It's that time again...

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Yet again, I start a blog with apologies for how long it has been… I’m beginning to sense a pattern here!! The truth is, as always, I’m lazy, I never have enough time to do anything, and I don’t think I’ve been doing anything of note. But then I do realise that what to me is “nothing of note” may actually interest some people. So what I’ve decided to do with this blog is share with you some of the things which make up my daily life over here.

Since I last wrote, things have just been carrying on as normal. We’ve got one more month left until the winter holidays, and it will be nice to have a break. I haven’t really taken advantage of any of the long weekends we’ve had so far this year. Partly because I’ve been trying to save money for the winter break and also because I’ve got a lot more work on this year, and if I fall behind with any of my marking etc I’m really in the oven, as they like to say over here.

And so, here follows an insight into my daily life, broken up into sections. Each section is something which could be regarded as “important”, however the order has no bearing, it is simply the order in which I thought of things!

Tapitas
Tapitas are the plastic lids on the bottles of coke etc. Don’t worry, I’m not going crazy, there is a valid reason as to why these play a rather big part in my life! There is a charity over here who collects said tapitas and recycles them to buy hospital equipment. One of the teachers at school started collecting them, and put a collection box at school, and having grown up with Blue Peter and all its yearly Appeals, I didn’t need much encouragement to start collecting too. I would berate my students who even contemplated throwing away an empty bottle without first removing the tapita. I would take them off colleagues bottles before they threw them away. At home, I started collecting them, and lining them up on the breakfast bar in colour order. My landlord even started collecting for me and brought round a bagful. When I went travelling in the north, I carried on collecting (and am rather proud of certain tapitas from brands only available in particular regions…). However, things have got worse. I’m now so attached to the pile of tapitas on my breakfast bar (I say pile, there is more than 200) that the thought of handing them over to be recycled fills me with fear and worry. Whenever I look for something in my handbag, I generally find a handful of tapitas, but not whatever it was that I was looking for. One of my friends calls me a cartonera. The cartoneros are people who go through other peoples rubbish to find anything they can recycle for money, or just anything that they could eat/use/wear…

Stickers
I have started collecting stickers. Something that I haven’t done since the good old days of the Premier League sticker albums of Primary school days. Here there is a brand of sweets called Yummys which are little bags of gummy sweets, and they always have a sticker in them. Ironically these are aimed at the tween market, hence the stickers being High School Musical, Winnie the Pooh, Barbie… However the best ones for me were the Disney ones, with Donald Duck being the holy grail…
Somehow I ended up being in competition with Al, one of my colleagues over these sticker collections. You see, it doesn’t just stop at Yummys. Biscuits (again, those generally aimed at kids) also have stickers. Any big movie that comes out does a whole load of promo work with biscuits and stickers it seems. So my folder at school, where I keep all my registers now has the front cover totally covered with stickers. I’ve just started on the back. As for Al… he’s still got to complete the front cover…

Football
Like I said, this list is not ordered my importance, otherwise it would be shameful to have football languishing at a lowly third!
It should come as no surprise that football is a big part of my life here. I admit, it did take me a while to fully integrate myself into the Argentine way of football. But now everything is sorted! I have my team, San Lorenzo. I’ve been to a couple of games. The last game I went to was back at the beginning of the season when San Lo whooped River Plate 5-1 at home, and it rates as one of the best experiences I’ve had in this country.
Football is a passion in this country, something I can relate to, and the coverage is phenomenal. Unlike England, every single game of each fecha is televised, with the minority being on pay-per-view. Which means, that if I wanted to, I could easily watch 6 or 7 games a weekend… and that’s before we start counting the Spanish and English league games I also watch. Don’t get me wrong, I do have a life… but if I’m stuck at home with 30 odd compositions to mark on a shitty Sunday afternoon… some people might stick a movie on, or listen to their ipod… me? It’s the football. Which could explain why it takes me so long to do my marking, as every time the commentators get slightly excited, I have to stop what I’m doing to check it out…
But it’s not only the matches. Everyday, on at least one sports channel there is some kind of review programme, or debate or something. You can’t escape football in this country, so why try to fight it? Embrace it like the beautiful sport that it is. My knowledge of Argentine football is now on par with my knowledge of Spanish football, and probably above that of the Premiership.
And to tell the truth, I do get a bit of a kick about being able to beat a 14 year old boy in an argument about football…just please don’t mention the result of today’s clásico con el Globo…

Coffee…
…is my lifeline. I’m convinced that if anyone cut me open, they would find coffee running through my veins instead of blood. It’s quite common for me to be out of the house for 12 or 13 hours, and coffee is often what gets me through the day. One of my friends works in his brother’s locutorio, and he always has coffee in the machine. I pretty much walk through the door and he’s throwing a sachet of sugar at me as I make my beeline to the coffee machine.
I’ve got into the habit of reading my horoscope as I stir in the sugar to my coffee. I use the excuse that I’m practising my Spanish… whatever the reason, there is something soothing about creating a whirlpool in the centre of my polystyrene cup whilst glancing at the horoscope before getting onto the more important part of the newspaper: the sports section. Will I ever actually read a newspaper from beginning to end?? It makes much more sense for me to start at the back with the sports… I mean it’s not like there is ever anything important happening in the world….
Talking of newspapers, Wednesday is always a fun day, as it’s the day of the Saucepans and Frying Pans section. Somehow, the title sounds nicer in Spanish: Ollas y Sartenes. Whatever language it is, I’ve not turned into a kitchen appliances freak, the OyS section is the cookery section. So it should come as no surprise that I always pinch the extract from the newspaper at my friends local to take home and add the recipes to my scrapbook.
Hmm… I realise that this section was more about Nacho’s local than coffee… but as I can’t really have one without the other…

Empanadas
Empanadas are brilliant. I’m sure I’ve written about them before, they’re one of the national dishes of Argentina, and are like little pasties. They come in all different shapes and sizes and flavours, and everyone has their favourite.
Thursday night has turned into Empanada and beer night. As we’re taking a break from Tango, for various reasons, Thursday night has gone from being Tango night to Empanada night. There is a bar round the corner from our school that has long been a favourite of teachers there. I guess the fact that their empanadas are not only cheap, but tasty helps a lot. The beer is also cheap and chilled, and there will always be football showing if there is a match to be shown… What more could you want?!

Emglish… a.k.a Losing my English
I’m an English teacher. I spend my days spreading the beauty of the English language. So could someone please explain to me why my English is rapidly deteriorating? It’s bizarre. The ironic thing is that my knowledge of the English language and it’s components is increasing on a daily basis. Yet my spoken English is diabolical. I pepper my speech with Spanish words, and it’s not to show off, it’s because either I can’t remember the English word, or I don’t realise I’m doing it. Sometimes I manage to stop myself, most time I don’t. But that’s not too bad, it’s to be expected as I live in a Spanish speaking country and spend most of my time speaking Spanish. The main problem is I’m starting to speak bad English. I find myself making the same mistakes that I’m constantly pulling my students up for. I confuse the tenses. I use false friends (those words which are similar in the two languages, but have completely different meanings). I’ll say know when I want to say meet. I’ll say notices when I want to say news. As for have and be… don’t even get me started. And don’t try and tell me I’m overreacting. I’m not. I’m not the only person to have noticed this. And thankfully I’m not the only one who does it… Al is just as bad… if not worse…
But I don’t mind… and you won’t find me apologising if future blogs are written more and more in Spanish… it’s just too hard to think all the time in English…



And so, I’ve managed to write a whole lot of rubbish about the most random things possible, but hopefully you may now have more of an insight into what I do. Actually you probably don’t, as I was pretty much rambling most of the time, but hey…

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Photos

Despedida de Dianne
We had an asado at home to send Dianne on her way back to the land down under

Manu Chao @ Luna Park
Manu Chao concert in BsAs