Vos?

Had my third Spanish lesson with Nora this week. It’s going well. I’m not very correct but I have a monton of vocabulary at my disposal largely born out of a million random and weird situations in Ecuador.

Out here I’ve picked up some other new words and had to replace some of my existing vocab with the Argentine versions. For example boisal is headcollar, shame as I really liked hakima the word we use in Ecuador (I wonder if Hakima is a Quechua word? Fairly likey as the indigenous language has crept into all kinds of Ecuadorian Spanish). A boina is the hat that we all wear out here.. yes including me. It’s something like a flat cap crossed with a beret. Have a look at Becca wearing one. A young unbroken foal is called a chuckaro not a potro. My transportation´s all gone to pot… as I’ve just forgotten the word for pick up truck.. but it’s nothing like camionetta; and the word for bus is a collectivo whilst taxis are called remis. Odd stuff.

The other thing is vos. I’ve spent ages using tú but it seems in Argentina they use vos instead.

So…

¿Como estas?

Bien. ¿Y vos?

I’ve also spent some time learning irregular verbs… but vos doesn’t accept irregular conjugations, so I have to learn regular conjugations of those verbs…

I also foolishly told my teacher that I had plans to go to Spain, so she’s also teaching me the official Castellaño conjugations for vosotros when I’d been quite happy with ustedes. Hey ho, it’s all good learning stuff. No lessons now for a couple of weeks though, because we have a bunch of people showing up for polo week. Hope I can keep going, these 12 to 16 hour days are killing me. Spare time is spent asleep.

It is again – cue the whoooooo-hoooooos, whistling and cheering – my dia franco (day off). And so I snuck a lift with Miguel down to Rio Ceballos, dropped of my washing and went to the bus station. Not exactly massive and so easy to pick up a little Fonobus (no idea why it’s called that by the way, but it’s the equivilent of catching the old 261 around little Lepton) and have successfully minibussed it into Cordoba city.

Argentina’s 3rd largest city and home of the countries first University. So far I’ve seen the bus station (fairly large) and the internet cafe (super fast.. have uploaded a gig of photos so far!). It’s raining outside. Although as you’ll see from the pictures taken at the Estancia it’s been really hot and sunny most days. This has of course given rise to the builders tan… my arms are now doing a great impression of fabulously tanned Walls sausages and my legs are white and bruised from playing polo or other such adventurous riding in the wilds of the Sierras Chica.

Do take a look at the photos, there’s some of Panama too as well as Argentina. I’m going to go and do what I do best on a rainy Saturday afternoon… find the shopping centre.