Just Argentinean Things...

  As you've probably gathered by now weird things tend to happen here that aren't normal. Big things and little things that I experience or see that just don't tick in my head. The problem is that I've been here nearly two months now and I'm becoming immune to it. Such is this that things pass by without me thinking 'oh my God I need to write about this', but that doesn't stop them being weird. It was only when I looked back at my most recent weekend, for example, that it struck me that a few un-normal things happened.

Just pick your roast chicken off
a stick and you have your
 Friday night dinner.

  I'm going to write this article with a key, so after something that may be construed as 'Argentinean Things' I'm going to put (AT). So just keep that in mind, let's go...

  With a busy couple of weeks coming up with trips to Buenos Aires and Iguazu sandwiching my first camp as a councillor, I decided to spend the weekend at home with my host family. After some basketball and football fun (half player/half referee) with the kids, I went with the host Mum Tatiana to pick up dinner. This was just like home, chilled Friday evening going to the chippy to pick up dinner. Except the chippy here does not sell fish but a whole roast chicken (AT) to accompany your chips (which are the same chips as 'fish and chip' chips). I speculated to myself that this shop would be very busy on Sundays back at home - a quick way to acquire the star of your roast dinner.

The Buzzcut Epiphany

  As I heard the incessant buzzing of the Argentine barber's clippers attacking the back of my head, I waited in nervous anticipation for the revelation of exactly how short he was cutting my hair. I had asked for short, and my usual is a close cut 0.5 on the back and sides so how much of a disaster could it have been? Yet in the moment, rationalism goes at the window replaced with the images of being a social outcast with my terrible new haircut. Eduardo - the gentleman whose hands my life was in - started clipping the back of my head with the combine harvester-esq tool and left me hanging before coming to the sides and into my vision. It was in that exact moment, as I waited second-by-second the buzzing to reach the side of my head, that I decided to write this blog.

  

  Now I never planned on doing a blog. I had a whole year away ahead of me and in my mind there would just be too much to write about (a brief glimpse into the minimalistic work-ethic of a university student there). It would just fade into a memory of something that promised so much but gave so little - much like the careers of Joe McElderry and Freddy Adu. Yet the best blogs are not the ones that are forced but the ones that are fuelled by an accumulation of events that just can't go without sharing*.