Advertisement
Published: September 2nd 2014
Edit Blog Post
I have been super busy since last week. On Wednesday I made Spaghetti Bolognese for my family, which they absolutely loved! They have asked me to teach the daughter some of my recipes so she can cook for them after I leave! I have been organising a lot of exciting classes recently at the school, stimulating debates and nuclear war with the older students and the simple duck, duck, goose with the younger ones. It is nice walking down the corridors and having almost every student shout "Hi Danny!" It is also rewarding in the sense that I can already notice a growing confidence with the students with the spoken English, and I am delighted that my presence has helped them improve in such as short sense of time. It is also making me realise that I am unusual and lucky to have been able to have so many experiences in my life and seen so many wonderful sights, something both the teachers and students find fascinating about me. Of course I still get the usual nonsense questions about Harry Styles and such, predictably from the younger girls, but on the whole the pupils are interesting to learn about my culture
and my daily life in England. It is a shame that this is my last week working at the school here in Quilmes, as I moving to a different town and school next week. I hope it is a good as the one here.
On another note on Friday I turned 20 years old! I have now entered my twenties (a whole new decade of life) which a little scary as I feel like a proper adult now! I worked during the morning on my birthday and then I got the bus in to Buenos Aires. I met my friends Ellie and Josie at a hostel and checking in we went for a bite to eat at the nearby square. After this we returned to the hostel and relaxed, before getting ready for the night to come. first we went to dinner at an Arabic restaurant around the corner from the hostel, which was nice. The Argentineans are such wimps when it comes to spices and exotic flavours that it was nice to experience a different flavour palette after weeks of rather bland food. After dinner we went the flat of one of our friends who works at the
camps with us, Isaac. We had some drinks and met some of his other friends, and Zack from the camp joined us there too. After some drinks we left for a club. It was free entry until 1am, but annoyingly we arrived at 1:07pm, so had to pay 120 pesos to enter. This meant I didn't really have much money to buy drinks in the club so it turned out to be a rather long night. The event was a masquerade party, and we all got given a mask when we entered to wear. It was electronic music all night and the venue and DJ were cool. I got my face painted with fluorescent paint, so spent the night wandering around with glow-in-the-dark, bright yellow eyebrows! We left the venue at around half 5, and went back to the hostel to sleep. After only 4 or 5 hours sleep we got up, not wanting to waste a day in the capital lying in bed. We went to the supermarket to buy eggs and ham and cheese, and returned to the hostel to make omelettes for lunch (we were running out of money so could afford to eat out). As it
was a lovely day, after lunch we headed out into the city, and caught the subway across to the other side of the city. We went to the district of San Telmo, which is really nice. It is an older-style district, with quaint cobbled streets and a bustling art scene. We mooched around the market in the main square looking at the antiques and indigenous-style instruments and alpaca wool jumpers. We grabbed an ice-cream in the local parlour (a delicious lemon and orange combo for me) and then we looked inside the oldest café in Buenos Aires, which was like stepping back in time. The bar was lined with old-fashioned original liquor bottles and the tables were all completely covered in names, were being have carved their names over the years. We also checked out the nearby church which was nice as well, before returning back to the main square to catch the subway back to Palermo (where our hostel was). By complete coincidence we bumped into two other camp councillors we know in San Telmo, and they invited us to go to an asado (more or less an Argentinean BBQ) that evening at Arturo's flat (another councillor). We thought
it sounded good so after going back to the hostel briefly to change we walked over to the flat. It was about 40 minutes walking distance away, and en route we passed through Palermo Hollywood, a really nice area which is popular with tourists due to the abundance of restaurants and bars. The apartment building was really nice and we met them on the roof terrace for the asado. We were joined by lots of other councillors who I haven't seen in a while so it was awesome to hang out and catch up with everyone. The view of the city from the roof was amazing, and we sat drinking amazing national wines and eating the meat as it came off the grill - incredible. I couldn't help feeling a little jealous of the rest who are living full-time in Buenos Aires, it is such an inspiring and diverse city I would absolutely love to live in my own flat there. At about 2am some of us left and went to a local pub/bar nearby, where all the music was Argentine. After lots of dancing and drinking we got back to the hostel to sleep at around 7am. The next
morning was rough as we had to check-out at 11am so we were all knackered after such a crazy weekend. Ellie went to meet up with her Godmother who lives in Argentina, so me a Josie took the subway across the city again to the port. On Sunday the weather was amazing, the harbourside was thriving because of the beautiful weather. We had a meagre lunch of empanadas (the money situation had gotten pretty dire - I left BA with all of 30 pesos, roughly £1.50). I then said goodbye to Josie and took the bus back to Quilmes, where I pretty much did nothing and went to bed early. Yesterday I was working in the morning which was hard work, firstly because I was still pretty tired and secondly because I had the whole day in the primary school and some of the classes were naughty and hard to control. After work I came back to the house for a siesta and then my family took be out for dinner as a belated birthday outing. We went to a restaurant in the brewery (Quilmes is famous for producing the Quilmes beer which the whole country drinks) and I had
a nice meal out with them. They also gave me a birthday gift of a nice leather wallet which was really thoughtful. It's a shame I'm leaving the family this week because they have been really great and made me feel so welcome in their house. I'm going to cook a nice meal for them on my last night here to say thanks for everything. I'm going to working a lot of camps this coming week. I'm working Thursday - Sunday at the camp, then I'm going to a different camp in another town Monday - Wednesday, before returning to the original camp venue Friday-Sunday. After the camp next Sunday I will be moving to my new placement in Hurlington, a different city which like Quilmes is only about 40 minutes away from Buenos Aires. I hope I'll be fortunate and have a lovely family and good school again.
D X
PS. I have literally been ill for almost three weeks now, so I finally took action and bought some strong medicine from the chemist. Fingers crossed I will improve soon or I might have to brave an Argentinean doctor...
Advertisement
Tot: 0.054s; Tpl: 0.012s; cc: 11; qc: 29; dbt: 0.0253s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb