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Published: June 26th 2008
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And suddenly we were into our last few days in BA.....
On Thursday my class was supposed to start a little early to enable me to get away to go volunteering but the school was still closed when we arrived! As the lesson passed the skies turned grey and by the time I set off to grab some lunch there was a miserable drizzle falling. This is not ideal as the place we usually work with the kids is outside! As it was raining even more heavily by the time we arrived there was no option but to squeeze everybody into the tiny indoor room. Luckily not quite as many kids turned up as the week before but even so, with 5 volunteers and around 15 kids we were all on top of each other. Everyone had got pretty wet getting there too so it was a cold and damp afternoon. This, of course, did not bother the kids and they all worked really hard. Elisabeth, who I was working with, was racing through her worksheets and desperate to do more. Yonatan tried to get away with doing ones he had done the week before but eventually we got him
onto something harder. As it was my last day I wanted a few pictures of the children but then some of them got hold of the camera and I ended with lots of pictures of backs, shoulders, walls and ceilings! As kids queued up to get their daily jug of hot milk for their families we packed up and I said goodbye for the last time. That's the problem with travelling - you have to keep saying goodbye....
And then more goodbyes on Friday - to Ode, the Norwegian girl with whom I've been studying for 4 weeks and to my excellent teacher Cecilia. Due to the nature of language lessons, particularly at a reasonably advanced level, you get to know the people in the class and the teacher very well as you spend a lot of time talking about yourself, your life, your interests, your opinions and suddenly you realise after a few weeks that you know these people really well...and they know you.
Saturday we finally made the trip out to San Antonio de Areco - a gaucho town about 2 hours on the bus from BA. It was a chilly day but the sun was
shining and it was pleasant to walk around the low rise Italianate streets. The town is surrounded by the huge expanses of pampas dotted with estancias which Argentina is famous for and has an annual festival celebrating all things cow and horse. We crossed the festival grounds and some muddy streets of small houses to an old estancia that is now a museum, in the main dedicated to an Argentinian writer who wrote a famous book about the gauchos of San Antonio. The house was full of photos and pictures of local people from many years ago and amazingly intricate silver and leatherwork that is used to make the kit for the horses. Probably most interesting is the entrance which is through the original pulperia (kind of grocery shop which also served drinks and food) which appeared in the book which was the centre of town social life.
We were also shown around a local silver workshop by a very enthusiastic girl (who had spent a month living in Wimbledon and, I think, thought all of the UK was like that!). The workshop is a family business, started by the father who only died earlier this year. He was
self taught but travelled all over the world to learn and then sell his goods. They even had for sale an antique silver knife made in Sheffield (where I grew up) to which they had added a new handle in the workshop. While not really my taste, the work involved in some of the pieces is amazing and we saw a part finished silver trophy which will be for a polo prize in the US which they have been working on for 3 months but is not finished yet. There will be a silver horse on the top which weighs 1kg...solid silver!
And we couldn't leave BA without revisiting the best restaurant we had found. There's always a danger that a place won't be quite as good a second time around but Sunday lunch at La Cabrera lived up to the previous visit. After our last visit, my Dad told me that the restaurant was actually mentioned in the travel pages of the Times a few days later....see how with it we are!
Our friend Gabi was supposed to join us for lunch but had been in bed all week with a chest infection. However, she did manage
to join us for coffee and a final chat before we have to say goodbye. She is such a lovely warm and welcoming person I really hope that one day she manages to make another trip to Europe and we can reciprocate her hospitality.
And suddenly it was Monday....luckily we were able to stay in the apartment till late afternoon as they had no new tenants so we had all day to sort ourselves out and managed to fit in a final Freddo's ice cream! And then we collected our deposit, collected our bags and headed for the bus station for our next adventures. But more of those next time...
Hope you're all enjoying the sun and Wimbledon...we're freezing here!
Lots of love
S + H xx
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