Two bits of news I forgot, and an update

1) The mystery of the missing bra ends. Well, it´s re-appeared *by magic* in my drawer, freshly washed. Nothing was said, so I´ll say nothing. Very strange though. Just as well, cos the figleaves one my mum posted (along with my cash card) hasn´t got here, 10 days after posting...

2) Graciela, the head, has got Veronica to agree to me doing 4 more weeks at the school - YAY! So no horrific Refugio. They´ve got three other volunteers starting there next week anyway so I won´t be missed, and this 4 weeks will take me nicely to my school´s winter break. I think most voluntarios (like John & Ali) do max 4 weeks, so to have this continuity will be massively beneficial for the kids. A lot of work alone though, so I´m not looking forward to my last 2 weeks already!

UPDATE: Saturday night: We met in a bar with Tom, John, Ali, Kirsten (she´d fed the bear and put her to bed), Catherine, her boyfriend Scott and some random ginger guy, from Geneva called Timothy (Tom & John had met him earlier that day when they went to the Jesuit Ruins...those old rocks I told you about). He looked like he had a comedy ginger Scouse wig & tache, but he was a really nice guy.

Tom amused me by admitting that when he hung out with John the girls came flocking and he was quite happy to take John´s cast-offs!!!

The bar was fun, then we went onto Power.

Seriously, why do we bother? Power was shite the first time we went, and then just as bad on the Saturday. We managed to stay till about 5am (we only got there 2.30am) and headed home.

I think John enjoyed it as he went off sharking immediately (joined by Tom, but eventually Tom returned to us in the Electronica room, his less-proficient Spanish, and thick N.Ireland accent, making communication with the chicas almost impossible on a noisy crowded dancefloor), but for anyone who just wanted to dance, the music was shockingly bad, even in the Electronica room.

I knew we were in trouble when the best tune was ´Rhythm is a Dancer´ played twice within an hour. In between the tuneless bleeps and tragic mixing (the overhead said he was from Pacha...if that DJ has even been in as a punter, I´ll eat my Tango heels) he managed to tease us with a bit of Faithless ´Insomnia´, which he just as quickly took off as soon as we looked like we were enjoying ourselves.

Seemingly oblivious to the reaction of the 8 people on the tiny dancefloor (most of which were us), they switched back to tuneless bleeps, like teenage boys experimenting with their first Bontempi organ. As the worse type of men do, they seemed to be playing for only their own pleasure.

C & I left, vowing to not bother again.
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Sunday: I was in a bit of a huff with Aida today as she had told me off for speaking 6 words of English yesterday. (It´s exhausting speaking Spanish all the time and I wasn´t even speaking to her!)

She does this all the time, even if I´m speaking privately to C, which is annoying enough but bearable, but what *really* hacked me off though was that she said I *never* bothered speaking Spanish and that only C made the effort, which is a blatant lie, in fact my Spanish is better than his, and Mariana and C said as much to her - in Spanish - in my defence. I was furious though. I wanted to say "I´ve quit my job to come here, I´m learning your language, you´ve had loads of volunteers and have not bothered to learn any English, I am doing *voluntary work* here, we are paying to stay at yours, I´m tired, exhausted, Mariana speaks English and it was just a couple of mugs I needed, so JUST SHUT UP and LEAVE ME ALONE!!!´ but I seethed, silently instead. We´re here for another 5 weeks, no point rocking the boat.

So I stayed in bed for as long as I could, reading my novel, sleeping, and C brought me up a hot chocolate (sorry, "chocolate caliente") for sustenance.

Eventually, at 5.30, hunger got the better of me so I had to come downstairs. I managed to not say very much though, even at dinner, feigning tiredness.

C wasn´t very sympathetic when I had a rant to him about it later that evening, till I reminded him how supportive I´d been when Aida had told me yesterday to tell him to stop creating so much washing. (Ummm, how?! The refugio and kids are filthy so he *has* to change when he gets in. He also doesn´t want to wear his nice clothes to work, so he´s in effect getting through 2 sets a day). We´re going to find a laundrette, and then he won´t have to ration his pants and socks, or just keep buying more and more when he runs out (we have the EU sock mountain going on here).

A late (at night) posting, it´s 1.51 now, but I couldn´t get on till late tonight, Flor had more college work to do, and I needed to lesson prep: 1) los partes del cuerpo (parts of the body) and 2) physical descriptions.

We didn´t go to Tango tonight: John called off, which I was cool about; it´s CHUCKING it down right now, as it has been since about 3pm today (again, miraculously it stopped for 15 mins, just enough time for me to get home from Ali´s where we had lunch, and decadently polished off a daytime bottle of wine, despite promises to only have one glass each), and I just feel like getting under the blankets in this horrible cold weather :(