You´re an Immigrant Too

Another day, another peso spent on the bus fare. I´m shattered following last night´s adventure… But I´m annoyed because this PC is very slow and I can´t actually see what I´m typing, plus I don´t have much time, so I may not edit mistakes… sorry!

My main gripes today are the buses (do they even run to a timetable? Why do they not say where they are going and how do I find out? Why are the drivers total psychos high on G-force?) and the pavements (dangerous half-metre drops as you are walking along and no streetlights to see by… and it´s dark by half 7) so getting around is a bit hairy… and don´t even get me started on the traffic lights. If you get across the road without being mown down, it´s by pure fluke!

It´s been a long day… we were up until 4 am again and work at half 8… not cool. But worth it. We went to the Festival of Immigrants in Obera, 90 minutes away. We ended up going in a taxi, and were subjected to the most dangerous journey of my life. The driver kept making unwise overtaking manoeuvres on blind bends, and so on, and the car didn´t have any seatbelts (none of them do!)… hairy. We eventually got there in one piece… just. It was “la Noche de la Juventud” (Youth Night) at the festival, which itself goes on for ten days. So there were just tons of teenagers in the place… yes, the boys´ eyes were on stalks! The festival was really cool, it had about a dozen houses done in different styles of the countries that people have emigrated from to live in Argentina… such as Switzerland, Germany, Russia, Brazil, Spain and so on. They were serving food and drink from (allegedly) the corresponding country, but all the beer seemed to be Stella! It was really interesting though, and hoaching with kids. Apparently there was a “rock” band playing, but I didn´t see or hear them! There was a rap collective though that was pretty cool. My high point of the night was meeting a Argentine kindred spirit – I spotted this guy coming down the hill with ace indie hair, a black shirt, red tie and eyeliner…. I couldn´t help myself, so I asked him if I could get my photo with him. Sadly it´s on Sile´s camera, but I´ll get it off her ASAP! We had a brief chat about Green Day and then I asked if he liked Interpol… I almost fell over when he replied that not only did he know them, he was a big fan! Classic! That totally made my night.

It was all downhill from there and we all ended up falling asleep in the taxi home. This morning I could barely move, but we made it up to the hogar and managed a scaled-down version of yesterday. The kids are so sweet. I had a chat with a couple of the older girls, and they were telling me that they wanted to have boyfriends but not husbands, as husbands always ask where you´re going and who with (?!), and that men are really jealous (not sure how they know this!) – at that point one of the boys popped his head round and said “women can be jealous too” – he´d obviously been listening to every word!

The rest of the afternoon passed without incident – I picked up my clothes from the laundrette and they seem ok, so it worked out in the end. I also have no plans for tonight (going to bed might be a good idea) but who knows what might happen?

Next installment soon. Thanks to all of you who have stayed with me on this so far, hope you find it interesting… leave me your comments, it´s great to hear from you.