General Impropriety

Getting up this morning was a bit of a trial! Thankfully, we had arranged to start work at 11 rather than 9, and I certainly needed my sleep! The leaving do turned into a bit of a late one, of course. We went to Veronica's at 9 for the asado (barbecue). Asados are nothing like barbecues at home, no no. They are massive meatfeasts with huge chunks of beef, breaded veal and chorizo sausage. I ignored all the sidesalads and went straight in there for the delicious meat slabs. I had managed to find some cheap champagne in the back of the fridge of our local shop, and we shared that between the lot of us. Red wine here also costs as little as 6 pesos - that's 1 pound 20, folks! Unbelieveable.

After the asado and much hilarity, we headed of to Oli's choice of bar, Tauro, which turned out to be a real spit-and-sawdust joint. As soon as we went in we were hit by the smell of smoke, rough men and general sleaze. Perfect! There was an impromptu tango dance-off and we made some random Argentine pool-playing friends. I'm not quite sure what time I eventually got to bed. I have to say that I was amused by Cuca's advice as we left the house before we went, though - she said "take a jacket, because it gets cold in the early morning and you never know what time you'll be in". She said all this with a wry smile. She was right, of course, and I'm glad I took her advice. I reckon Cuca's seen it all!

We had quite a pleasant morning in Arcoaires - we made bead necklaces and bracelets with some of the kids, and of course they kept going all over the floor. Then we played a board game that was a mixture of Pictionary, Charades and Blockbuster. Brilliant fun and really good for my Spanish! Later on we ended up playing "guess what animal I am" and I had a great old time writhing around on the floor pretending to be a crocodile (cocodrilo), and fell about laughing when I was being a crab (sadly I still don't know the word for this!).

There was a huge storm just as we were thinking of heading off. The skies here grow almost as dark as night when there is a storm, which gives me an odd creepy feeling. As usual, we were really sad to leave. No siesta today, so we went straight to the stark contrast of El Refugio. The power had cut out during the storm so we sat around for a while in the dark. I'm finding it hard to deal with Refugio - the kids are incredibly demanding, often not clean (I have lost count of the number of times I have been peed on - and worse), and play little tricks on us and so on. One of the kids who loves to climb up for a cuddle clearly needed a nappy change, and was wet right through - I pointed this out to one of the women, who took him away, but she didn't change his clothes so he was still soaking on the outside. I couldn't bear to pick him up, and there was nothing more I felt I could do to help. When this child doesn't get picked up, he starts to call for attention by destroying things and hurting people, so it is a real nightmare. Very frustrating.

Finally, I think today I saw one of the most wrong things - it was some sort of holy day (I think!), and all the kids had pictures of the Virgin Mary with a prayer on the back. One wee girl came up to me and started doing this rather inappropriate dance (no doubt gleaned from the endless hours of risqué TV that the kids watch) whilst holding the card in her left hand. The irony was not lost on me. Later on she went off to have her shower and appeared naked, and proceeded to do the dance! ¡Madre Mía!

I have spent the last hour and 45 minutes in the locutorio writing this and several job applications that are due tomorrow. I'm currently about to scream as the emails won't send and I fear all my work will have been for nothing... and that I won't get a job because of it. As Mike Skinner rightly said, it was supposed to be so easy. I hope it's worked - I have to leave now as we are meeting the boys in 45 minutes to go out for a meal - Oli is leaving tomorrow, so we are going to celebrate/commiserate one more time. Any excuse!

Just checked, email seems to have gone through. Fingers crossed, or as they say here, ojalá. Pues, ¡me voy!