Sun-loving... Tango-dancing... and the odd bit of teaching from time to time...

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So yes, it's that time again. Time for Emma to update people on her life in the land of Diego Maradona and Evita... (I wonder how long it will be before I run out of cheesy Argie comparisons...)

Since my last update (48 days ago I'm informed by the TravelBlog people) life has continued to swim along.

I turned quarter of a century at the beginning of October and celebrated with a party chez-moi. I had to work on my birthday, which was rather strange as I haven't had to do any kind of strenuous activity on my birthday since I was at school. But it wasn't too bad. Both my evening classes were quite relaxed. I had a picnic with my adolescents and had cake with both them and my adults. Then in the evening I went out for dinner with the other teachers. The party we held on the Saturday, and apart from a hectic day spent trying to sort the house out and prepare food, it was fun! There will be fotos uploaded at some point... I just need to remember to bring my camera to school...

After my bday, the next event of any interest was the long weekend to celebrate Columbus Day... or as they now like to call it Día de la raza or something like that. They don't like to celebrate old Chris as he killed to many natives... Anyhow, it's by no means as straight-forward as it sounds.
I should probably explain here that Argentina is a country of faffers. Now I've lived in Spain, so I'm used to Latin bureaucracy... but here it's a completely different kettle of fish. There just appears to be no coordination at times. Take Columbus Day for example. It's usually a public holiday. And is one of the most important holidays for the tourism industry as it marks the beginning of summer, falling at the beginning of October. However, this year it fell on a Sunday, and no-one knew if the government was going to move it to the Monday so we could all have a long weekend. Eventually they decided to do so... the week before hand. Nice and organised there! However, after a lot of faffing on our part (it's contagious I'm sure), we managed to get our arses in gear and hired a cabin in the beach resort of Mar Azul. And I'm using resort in the loosest sense of the word. Don't get me wrong, it was just what the doctor ordered: peace, quiet and a beach. But it wasn't Benidorm by any stretch of the imagination.
However I wouldn't have changed it for the world. We had log fires lit for us every night and breakfast brought over to the cabin every morning. The beach was 100m walk over some dunes, and whilst the weather wasn't brill we still managed some bikini time (hell we're brits...). Even better the cabins had cable tv so I was able to watch the Spanish and English World Cup qualies (both of which were victories).

And what else? Well, not much really. I work, I eat, I tango, I sleep! On the work front, I've got a decent workload on now. I've a few more in company classes which means more money (good) and more stress (not good). But I do enjoy the one-on-one classes, and I've got a good relationship with all my students, so it's fun. My classes at the insti I'm still really enjoying. Even the hormone-filled ansgt-ridden teenagers I'm growing to love, and am not looking forward to saying good-bye at the end of term. But c'est la vie. This is the life I chose, and this is how it's going to be.
My tango-dancing is going from strength to strength. I LOVE it!! And I really didn't think I would. I remember when I was talking about going to Argentina, way back, everyone would mention tango, and I would scoff, and mention something about how I was more looking forward to getting into Argie football. Well the ironic thing is I fell for tango in a huge way, and have only just begun, this last month or so, to fully understand and begin to apreciate the football over here. Part of that is due to the fact that there is such comprehensive coverage of European football on tv here that I'm never at a loss, I can still follow Madrid and Liverpool as closely, if not closer than I did back home.
But back to Tango. I don't just love it. I need it. We go twice a week, and as well as using it as a de-stress method, it's fun, and relaxing. The other dancers (aka people who know what they are doing) are all friendly, and give us advice when they see us messing up, and the teachers are brilliant. What is even better is as we're progressing and improving, we're learning steps which are more complicated and fancy. My aim: to eventually be able to dance tango like Mark Ramprakash and Karen Harding on Strictly Come Dacing 2006....

And so, I've prolly missed out a million and two things... pero bueno... I've got class!! I will update fotos at some point, it's just that I'm crap at remembering to bring my camera with me to school!

Entonces, hasta la proxima...

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