but is usually shortened to mate.  You drink it with a straw, called a bombilla (bome-BEESH-a).
This is how it usually goes down, germ freaks beware.  There is one gourd, one bombilla, and one server.  The server pours the yerba into the mate, shakes it a few times to get the dust out, places the bombilla in the yerba and down to the bottom of the mate, then pours a few drops of very hot water onto the yerba until it becomes saturated.  The server then sips it down.  The server always takes the first "hit" of the mate because it is the strongest.  He then pours more water on the yerba and passes it to the next person and they sip it down.  When they are finished they give it back to the server and he pours more water on it and hands it to the next person.  This goes on until everyone has had their fill of mate, or until the leaves lose their flavor.  You can also add a sprinkle of sugar on the yerba before you add the hot water each time, but I prefer it without.  In summer months, it is made with cold juice (or what they call juice...more like tang really).
This drink was made popular by the poor people in Argentina because it has appetite suppressants in it so they would drink it when they were hungry.  It also has stimulants in it, the main one being caffeine (cafeina), but in mate is called mateina.  The coolest thing to me about this is the fact that EVERYONE takes it EVERYWHERE.  Anytime I am on campus, at a park, or just out, there are always groups of friends sitting around drinking mate.  I'd say about 8 out of 10 students always have a thermos on them.  It seems as if having mate on you is as much of a necessity as clothes themselves...or maybe more so considering the lack of clothing on some people.  Anyways, I definitely plan on bringing the tradition of mate back to the states with me.  So my friends who are terrified of drinking after people (I am not going to name names, but you know who you are) will just have to get over it and experience the delightfulness that is mate.

JM