Che, boluda, pelotudo, dale Ramon, listo, viste, chau!

Ok, so have made my peace with the fact that I will not be waxing poetical on the awful beauty of Patagonia and Fireland as well as colouring the Bs and all the new friends on this blog while I am in Argentina. I could probably finish it all now before I have to race to the airport but I'd rather drink coffee in Rapsodia one last time. So there. Boo yah. Just said goodbye to Joe - Bec, IG, he sends his best wishes and apparently we can all return just whenever we feel like it, sooner rather than later. He also informed me that Ian has vacated the apartment next door to take a BIGGER apartment nearby - with (wait for it) a ROOMATE ... (yep, there it is, that's the sound of the wheels in Becca's head turning!). I very nearly started laughing in Joe's face but fortunately he smelled gas at that moment. Saved by the potential firebomb. They should really do something about that gas leak. Then he cheerfully added that two 25-year old football players from Barbados have taken Ian's old apartment for a year. They moved in two weeks ago and are playing for one of the clubs here. "They're taking Spanish lessons," he said whimsically. "It made me think of you, so I thought I would tell you about them. I'm sure you would like them." Way to drop that crumb three days after I returned to La Capital and two hours before I leave again, Joe. I'm sure I would've loved them. Y Brunella, para vos, que estas leyendo - recuerdas que te dije que escribiria algo en castellano especialmente para vos y la familia? Bueno, aca vamos. Fue increible a conocer uds., por fin, y por supuesto especialmente a ver y charlar con la Negra de nuevo. No puedo decirte como increible fue, me hicieron sentir como un parte de la familia y no les olvidare. Bueno, quizas Martin, porque nunca pude entenderle de todos modos, excepto cuando estaba borrachado y hablando ingles perfectemente. Pero los demas - no les olvidare! Y que me escriban - claro todavia hay que aprender mucho, asi que cuando volver, todavida podere a entender lo que esta pasando! Pero que no me canten Dale Ramon nunca mas. Magalinahagalinaookatokawakatoka! Alright that's enough of this boludez. It's coffee time. Listo!

On second thought,

after reading this stomach-churning account ("Hangover Sundays") of life on the Rock, maybe it IS pretty sad to be leaving Argentina.

Aaah, it's ending. I've already left Negra behind in Rosario, lord knows when I'll ever see her again, and am back in La Capital Federal with Joe and Jorge and the Johnnys and Juanita (I can't believe we gave them all J names and I've never noticed that before). And, I don't know, maybe it was the vision of the swinging rat carcass or the evocative description of the smell of puke or the sound of "Why are we waiting" ringing in my ears, pero de repente no estoy lista a irme. Back to the I Hate Endings diatribe again. Said it all before, so won't bother to say it again now.

Still can't wait to get home (though am suddenly not so eager to see Front Street anymore) but - well, but. No matter where or who with, there's always a "but".

How the fuck did I get into grad school?

Honestly. How did that happen? And how the hell am I going to make it through the year when I keep doing stupid absent-minded professor things that nearly get me thrown in jail?

By sheer luck I happened to discover something this morning that, had I not discovered it, would've meant Arnaldo would finally have gotten me as I tried to pass through the airport. Three months in Latin America safe and sound and I get thrown in jail on the last day. No ending with a whimper there, folks, that's all bang.

Ok, ok, maybe not JAIL, but it certainly would've been complicated. And probably expensive. At any rate it's all fixed now. So don't worry, Mom and Dad, you're still getting to spend a wonderful month with your eldest before shipping me off to the Green and Pleasant Lands. Don't you love how each time you get rid of one child, another one comes home again? We're like those games at carnivals where rubber ducks keep popping up out of holes and you have to clock them on the head with a huge foam bat, and every time you hit one another one pops up again in a different place. Aren't you guys lucky?

Meanwhile without the daily deadline and the sub-editors breathing fire down my neck, I have returned with a vengeance to my procrastinating ways from the good ol' Queens days. Here we are, out of Patagonia and back in Rosario - and I have yet to discuss Chile, Ushuaia, El Calafate, Chatty Argentines, Favourite Argie Catchphrases, How Argentina Destroyed the Myth of the South Beach Diet, Yes He's Gorgeous But He's 17 Years Old You Filthy Cradlerobber, and all the other blog entries that I have completely drafted out in my head. I totally meant to write them yesterday but then unfortunately walked by a bookstore and realised that Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince has made it to Rosario, and that I don't have to wait til I get to Buenos Aires to finally buy it. Negra found me, hours later, sobbing in a pathetic, snotty heap over the ending. My cool kid status has been officially revoked.

Setting all that aside, we are back in Rosario and the weather feels just like a Canadian spring - a nice change after de south. It's starting to end. It would be sad, but there's a sunny month ahead of me filled with unemployment, Hangover Sundays, the Dish Nazi's return to the Rock, ladies lunches, hen nights, and the triumphant, winey revival of the Dinner Club - and then Inglaterra. No wonder I can't concentrate enough to write about all these amazing things, everything's amazing right now.

I'm still not sure how it all happened but I'll take it.

And YES, Dish Nazi, it is impossible to concentrate with the messages flashing!!

"You've seen one llama, you've seen them all"

Well apparently NOT, chicas. All those llamas we saw at the miserable Buenos Aires Zoo? The brown ones and the white ones? Yeah, the brown ones are guanaco, as I discovered when D brought the car to a screeching halt on the way back to Gallegos from the volcano so he could point them out to me. Guanaco certainly are very similar to llamas, the family agreed when I expressed my confusion, but they are not the same. They're much more beautiful, they said loyally. They're plentiful in Patagonia, the Indians used to hunt them all the time - some people still hunt them. As Bruce Chatwin mentions them about every five minutes (and they must be clearly marked at the zoo, I'm not sure how we missed that) I felt it was pretty pathetic I hadn't realised it before.

We also have to keep an eye out for those enormous birds that run everywhere, the family told me. You know, the really big ones. It took me quite a while before I got what they were talking about - ostriches. Duh. Unfortunately we didn't see any.

You've seen one llama, you've seen them all. Ha! Not so much, Becca!

When Hell Freezes Over

Speaking of the infierno, I could've gone ice skating in a volcano the other day - if only we'd had skates. And if only I knew how to skate. (Mom and Dad, Negra took a great video of me attempting to ice skate in El Calafate and she's threatened me with death if I delete it before I show it to the family.)

But the El Calafate story's a whole other story, so back to the volcano. D (Negra's dad) and C (her mom) manhandled us into their car our second day here and out of Rio Gallegos we drove on our way to visit the volcano.

An extinct volcano, that is - we weren't going to be dangling from ropes over molten lava or anything, exciting as that would've been.

Leaving the city felt a bit like casting off, like a great jump out over some bottomless unknown. Five minutes of driving and we were in the middle of nowhere. Civilisation could've been thousands of miles away for all I knew. And I still can't get over how much the landscape around Gallegos reminds me of the ocean. You could see it especially well on the road to Calafate, how you could've been driving on the bottom of a drained sea - but I digress again.

Around 45 minutes later, it began to change - blackened rocks torn out of the ground, jagged hills. "Volcano country," D explained, slamming on the brakes and taking a 90 degree turn at about 60 kph. The road to the mountain isn't exactly boldly marked.

We bumped and jolted happily up the mountainside and arrived at the top. Barrelling out of the car we stood at the edge of the crater and looked down. I remembered walking into the Molson Centre in Montreal for the first time, and the slightly dizzy feeling of awe looking at the rows of seats cascading down below. The wind howled over with a faint roar, like the sound you make when you blow over the top of a bottle. Far below us, in the depths of the crater, was a frozen lake. "Laguna Azul," C explained. "Blue Lagoon. You know, like the movie."

For a second we all stood in silence, shivering in our parkas, looking down the brown expanse onto the wind sheared ice. "Well, not exactly like the movie," C added dryly.

We climbed down inside the crater and found a cave, which we crawled into for a photo. Then we didn't want to come out because it was so cold outside, and so much warmer in the cave. Then it got cold in the cave also, and we all piled back in the car and drove back down the rock-strewn road, passing around the hot mate with relief.

"Oh, that's Chile right there," C added, pointing, as we reached the main road. "Chile?" I said in excitement. "Do we have to cross the Andes to get there?" As there were no mountains in sight, she gave me an odd look, so Negra explained the details of Becca and my's failed mission. "You want to go to Chile?" D said thoughtfully.

That night they announced we were going to Chile the next day.

And is burnt hair my penance?

It's been a quiet few days in Gallegos and we spent much of today around the kitchen table with the mate having a little arts and crafts session. Negra's ten year old sister was showing me some kind of braidy ropey thing she and all her friends make with string, and asked if I wanted her to put it in my hair. All the cool kids are doing it, she assured me.

As I've always wanted to be a cool kid I said sure, go for it. Unfortunately I'd missed the part where she'd said it had to be "quemado" to my hair - burnt to my hair. Didn't pick up on that detail til she was waving a lit match two milimetres from my scalp. If you want it out you have to cut it out, she informed me cheerfully.

After that vision into the flames of Hell I spent the entire afternoon reading the Spanish dictionary and am proud to say I can conjugate the verb "to burn" with my eyes closed.

And Then Desecrating Mass

The last time I went to church was to attend the funeral of a friend who died well over a year ago. The time before that, I think, was for a wedding of some sort. It might even have been the Easter I spent in Canada with Triner's fam about four or five years ago. Not exactly what you'd call faithful.

But yesterday, exploring the streets of Gallegos while Negra and her mom got haircuts (yes, Becca, I hate to admit it but it's as bad as you feared), I just really, really had to pee. I mean, this was an emergency. And somehow I'd ended up in a part of town with no cafes, no restaurants, nothing I could quietly sneak in to.

Then I saw the church.

It can't be that bad for a heathen to sneak into a church to use the bathroom. Especially when it's not a Sunday and there were no services going on. So in I snuck, and was naturally promptly caught by the tiniest, cutest little old lady you've ever seen - ribbons in her hair and all - who'd been quietly praying there.

Skinner would have been impressed, I didn't even turn red, I just coolly stood there in the middle of God's House and lied to this little old lady, saying that I had just wanted to see what it looked like on the inside. Oh well you are welcome here, she replied kindly, patting me on the arm, this is God's House, we are all his sheep, his children, all are welcome here, all can find shelter in God's love, stay as long as you want, look around, pray.

It was on the tip of my tongue to reply that I'd been praying for a bathroom for about 20 minutes and if she'd just point me in the right direction all my prayers would've been answered, but I managed to restrain myself and just thanked her. Then when she returned to her quiet prayer, rushed into the bathroom and then slipped out the back door.

But you can't go to hell for something like that. Right? And does writing about it on a blog count as confession??

Meeting the Masses

We stumbled off the bus that first day in Gallegos and pretty much fell into D and C's car. I had the impression of wide square streets, mud and construction, a town smacking of youth and growth - reminiscent of what Scarlett saw in Atlanta. Negra hadn't been home in a year and spent most of the ride to her parents' new house pointing out things that hadn't been there the last time she'd been home, while D and C explained how the town had roughly tripled in size since they'd moved there twenty years ago. The wind was roaring. I thought of all the places in the world, and all the stories of the Old West in Patagonia, and realised this was as close as I would ever get to the frontier.

We went home, met the bro and sis, showered gratefully and ate home-made lasagna even more gratefully.

Then the people started coming over.

They came over in hordes. The entire town appeared to have turned out to greet Negra home. Like our family, their family has family friends - it was as though all the uncles, aunts, grandparents and cousins on both sides of my family were there, along with the entire L family, the Fs, and all the other assorted people usually found around my house. It seems now like hundreds came, though logically it can't have been more than 30. I was introduced to person after person, promptly forgetting their names each time. All the intricacies of how they knew each other and who belonged where and how long they'd known each other were explained in rapid Spanish, while around me everyone else was talking at the same time, very loudly and at great length. Children were running around, the kitchen was a flurry of activity as pizzas were prepared.

I was terrified.

My family suffers from a rather strong fear of strangers. They will understand. And it wasn't even like everyone was talking in English. In English I could at least have made an effort. Any scant knowledge of castellano I'd previously possessed fled as my tired brain tried to process what was going on. I was rendered the tall dumb one.

Ok, not really. I was, however, completely overwhelmed. I could see what a wonderful scene it was - I just wasn't up to par at that moment. At one point the living room emptied for a second as the tide rushed into the kitchen for some reason, and I sank gratefully into an armchair. Negra's father grinned at me.

"Lot of people, huh?" he said. "It's ok if you go upstairs and take a nap, you know, you must be exhausted."

I'd never been so grateful to anyone in my entire life.

I don't know how Negra was still on her feet when I woke up again an hour or so later. The masses were still amassed - and, to my distress, the older ones announced they were going out, and that I was going with them.

You're tough, Sarah, I scolded myself. You're so in the mood to party right now.

Fortunately for me, around 2am Negra decided it was time to call it a night. "We're such losers, I can't believe how early it is," she kept saying. As 2am is a perfectly acceptable time to skip Hamilton, and even in Buenos Aires was early but not disastrous, I asked what time people usually went home in Rio Gallegos. "Oh, we usually don't even go out until around 4," she replied, laughing at the look of horror on my face. "You're not old, Sarah!" she cried.

We slept nearly 14 hours that night and woke up the next day to blazing Patagonia sun - in the words of Frank, refreshed and replenished and ra-a-aring to go.