Martin & Hazel Frost

When I booked our tickets to England with TAM airlines over the internet, I arranged an itinery which I thought gave plenty sufficient time to make the changeover in Sao Paolo. TAM airlines then contacted us to say that the gap wasn’t long enough and so we were being rescheduled. Which as Martin said is fairly poorly disguised code for “We’re even less competant than you think we are”. However, compared with our experience with TAM a year and a half ago, I am pleased to announce that they have made some serious strides to becoming a serious grown-up airline. The whole operation is now much cleaner (as are the planes), timing pretty nearly spot on, they got themselves organised to give us well-placed seats for travelling with a small child (they were practically the best seats in the house short of offering an upgrade in fact). I think the main thing they lack now would be some staff that speak Spanish. Given that this is their flagship route into a continent which only actually uses two major languages, it would seem reasonable to expect the cabin crew to speak both of them rather than putting all anouncements into English and Portuguese and relying on other passengers to translate for the Spanish speakers. That said, when we travelled KLM a couple of years back, they seemed to have a similar policy, and at least translating “she says she’d like some water please” “she says she’ll bring you some in a minute” relieves some of the boredom of crossing the Atlantic. And TAM didn’t lose any of our luggage which KLM, BA and Air France have all managed to achieve at least once each.
Joni nearly caused a minor international incident coming into land, watching out of the window as we came down through the clouds he announced “look, fire!” and then when he saw the houses and trees below us and I explained that we were up in the sky “plane fall down”.

So here we are in blighty, only for a couple of weeks this time. Last time when we left Cordoba for four months, someone suggested that we needed to have a going away party. So I organised it, bought everything, prepared everything, invited the people, Martin did the barbecuing, and I did every last bit of the clearing up afterwards and I vowed never to do that again. This time, someone else suggested that we needed to have a going away party (for a two week trip!) and twenty people came, they all brought food, they all helped with the preparation, one of the guys did the barbecuing, one of the young people had made a cake, willing hands set the table, and willing hands helped to clear it all away afterwards, and seven of the guys came to see us off from the bus station on Monday night. Two nights, two cities, two hours away, two worlds in the same country, and to me a summary of the experience of living in these very different contexts. If I never had cause to go to Cordoba again I promise I wouldn’t complain, but San Francisco, well that’s a place I find I might even look forward to going back to in a couple of weeks time.

I made the mistake of telling Joni he was going on an aeroplane. He gathered his toys together in a little bundle and spent the morning following me around with his armful of toys saying “pane? pane? pane?” Toddlers don’t have much concept of time, and Tuesday is a long way away.
We’re diving into the UK for a couple of weeks; got a wedding to go to, family to see and a few other bits to do, and we’re not planning on doing any more than a minimum of driving anyway, which is why we haven’t gone public with a schedule this time, but to anyone who is available / local / would like to see us, we’re more than happy to stand you a shandy if you’re willing to do the travelling, we arrive on Wednesday, and leave again on the 30th.

Not only do we have internet again in our house, but we are also launching our new-look, revamped, refurbished and revitalised website. It is still a work in progress, but this is more or less how it is going to look and function, so do let us know what you think.

A big storm on Thursday night took out both our electricity and the internet. Fortunately the electricity came back very quickly, but we are still without internet. This is being typed in a town-centre internet cafe, on a very slow machine with an annoyingly sticky keyboard (reminds me of the old manual typewriters) whose symbols need to be accessed by knowing the “alt” numbers; alt64 for @ etc.
Hence my next move will be to abandon this and go order coffee instead.
Have a good weekend, hopefully normal service to be resumed soon; in Argentinean time…

Visitor number 1 left on Monday to go to Cordoba, planning on coming back briefly for a couple of hours on Friday to collect his stuff and go on to Buenos Aires. Visitor number two was due to arrive on Thursday and stay till Friday morning. Visitor number three was due to arrive on Friday morning and stay till Saturday.
What actually happened…
Visitor number 1 returned a day early, on Thursday, nearly went on to Buenos Aires, decided not to go on to Buenos Aires, almost cancelled his ticket to Buenos Aires, and then went to Buenos Aires. This was really somebody else’s fault who probably needed to be shot, except that shooting people may turn out to be a career limiting move in our line of work.
Visitor number 2 sent us a message to say that he wasn’t coming on Thursday night. He didn’t share the bit about deciding to come for breakfast on Friday instead. Luckily we were all up and more or less decent when he arrived bright and early for coffee.
Visitor number 3 was caught up in a bus strike but she did manage to make it through on Friday afternoon and stayed till Saturday as planned… (German, no stereotyping but….)

Joni swiftly got the measure of V3, they’re old friends. He fetched his little blue shoes from his room and presented them to her with the instruction “sadalls” (sandals) which she correctly understood as a request to put them on him. He followed this up with the instruction “paga” (plaza), and led her out of the door over the road to push him on the swings.

I was left pondering how amazing it is that a child of not quite two can conceive and communicate an action plan in just two nouns correctly interpreted and put into action by his chosen junior executive, but at 18 if he decided to go into business, he would mostly likely spend the following three years at college learning about vision statements, buzz-words, flow diagrams and Smart targets, and yet he would almost definitely come out less effective at project management than he is at the moment.

As for us, the next software project might be a little hotel booking system in order to manage our diverse and unpredictable guests.

Remember those games where you have to change one word into another; slug becomes frog in three steps that kind of thing? Well, here, Winter became Summer in about the same amount of time.
On Monday morning we set out for pre-school wearing a T-shirt, a jumper and a coat.
On Tuesday morning we set out for pre-school wearing a T-shirt and a jumper.
On Wednesday morning we set out for pre-school wearing a T-shirt and a thin top.
On Thursday morning we set out for pre-school wearing a T-shirt.

It may be best if we didn’t leave the house on Friday.

I have no idea what our kid was dreaming about, but when he woke up this morning the first words he said were “Get cake”, and when I asked him what he’d like for breakfast he said “ice cream”. Fortunately he consented to cornflakes and an apple.
Also before breakfast our kitchen sink flooded the kitchen; the pipe underneath it appears to have been held together by friction. Unfortunately gravity won in the end. Simultaneously, the washing machine stopped working. Fortunately it didn’t flood the kitchen. Unfortunately the clothes and all the water are still inside it until the guy arrives to rescue them. He was going to come this afternoon, but this is Argentina. We phoned and had words. He may come tomorrow.

I went to Quebracho Herrado this morning and this afternoon. This morning was a non-event so I didn’t stay very long, but this afternoon worked out well. Kid of 16 came in wanting help with numeracy and literacy, she’s actually better than she thinks, really should be doing a secondary school curriculum, but the system here is that you either start secondary school with your peers, or you can’t start it till you are 18 so she’s potentially in limbo for the next couple of years unless we can find a way round the bureaucracy. Following that we also had a good chance meeting with an older couple who look to be key players in the village. Every village / small town has them; the folk who are on every committee, organise the fete, finger in every pie, some people hate them, but the fact is that they are the people you need to know if you actually want to see something done.

Then it was back to San Francisco, throw child in bath and leave him to Daddy’s tender care while I went to Scout leader’s meeting. And now I’m worn out. How did I used to survive back in my mis-spent youth when I cycled thirteen miles to work, put in a hard ten hours a day and still had energy left for activities nearly every evening? (having swept the chimney and licked the road clean first and you tell that to the young folk of today and they don’t believe you…)

Having been more or less continuously involved in the Scout and Guide movement since becoming a Brownie at the age of seven, (until I finally drowned in bureaucracy and gave up attempting to lead the Ranger unit under a District Commissioner who was particularly pro-bureaucracy and even more anti-Ranger) we are happy to report that cub-camp in Argentina looks quite a lot like cub-camp as we know and love it:

Some of the younger members struggling to take the pace.

The one thing I have definitely learnt from this camp is that single sleeping bags are only made for one, no matter how small the other occupant might be.

The traditional campfire begins with a rendition of “Campfire’s burning” in Spanish, continues in familiar format with songs and sketches (even recognised some of the sketches), and ends with wait for it… Auld Lang Sine in Spanish, couldn’t believe my ears!

I think this weekend may have been valuable in establishing myself as part of the leadership team here. I certainly detected a warming of relationships, which may be because the other guys have now seen that I can organise a game, provide sausages for twenty five and light a fire, and that despite my European roots I am not too posh to clean a toilet. There is of course also the rich gelling factor of swopping yarns over mate at two in the morning while waiting for the last of the little sh….s darlings to run their batteries down and at least pretend to go to sleep. And now we’re home, stink of campfire, and completely knackered in that satisfying way that only a weekend in the open air can provide; all told, a top weekend.

Since writing the other day I have also been told that Facebook own the legal copywrite to all content posted to it, which I haven’t managed to verify if this is true or not, but if it is, then it is probably a top reason not to put up anything more significant than that blurry photo I took of someone elses cat on my mobile phone… beginning to spot a pattern here.
It’s been a while since I got near my email inbox but some judicious pruning this morning has reduced it to the fifty that actually need dealing with. However, it’s Scout camp tomorrow and Sunday, so I’m sure it will double again in my absence. Speaking of which, need to go throw a sleeping bag and a few bits into a rucksack… Have a good weekend.

Four trips to the village of Quebracho Herrado, four families visited, one trip to the prison, several prisoners visited, one trip to the village of Obispo Trejo, two and a half hours away where we spent the day at a children’s home talking about the possibilities of sending them some Latin Link short termers. Speaking of Latin Link short termers, one has taken up temporary residence in our house, has built himself a little nest in our spare room, plays with our child, does the washing up unasked, nothing to complain about there. We received a phone call on Wednesday night “X is on a bus, he will be arriving in San Francisco at 4.30 in the morning” “OK I’ll make up a bed then shall I?” This is Argentina, and some Argentineans are more Argentinean than others! Thus another fairly normal week passes, and this week looks to be more of the same. Scout camp coming up this weekend I’m not sure we’re as organised as we might be, but I’m the new person here so I’ll watch and learn.
I signed up to Facebook a few weeks ago to see what all the fuss was about, and so far I still can’t see what all the fuss is about. Maybe my small-talk is even less interesting than most, but I really can’t imagine why I would want to broadcast it around the world, even less record it for posterity, let alone the blurry pictures of someone else’s cat that I took on my mobile phone while drunk (actually my mobile phone doesn’t take pictures, maybe that’s where I’m missing out). Apart from that the screen is cluttered with stuff that I will never want to use, and useful bit, i.e. the space to write in, is only eight lines long, so I guess that Facebook assume that their average writer doesn’t have very much in on their mind, or maybe that the average reader has a very short attention span. In addition, I am probably over privileged in that I can’t remember a time when my life was empty enough that I would have enjoyed filling it with quizzes on goldfish, office furniture, 70’s music, or the significance of the first letter of my name. I will admit to being a bit of a technophobe, but I can find my way round the internet, bid on ebay, buy things from various places, do banking transactions, have an MSN conversation, or search for academic documents on a database. And five years of living with someone whose “other wife” is his latest software project means that I can bandy around “CSS” and “PHP” with the best of them if the occasion demands, so I don’t think I’m a total luddite, but Facebook? It has one more month to impress me or I’m taking it down.