I spent last weekend at the coast with a few of my housemates and a group of uni students. In theory it would have been a wonderful weekend…but for a very boring visit of the common cold and cough which pretty much destroyed me! Anyone that has ever had the pleasure of living or working with me knows when I get a cold I get it way worse then everyone else and it lingers!! The biggest problem was being unwell I was seemingly unable to speak much Spanish all weekend which was frustrating as hell. Most of the group were French students who speak really good Spanish. I’ve met most of them before and managed to communicate well (with bad Spanish), but this weekend I felt like everything I was trying to say came out like Russian.., not helped by a croaky voice and sore throat! Coupled with the fact everyone else was enjoying a good drink, I wasn’t and in general was a bit boring and slightly miserable. And I hate being like that!

On the plus side it was a lovely location, great to get out of the city for some fresh air and space, very rustic, basic and charming. We had an Asado (BBQ) everyday, and sat round the fire to keep warm drinking (everyone else) and chatting. All though I was a little bit dour everyone was really lovely, and I met some unusual sorts. Including Ricardo who lives there all year, slightly eccentric genius painter who lives in an group of huts in the wood. He was the Asado maestro and cooked all our meat. How he assembled various bits of metal and wire to support and hold the meat was like watching the A-team in action. On the Saturday we went over to where he lived with the food for fajitas. I was slightly dubious how this was all going to work but out of nowhere a full stove was assembled over the open fire and we had a great meal. The Saturday night we had whole suckling pig which took seven hours to cook, and we didn’t eat till one in the morning, but the meat was SWEET! On the Sunday we headed up the beach twenty kilometres with two quad bikes and a 4×4. Massive expansive beach and sand dunes, a lot of fun! My flatmate Matias who was driving nine of us in the 4×4 along the beach found it amusing to drive through the sea….with the sun roof open…..just a tad wet after that!

All in all it was a good weekend, just gutted I wasn’t on form to enjoy myself more. Spent the following Monday and Tuesday in bed coughing and spluttering and still not entirely back to full health but getting there!

Disclaimer:
So I don’t offend my Argentine friends….this is all just my opinion!

One of the things I looked forward to most about my trip was all the food I’m going to try in different countries. Honestly it’s been a little disappointing so far here, but not without some highlights. In general the food is pretty bland, and the Argentine people for the most part really don’t like spicy or very seasoned food. But the biggest problem for me is how unhealthy the food is in general.

BA has a large Italian influence and there is pizza everywhere. But it’s not good (in my opinion..). It’s thick base and THICK cheese, I’ve been looking for thin base, stoned bake but given up now. And if you order something with cheese on it you are going to get a lot of it! Actually there is a good chance your going to get cheese on most things anyway. I’ve tried a couple of salads, but there has been so much cheese with them I’m kidding myself if they have been a healthy option. Then there are the empanadas which frankly will be the death of me. Not much is cheap here, but they are. You do need to know where you should and shouldn’t buy them, and I’ve had so many different standards and fillings. My Italian housemate has introduced me to one place which for me is head and shoulders the best I’ve tried! Five blocks from the apartment, and they deliver. I need to stop buying and eating them, but I lack something called willpower! Bread comes with everything also. If you go for dinner in the UK you may get a complimentary roll, or slice of bread….here you get a full basket for two people. Again the use of willpower would be good.

Other Italian influences here that are abundant are pasta and ice-cream. There are as many ice-cream cafes are there are coffee shops in the UK, and everyone here has an opinion on which is the best chain….so I’m trying them all to make up my own mind. Pastries and “Dulce de Leche” are big business here and the people definitely have a sweet tooth. In my first week I stayed in a small B&B and for most of the time I was the only one there, every morning at breakfast there would be a basket of breads, a basket if pastries, a plate of cookies and cakes, oh and some fruit.

So for the most part it’s cheese, pizza, bread, pastry, sugar……feel like I’m forgetting something…oh yes, MEAT!

Here the steak restaurants are called Parrillas, which is the large open grills they cook meat on. I’ve been to three now, and had great meat every time. The meat really is as good as I had heard it would be. And they take it pretty seriously. Again everyone has an opinion on which Parrilla restaurant is best, but a couple of people I’ve asked including my housemate simply don’t eat at them at all because for them cooking on a Parrilla is something they do at home when they have an “Asado” (BBQ). My housemate runs a guesthouse for students and they have a Parrilla on the roof terrace. He invited me to my first Asado with all the resident students and some of his friends, and the meat was good! It’s also a lot of fun…as are BBQs. Nice people + good food outdoors + lots of beer and wine….it’s always going to be a winning combination!

So the meat is extremely good, the empanadas are great and dangerous, and the ice-cream, dulce de leche and pastries are lethal….and I am getting heavier by the day. Coupled with the fact that despite bringing training gear, other then a fair bit of walking I’ve done no exercise, so my jeans are starting to hurt me!! Thankfully I did bring my best friends….leggings!

The other thing that’s tricky when you are somewhere you don’t know is finding good places to eat. There is a plethora of information online with people’s opinions of top 5 this or best ever that…but like this…its only someone’s opinion, and there is no guarantee you’ll share it. So last night eight of us went to a Mexican taco restaurant that a girl in my school had raved about, and indeed all the Internet reviews raved about the place. I told my housemate I was a going and he said it would be bad, but that he knew everyone else said it was great! Well it was really bad…tasted of nothing and all of us couldn’t believe the hype! But then that’s all part of the experience…being disappointed with the bad and elated when you find somewhere, or try something great!

So I did a ten week course, once a week two hours from April to July in very basic Spanish, and as I thought remembered nothing from GSCEs… I had then intended to do some homework revision everyday till I embarked on this trip; of course I did nothing. I got off the plane and could hardly remember to say what my name was. A lot of people had warned me of the differences in the accent here in Argentina, but I think I slightly underestimated it! And it’s not just an accent change, it’s totally different pronunciation of some letters, some different verb conjugations and a lot of different words used from Español España. That all said my biggest problem was I could not speak much Spanish full stop!

On my first evening here to get myself out of the B&B room I went to a “Spanglish” event in a bar. It’s something run four times a week here, and is somewhere for Spanish speakers want to learn/practice English, and vice-versa. The format is a like speed dating, in that you change tables every ten minutes, and half way through the ten minutes you switch from speaking to the other language. This first night I went I could hardly say anything in Spanish, but I met some nice people and got out of the hotel room. The next day I went to a different bar for the same event and somehow I managed to speak quite a bit more Spanish this time, and met some really nice people. I’ve since been about six times and each time I can hold much more of a conversation. Of course this is in part because I have been in Spanish school for 4 weeks now!……

So my Spanish language school experience:

I found a school just searching on the internet, and in general I was pretty pleased with the school. It was quite large, and right in the centre of the city downtown area. My first week I had a really fun class, mix of Oz, Belge, Swiss, English (6 of us in total) and two really fun teachers. And I really a enjoyed myself, all though I knew that I was way behind on my verbs compared to there rest of the class. The problem was that in class we are all stringing some sort of sentences together, but then as soon as we went for lunch none of us could say anything! At the end of the first week, one of my teachers suggested I step down a class, as the class would be moving onto past tense and I really a needed to revisit my basic verbs and tenses! So the following week I was in a class of 8, mix of Brazilian, German, Swiss and American. This time I just didn’t bond with my teacher, I think I irritated her. We did far less talking in this class, and It was much less fun. I’ve realised that I need to have fun to learn, which is why Spanglish has been a good forum for me to practice. I also had a couple of private lessons, which meant six hours a day. I know this does not sound much considering for thirteen years I worked ten hours a day, but learning a language is exhausting!! The private lessons were good, and I had a really nice teacher. At the end of the second week we had a mini test in the group class, and I did terribly. I think it always helps to read the instructions!! Anyway I think I was bit tired, really frustrated…left the class and then when the teacher asked me what was wrong I cried… Slightly embarrassing to say the least!! I walked three miles home, had a beer and felt better. The third week I only had two hours private on two days, and I had an easy week.

This week I started at a different school which I can walk to in fifteen minutes. It came recommended by one of the guys who was living in my apartment when I first moved in. He was from Norway, and had done three weeks intensive in this school and spoke really highly of it and he had learnt ALOT!

I’m really glad I’ve made the change. The school is much smaller, and I have been in a class this week with two Dutch girls. We have one teacher for the first two hours and another for the second two hours. The classes have flown by, the teachers are great as are my classmates. I feel like I’ve made some progress!!

The other Spanish lessons I’m really benefiting from is my taxi journeys! Most things here are not cheap, pretty much the same price or in some cases more expensive. Inflation is rising and rising. But the one thing that is cheap is taxis! So at night I take taxis everywhere…and I’ve found it an excellent way to practice Spanish! Partly helped with the confidence of a couple of glasses of wine on my way home, and I’ve been really lucky with some very nice chatty drivers…(of course there are some grumpy silent ones to!) . The other night I had three really nice drivers and had some sort of converstation with all of them…it’s a very very satisfying feeling that I’m finally communicating! The more I can learn in the next couple of weeks the more I’m gong to enjoy the whole year!