Hopefully not Spanglish

Aprender otro idioma cuando tenes treinta y un años es una cosa más dificil de hacer cuando eras un niño. No quedan nuevas palabras en tu cabeza, y el miedo de equivocarte en conversación es más fuerte. Además, el paso de mis estudioas aqui (veinte horas por semana) es más intenso que algún curso en mis escuelas in Inglaterra. Eso me cansa a veces, y tambien me frustra. Los Argentinos en la calle hablan muy rápido, frecuentamente no saben cómo hablar más despacio para los extranjeros.

Pero, como con algunas cosas dificiles, vale la pena, y aun más porque, cuando sos adulto, el proceso del saber es más transparente. Entonces, cada día, cuando estas caminando en la calle, sientes un emoción pequeña. Al principio es porque entiendes unas palabras, después las formas de oracións, y finalmente (sólo a veces para mí), puedes participar en conversacións rápidas alredador de la mesa en tu hostel.

Y cuando soñas en español, o empiezas a usar formas en español cuando escribes en Inglés, o entiendes un canción por la radio, sentés una destreza nueva formando en tu cerebro. Por supuesto, yo miro a la punta de un iceberg, pero de todas maneras eso me gusta. (Y, claro, mi profesora me ayudó con esto texto!)

Dog days and dodging decisions

One of the joys of travelling is that generally you don´t have to take decisions if you don´t want to. The last 3 weeks, mas o menos, have been thus - a period of procrastination over basic choices. In Mendoza, I took 2 weeks to decide where to go next and, having decided to come here to Bariloche, I spent another week deciding how long to stay. Constant ruminations over these life and death issues have resulted in my most idle and frustrating period of this trip. But the snow arrived a week ago, skiing is planned for next week and I have enrolled for another couple of weeks in a new, improved Spanish school.


To fill in the time since my last blog, recently I have mostly:

• been on my first long bus ride (18hrs) across the pancake-flat wilderness of the Pampa between Mendoza and Bariloche;


• seen an evening of locals exhuberantly dancing the Argentine samba in the public square opposite my hostel;


• been attacked by a Doberman while its owner stood by doing nada; (and while we are on that theme, I have also taken the hostel´s dog for a walk during which it got into a fight with a street dog - a fight that splattered blood on the pavement and windows of a restaurant);


• shared two travellers´first sight of snow (and first snowball fight);


• grown a beard;


• and said goodbye to several good friends made in Mendoza, including my lovely "mother" in the hostel there.

My home here now is another small, quiet hostel. It´s out of the way a little, a few blocks above the main streets of Bariloche. Most of the inhabitants, including myself, are young long-stayers: Kate, the ever-procrastinating Sydneysider; Jotape (JP, Juan Pablo), a Cordobeso looking for work in the tourist industry here; Camilo, the wise Columbian who has cycled here from Buenos Aires and who will be returning to Bogota by bike to introduce his new American girlfriend to his mother who he hasn´t seen in 6 years; and Chris, a Texan ex-military guy with a penchant for all things spiritual. It feels like a cross between a student house and a halfway home for intransigent youths, but it is a very happy place, and even the temporary interlopers settle in quickly to the rhythm of the place - usually Columbian cumbia at 4 in the morning.


At the end of this week I will have been at school for 6 weeks, so I think my next blog will have to be in Spanish. Sorry in advance!

You know when you´ve been Tangoed

I fell in love with Argentina last night. Call me a tart (and I have been this week), but I fell for the gentleness of the people of Lao within days. New Zealand took longer before the solitude and frontier-like nature of the South Island found its way under my skin. But if NZ is still developing its identity, Argentina´s intoxicity (!?) stems from a surfeit of cultural and social influences crammed into one nation.

Last night I took my first tentative steps of the tango, a bewildering contradiction of control and passion. After learning a few basic moves, I exited the dance floor and, their toes now safe, Mendocinos from 20 to 70 strutted their stuff. Apart from the 1... 2... 3... 1, 2, 3... rhythm, the defining features of the Tango are, it seems, graceful improvisation without limit, and couples´gravity-defying leans towards each other as they twirl around the room. Every pair had a distinctive style, easy to differentiate but difficult to define, each being a mix of various holds and flourishes and different levels of theatricality. I sat for 2 hours sipping Fernet and Pepsi (a bitter, black drink which puts every other in the shade of bland incipidness), enchanted.

The highlight of the evening was an Argentina samba, much slower than its Brazilian namesake. Superficially a cross between a Morris and a Line dance, dancers tote handkerchiefs that somehow, to eyes admittedly tainted by the local brew, become expressions of their honour, pride and love.

The cliche goes that Argentines are arrogant, but that they have quite a bit to be arrogant about. It´s hard to disagree.