We're liking it better and better here, Moni and I. And, though travelling to a new place every few days has been extremely fun, it's also nice to have more time available to explore a place. Salado!
Some updates, then:
Monica stopped her internship at Choike a while ago and has started working at 2 different places; one is an NGO that works directly with underpriveledged children and the other is the ministry of culture and education. She's really excited about what she'll be doing there and it also means that we have a lot more to talk about in the evenings since we're no longer with each other 24/7 (judging from our chatter each night, it probably seems like we haven't seen each other for a month).
Our pensión is getting more and more crowded. Including the janitor, Octavio, we're now 11 people, and there are 5 more to come. Current newbies include: Yeanina's brother (whose name escapes me now), Marcelo (one of the brothers I think I mentioned was coming in the previous post), and Claudia and Marina who are staying in Monica's and my room. So far, so good, but the building is still rather dirty and unkempt. Octavio isn't much for doing his duties, and on another note, a navy background and big tattoo on the forearm might not be indicators of a benign soul, after all, despite 40 years spent hairdressing. Especially if you combine it with comments about wishing to live under another dictatorship. This is not firsthand information, so more news on that when I receive some. Meanwhile, we no longer have to operate the shower with spanners; new knobs have been attached and now we're just waiting for dehumidifiers, restauration of the other toilet (right now we're sharing one, and we're soon going to be 16), a non-leaking roof and perhaps some overall cleanliness. But I wouldn't bee too hopeful.
We have befriended a most sympathetic French girl, Maryse. She's from the Basque country and is doing an internship at the Teatro Solis. She lives just a couple of streets away from us which is very convenient, because then we can ring her doorbell and disturb her at almost any time we like.
Romina and I have started playing football with Rampla Juniors, one of the best women's teams here. Unfortunately, we're not very impressed by the coach nor the discipline of the group. Looking on the bright side of things, we're befriending some fun people and I can develop my technique a bit since I'd say that most of the girls in the team are more... casually technical than most of the girls back in Sweden.
My Spanish is coming along, especially from living in the pensión where they all speak fast and mumbled, but on Monday I'm going to have my first Spanish class with Nestor at the Uruguayan-Swedish Institute, which I'm very excited about.
Some other things which we're spending time on: the cinematequa and the jazz concerts it has organized the past few weeks, going out (Alexander is a favourite, but we're also excited to get to know the arty/hip scene better, thanks to Sofía and Ana), caféing (ok, twice, but we found a nice little place close to where we lived called La Verde which I'm hoping to spend more time at), hanging out at the pensión and talking to the others and going to the Sunday market in our neighbourhood.
And the big plan of the moment: during easter we're going to 33 with the others to a music festival for a couple of days and after that we're off to... Buenos Aires!
