I hope all my friends in Canada are having a lovely celebration in the summer sunshine! I’ve been thinking about the party I had last year when I and lots of my friends celebrated Canada.

Not quite the same this year, but it won’t be ignored. I am going out to dinner with four friends. They will come and get me and wheel me up to the restaurant in the wheelchair, so it will be lovely just to be out and about a bit. It’s winter here, of course, but it’s still 15 degrees celsius and sunny, so nothing to complain about!

Happy Canada Day everybody!

Well it’s been quite a couple of weeks since I fell and broke my ankle. I still have the cast on and still finding it a challenge to do the day-to-day things of living. But I have such a wonderful group of friends, I am humbled by everything they are doing for me.

Every day someone is here, making or bringing food or groceries — sometimes chocolate! It makes it so much easier than it might have been.

A bunch of us usually get together in a local cafe for champagne every Thursday at 5 pm. Since I wasn’t able to go this past couple of weeks, they all came here!

Last weekend I finally had the cataract surgery I’ve been waiting for for such a long time. And I have to say I am delighted with the results. Everyone who has had it told me about the dramatic change, but it still took me by surprise. I’ve spent a lot of time gazing out of my window. It’s not much of a view, mainly apartment buildings, but the lines are clear and sharp and that’s truly a gift after all those years of fuzzy edges.

No more missing my bus because I couldn’t read the number!!

Not that I’ll be taking the bus again for a while, but the good news is that I have a date for the surgery on my ankle of July 11 and that will roll around quickly. I am hoping I will have a walking boot after that and can begin my recovery seriously.

I’ll keep you posted.

Well you never know the minute till the minute after! A week ago I came out of my tango lesson to an unseasonably hot day. I was wearing a fall coat and scarf, and if I had stopped to take them off this probably would not have happened. But in fact, I fainted on the street, landed on my foot and broke my ankle!

I was taken to hospital and they told me I would need surgery to insert a plate and a couple of screws. But I had to contact the hospital my insurance dealt with and they would do it. For numerous reasons, I only got there today. I had thought they would tell me then when the surgery would take place, but unfortunately that wasn’t the case, I have to get some pre-surgical tests, and when I show those results to the surgeon then they will schedule the surgery. I have no idea how long it will take, but que sera sera.

I was hobbling around on crutches, but it turned out my superintendent had an old wheelchair, which he lent me, and that has made the world of difference in getting around. Crutches are awful.

The added complication is that I have cataract surgery scheduled for next Friday and the following Tuesday. But since it looks as if the ankle surgery isn’t imminent, I’m going to go ahead with the eye surgery if they will do it.

So it’s been an odd kind of a week, but I’m taking it all in stride. It will all work out and I just have to be patient. I’ll keep you posted.

This has been a birthday full of surprises! First there was Susan’s surprise arrival from Canada, and then there was the asado, a traditional Argentine barbecue.

I knew, of course, that we were having an asado at Cecilia’s house, but I had no idea about the surprise they had set up. Venetia told me to take my tango shoes and clothes because there was going to be some sort of photo shoot. Turned out that was not quite true! Cecilia and her family and Lina had all clubbed together to bring in a professional tango dancer and singer! There were six of us who dance tango, and the others were all in on the secret so they had brought their shoes. It was wonderful!

And beyond the dancing it was just a great party, with lots of my dear friends there to celebrate my big day. I couldn’t have asked for more. Venetia shot lots of video, as you’ll see below, and the album is the result of lots of cameras popping all afternoon.

My birthday hadn’t even arrived yet when I received an amazing present. Venetia had told me to show up at La Parolaccia, one of our favourite restaurants, and not to ask questions because it was a surprise. Well, that was the understatement of the year!

I walked into the restaurant and there, with Venetia, was my friend Susan from Canada! I had no idea she was coming, but apparently she made her decision back in January, and she and Venetia have been in cahoots ever since then! Venetia never let anything slip in all that time—amazing!

Here’s how it all went down.

Thank you for coming to share my special birthday, Susan, and thank you Venetia for helping make it happen. And for capturing the moment perfectly on video!

I have a special birthday coming up on Saturday and my friends are rallying around to celebrate!

Gillian is not able to make the party on Saturday as she will be out of town, so she invited me out for cocktails last night at a lovely place called Michelangelo. The building itself has quite a history, as it was at one time a British hospital. Now it has tango shows and lots of lovely rooms for eating. We didn’t take in the show, just the lovely cocktails.

Thanks, Gillian!

One of the sad aspects of expat life is that people come and go. Not all of our expat friends live here permanently. Some are posted here for their work, some come every year to dance tango, some just choose to spend half the year here, as I did before I moved.

When good friends leave, we usually have some form of goodbye event, or despedido, and last night it was for Janette and Marco, a lovely couple who live in Edinburgh. Marco was born in Argentina, and although he left as a child I think his heart is really still here. We hope they will be back next year, if not before.

In any case, I am planning a trip to Scotland in August/September, so I will meet up with them for lunch in Edinburgh – looking forward to that.

We asked the waiter, Luca, to take a group photo, and he liked us so much he put himself in it!

The week before last was Liz’s last week here, as well as the week Ali was here from England. As they are both tangueras, tango featured large in the week! When we weren’t doing lessons with Ale, we were at the milonga or buying tango shoes or tango clothes. And since we usually went out to dinner after the milongas, it was a full on week! But I enjoyed every minute of it, as I’m sure the chicas did too.

I’ve spliced together some tango clips to give you a taste of what the week was like. There is a bit from Ali’s lesson, where you’ll see Ali elected to dance to one of the modern tango tunes, as well as at two different milongas. It’s a bit hard at the milonga to make videos, as of course lots of other couples are dancing by, but I hope you enjoy them. Interestingly, when I uploaded the video to YouTube it was rejected on copyright grounds, so I had to go through, find and remove the offending tune, which happened to be Liz’s lesson. Sorry Liz!

Here’s a shot of the three of us at the milonga, as well as a candid shot of me taken last week at the same milonga.

I’ve mentioned this before, but the expat organization I belong to, BAIN (Buenos Aires International Newcomers), has a wine and tapas party once at month at the home of a member, and this month’s was at my place. I must admit when I volunteered to have it here I had an ulterior motive, as it was Ali’s last night here and she was able to spend it at the party.

There were about 35 people there, my apartment was jam packed, and even with the balcony door wide open and the air conditioning doing its best to come through from the bedroom, it was unbelievably hot. I think next time I do it I will keep it to 25 people!

People brought a great selection of lovely food, and there was so much to drink that I was left with a dozen bottles of wine and five bottles of champagne when everyone left — another good reason to have a party!

I took these photos even though you don’t know the people, just to give you an idea how it was.

Traditionally, a bunch of us go out to dinner to celebrate birthdays, but this year Gillian decided she wanted to do something different. So seven of us (Gillian, Venetia, Sally, Vivi, Cecilia Beth and Helen) went last Sunday for a day trip to San Antonio de Areco. We went in two cars, with Cecilia and Vivi driving.

San Antonio de Areco is a village about 90 minutes from Buenos Aires, and it is strongly associated with gaucho culture. You may know that the gaucho is the Argentine version of the American cowboy, associated with living on the pampas, raising cattle—and raising hell! Every year there is a gaucho festival at San Antonio, but that’s at a different time of year.

On Sunday we were still in the midst of a horrible heatwave that had us in its grip for a couple of weeks. Honestly, I’ve always loved summer heat, but daily temperatures in the high thirties with high levels of humidity is not fun. We all struggled to walk outside in the sun, but fortunately the restaurant and the gallery we visited were well air conditioned.

There is a famous Argentine artist called Florencio Molina Campos, who painted cartoon-like images of gaucho life, and there is a gallery of his paintings in San Antonio. Some of us arrived early for lunch and decided to pay it a visit. Besides the paintings, there was a special presentation that took some of the images and transformed them into life size scenes, narrated to give more of an idea of gaucho life on the pampas in the past. It was wonderful. Here are a few shots of both.

So then all seven of us met up at a lovely restaurant called Rossita. I have only good things to say about this restaurant. The food was excellent, the air conditioning was blissful and the service delightful. Here’s a shot of us outside the restaurant – missing Beth, who took the photo!

And here is a video of Gillian blowing out the birthday candle – not the exuberant Argentine candle this time, but enough to do the job! (As you can probably year, all the other people in the restaurant joined in the singing!)

Next stop after San Antonio de Areco was a surprise visit to an estancia owned by friends of Vivi’s. When we got there it was her turn to be surprised, as a whole bunch of her friends were there to greet us. You’ll see from the photos there were quite a lot of them — and we went around and kissed everybody once when we arrived and again when we left per Argentine tradition!

The tour of the estancia brought us to their big swimming pool, and although we didn’t dive in, it was absolute bliss just to dip our feet in the cool water.

The sun was setting just as we left, and we got a nice souvenir photo of the whole group together with the owner, Vivi’s friend Alberto.

All in all, a lovely day out. Beautiful place, great food, great company — what more could you want?