Well, as my title says, I’ve had a busy last few days!
Where I left off from my last post was about the events of Sunday with the powercut. In the evening of Sunday, Vivi (Luci (Noly’s sister in law)’s mum) asked if I wanted to go with her, Luci and Moni into town. I agreed, despite not knowing exactly what we were doing and off we went! We went first to pick up some planks of wood from Vivi’s house and then to my favourite shopping centre! (It’s my favourite one because there’s a pet shop with PUPPIES hanging around in the window 😍). It soon became clear we were getting bits for the planks of wood, as Luci had asked me earlier in the day if I would like to go to hers the next day to help paint a table for her house. Whilst waiting in the hardware store, I managed to have a good chat in Spanish with Vivi about how I’m doing. I told her I feel a little lonely here sometimes (well done me! 1, I find it hard to be vulnerable with people sometimes and tell people how I’m actually feeling and 2, I managed to communicate this en Espanol 😎 ) and she was suggesting I get involved in more churchy bits and maybe some of the women’s events at church. I’m keen to do this but it’s quite draining with the Spanish if there’s no-one there who can help me if I struggle so I need to make sure I’m emotionally ready for it! Haha.
After we returned back in the evening, I started having a conversation with Javier (Noly’s dad) about my finances, the possibility of me getting an Argentinian bank account and my job as an English teacher and 1:1 tutor. I felt quite quite satisfied as I had more or less managed to convey everything I had wanted to in Spanish, with only a few English words interjected when I didn’t know the Spanish.
The following day I went to Luci & Cristian’s house with Moni, Vivi & Billy (Vivi’s husband) and we got to work on the table by way of sanding and painting. I really love having a project like this! Whilst we were working on the table (and intermittently playing with Dona, their puppy 😊) Cristian got cracking on lunch. The plan originally had been to have empanadas (a bit like Cornish pasties but smaller) but obviously that had changed because we ended up having an asado (Argentinian bbq). I have never seen a BBQ being started and intermittently kept going through the use of a hairdryer but there you are! Marks for creativity I think 😂
After a well earned lunch, we finished off painting the other sides of the planks of wood and then I ended up having a good chat with Billy. He told me that Luci had told him that I like lettering and the long and the short of it was, he suggested I could letter some bits for the new church building! As Luci is an architect she has a printer that you can use to blow up designs etc, so I’m quite excited about doing that! I need to think about what verses to letter or a phrase to letter.
In fact, I posted something on my joyfulventures instagram page the other day (cheeky little self promotion there. Follow me if you fancy!) and I got a shout out from another lettering page who has 11k followers! She put my post in her story and commented ‘Love this from joyful ventures’ so that was fun 😊
Anyways, at about 5pm Noly and I headed back to the Matus’ house as Nolz had work to do for exams and I had to start prepping for my class the following day. At about 8 Nolz took me back to Marta’s.
The following day, Tuesday, I spent the day doing a mix of classic procrastination techniques (facebook, instagram, youtube) and preparing for my class for the evening. My class was from 6.30-8.40. I think it went okay! That’s my first lesson here done. Hurrah! I haven’t done any teaching since around March I think? So feel a bit rusty! But I’m glad to have got the first lesson out of the way.
After I had finished at the institute, I headed back to Marta’s. Noly had told me the night before he had a surprise in mind for me for Tuesday evening (I mean, is it really a surprise if you know that there’s a surprise coming? This always baffles me! In my experience, boys don’t seem to be able to do a full surprise 😂 this will always baffle me but anyways), so I returned back and soon enough Noly knocked on my door. In he walks with a bag full of supplies! Popcorn (one each because y’know, who’s got time for sharing?), oreos and chocolate 😋. And then out comes his laptop, his ‘energy giver’ (charging cable) & a blanket and Noly proclaims “Dinner is on it’s way!”. Those must be my favourite 5 words to hear in a sentence. Haha. Dinner was pizza as, in Noly’s words, “What’s a movie night with pizza?”. He makes a fair point. His rules for movie night were quite funny 😂 “It can’t be a film you’ve seen before. Who goes to the cinema to see a film they’ve seen?”, “Lights? You don’t have lights at the cinema!” etc 😂 I felt I should ask him if pyjamas were allowed on movie nights since he seemed very set on movie night being as much like the cinema as possible haha. Thankfully pyjamas were allowed, and in fact encouraged, in this cinema so hurrah! Anyways, it was a very sweet evening and the pizza was glorious! Why is food that you haven’t cooked just intrinsically ten times nicer than your own cooked food? One of the mysteries of life!
Okay, and onto today! Today was looking to be quite a busy day until yesterday, when the majority of my things got cancelled! I was first supposed to be meeting a lady and her friend who want to have private conversation classes, but we had to rearrange due to illness. And the other thing that got cancelled was my time at the institute. I don’t have any classes on Wednesdays but usually Laura and I meet to look at some material or plan for lessons etc, so I’ve just been having a really chilled day! I got my secretary (Noly) to help me with some bits. I’m excited because I’ve signed up to do an arty crafty course thing over three Thursdays 😊 Signing up involved texting back and forwards to this lady to ask questions etc which also meant I had to keep going backwards and forwards to Noly like, “She said this. What do I say now!??”, poor Noly! We got there in the end and I’ve asked one of the girls from church to come with me and help me, so that’ll be nice 😊 I then had a cheeky little skype with my Auntie & Granny and then just been having lunch and writing this post. Nice and chilled 😊 Which is good for me as I think I might be coming down with a cold. I’ve been on the lemsip though! So hopefully that’ll help fend it off.
This evening at 7.30 I’m going to Vale’s house (someone from the youth group) as she said to me the other week she’d teach me how to make cabsha. Cabsha is my favourite cake from here! Lots of the cakes are loaded with cream which I’m not a fan of. This cake is a little bit like caramel shortbread but better. Instead of caramel it’s the glorious thing that is dulce de leche. I can’t really put my finger on why it’s better than caramel shortbread but it just is! I’ll try and remember to take a picture and put it in my next blog post.
Then after going to Vale’s I’m going back to the Matus’ house for the night as it’s a bank holiday (again) tomorrow and some of the youth from church are going to Cris & Luci’s house for some Bible study and worship stuff. Looking forward to it!
Over and out!
Nadia's Adventures 