So after being conspicuous by their absence the housemates have been slowly making their way back to the nest this afternoon. It’s like some sort of late-adolescent soap opera (I must be the oldest by at least 10 years). They all seem to be studying or on a placement. They’re all leaving to go travelling at some point over the next two weeks as either the placements have finished or university has broken up for the summer.
I’m sharing a room with Pamela the cheery Mexican, who seems to get on very well with Robin from Manchester, so much so she doesn’t actually sleep in our room, but in his. Which means of course that I get the room to myself, apart from when she toddles in cos she’s forgotten something. And she’s buggering off in 3 weeks to be replaced by an American who isn’t actually arriving until next year, so I’ve got the place pretty much to myself. I like her though cos I can understand her when she speaks Spanish. Something that doesn’t happen very often with the Argentinians.
As for the others, they’re only going to be around for 4 or 5 days, so I’m not really going to have much to do with them. There’s Roy the Dutch guy who is doing a placement for a camper van hire company. He’s supposed to be writing a business plan, but seems to spend most of him time driving to Patagonia to pick up empty vans, sleeping on beaches and smoking joints with his German boss, who apparently is a bit autistic. There’s Florence the architecture student who has spent the last days building a model of a housing estate in Tigre that she has designed. Tigre is a town just outside Buenos Aires which is on the Parana river delta so all the houses have to be on stilts, she will merrily explain to you. Her sister and her cousin are over too, so they’ve been helping cut out bits of round, green plastic to make the trees. They don’t really look like trees, but they look nice so I’ve not said anything. There’s a couple of others I haven’t really figured out, but most seem to be leaving soon anyway.
And all this wonderful value for less than £120 a month. Gotta love this town. Except for the fact that we had an almighty thunderstorm yesterday and the house had no electricity for 15 hours. So it was a bit dark. But I used the wonderful clockwork torch my clever ole mum gave me to read my book. So there.