I'm not dead....just lazy

I know that i haven't blogged in a long time, but i can confirm that rumours of my untimely death at the hands of a Brazilian drug lord are completely unfounded. No instead, as i sit on the roof terrace of my new appartment in Buenos Aires with a glass of Quilmes in one hand (its actually on the table so i can type but the hand image works a lot better in my head) I can reflect on two great months of rest and relaxation, of extravagance and excess but most importantly....of zero work.

When i last posted  I was returning to Floripa from Rio. The major disadvantage of writing so long after the event is that all my memories have become absorbed into one of two groups. 'Beach' or 'after the beach.' When trying to remember amusing things that happened 'after the beach' two events sprung to mind, the first of which involved us trying to sell our other friend chloe for 20 reais (8 quid) after a night out because some Brazilians confused her for Pamela Anderson, and we needed money for a cab.

The second is yet more ridiculous as, having missed the last bus and with no cabs in sight, we accepted a lift from a crazy middle aged Italian woman. The rest of the story needs to be told from two angles, firstly what me, nick and Simao II saw as none of us speak Italian. We got in the car and our friend Giv was happily chatting away in Italian with the woman and we began to set off towards home. While her driving was irratic to say the least, we were prepared to overlook this fact as we were apparently getting a free lift home. It was only after about 15 minutes when the woman turned around and screamed 'f**k you guys' at us that we began to realise the arrangment may not be going that well. Then Giv said something else to her in Italian, we drove on a bit, and then he said something else and she dropped us by the side of the road within walking distance from home.

What actually happened as we found out from Giv on the walk home, is that the only reason we had got a lift is because Giv had promised this woman that we were having a massive party and that she could come if she drove us. After 15 mins Giv then admitted that there was no party, hence her strong reaction. Giv then told her there was actually a party (when she started driving again) an then finally that no, there definitely was no party (at which point she chucked us out the car). Its only through writing this down that i can appreciate exactly how mental the whole thing was. I feel i've learnt my lesson though......don't trust italians


As the end of my time in Floripa approached and with many of my friends in the midst of exams, I  decided to shun the 'gap year' stereotype and went travelling for two weeks to a little known place called Peru. Bungee jumping, the inca trail to Machu Pichu, the Best cooked brekkie of my life, i had two incredible weeks shared with an awesome group of people. If anyone is to blame for the puns that follow its Dan and Mikey, two Aussies who were with me for the whole trip, which happily coincided with the ashes.

I then returned to Floripa for a week to pack my things and say my goodbyes. I had really good leaving drinks at a bar called chopp de Gus, which misleadingly doesn't have a shop or a goose. An American would sue you for less. Then it was back to England for some cracking 21sts, including a great trip to Barcelona christmas with the fam and two great visits to Bristol.


Whilst i was undoubtedly keen to get started with the second half of my year i will admit i was really enjoying being back in the UK and so i booked my flight for 2nd of Feb. This meant that Ben, a good mate of mine from Bristol who i had (begrudgingly) agreed to live with, had to find us a flat by himself.

One of the main things that i expressed to Ben via skype whilst he was busily flat hunting was that the location of the accomodation was vitally important. We had agreed that Palermo probably be the best area to be, and so I was a little concerned when i heard that the place Ben had found for us was in Almagro, not least because it sounds a bit like someone with a speech impediment saying 'i'll mug you.' However, my fears were instantly allayed on arrival, when i saw that on the building across the road from our flat, someone had graffitied the words 'Almagro de mi vida, de las drogas, mi preferida.' I was able to loosely translate the message as 'Almagro is my life, its full of drugs and thats how i like it. Whilst the threat of turf wars and general gang violence is an obvious downside of being in an area renowned for drugs, i was able to take two positive things out of the situation.

1) my spanish isn't as bad as i thought it was.
2) Having drugs so readily available close by means that i don't have to cross town (which would have exposed me to the threat of being robbed, run over or ridiculed in some way) in order to service the unfortunate penchant for crack i seem to have picked up in Brazil.

In any case Ben did really well for us as the flat itself is an absolute 'petardo', which  giv has informed me is the literal spanish translation of 'banger'. Iv got a really nice room but the roof terrace is the undoubted highlight with a distinctly moroccan soukh vibe in one corner. Im sure we have a lot of fez-tivities to come up there. We also have a house dog called pippin who has some strange habbits including poking me while im sleeping and licking my feet. As well as Ben and pippin, i am sharing the flat with Eva, Rocio and Lukas;  two argentines and a german respectively. We get on really well (i did mention the war once but i think i got away with it) and we speak in spanish which is after all what im here to do. We had a 'family' barbecue on my second night where i performed the crucial role of that guy that stands there and blows on the flames every now and then. I won't lie, i did it pretty well.

As you may remember i visited here last semester, and loved it. If you combined the nightlife, culture and cuisine of Paris with the cheapness of Peru you'd get somewhere close to B.A. Imagine, if you will, enjoying a meal of red wine and steak frites....served by a llama. Welcome to Buenos.Aires.

As my job starts on monday (at the ungodly hour of 11 i might add) and so i have had a fair amount of time to relax and enjoy myself. We've been out a couple of nights and i have managed to cross bit off of my to-do list. I have always found its better to aim low with a to-do list because then you can be a massive underacheiver, but still have that great feeling of crossing something off. Some of the things i have crossed off so far include;
charge my phone
unpack
eat some steak
see if pippin can fly by lobbing him off the balcony (Ben's addition)
put credit on my phone
brush my teeth

you get the picture...

However i have managed to finish the 2000 word essay i had to write in portuguese for Bristol. Its fair to say i was stuck in a bit of a vicious circle where my essay was ruining my year abroad and my year abroad was ruining my essay.  Anyway I was pretty happy with this acheivment, not only because i managed to fit it inbetween  charging my phone and brushing my teeth, but also because trying to speak spanish whilst writing an essay in portuguese is bloody impossible. The closest comparison i can draw, apart from repeating the same situation but with two different languages, is to imagine if that woman from the m&s adverts started moonlighting at Mcdonalds. Linguistic overlap is impossible to avoid, and some poor customer would get 'this is not just a chicken nugget, this is a battery farmed, oil soaked, 3 week old chicken nugget'. Im not sure the analogy works perfectly but you get the point.

Overall I feel like i am settling into Argentinian life as well, and i dont feel like as much of a standout gringo as i did when i first arrived in Brazil. However my time here has not been without the occasional  moment of cultural misunderstanding. Like the time i didn't realise that the man who casually dropped a pack of tissues onto my lap on the tube was expecting some form of payment for  them, and was not just a friendly individual, acutely aware of the problems caused by the hayfever season. As i innocently went to put said packet into my bag, the man returned and started shouting at me in unintelligable spanish. So i gave him the tissues back.
I only thought later that i should have accompanied it with 'if you've got an issue, here's a tissue' but i probably wouldn't have conveyed the sense of the phrase in Spanish. Anyway, considering the size of the guy i was happy just to have made a KLEENEXcape with my health intact.
 

Although work starts soon, I am pretty damn psyched for the months ahead.
Anyway,  I hopefully should be back to once a week upadates, and I promise the next blog won't have any more crappy puns

Hasta la vista