Leaving Good Friends

On our last night in Buenos Aires we went around to our Spanish teacher's house for dinner. Mariano, our teacher is hilarious and we've thoroughly enjoyed our classes with him.

Mariano is an interesting chap and as we've had our many hours of Spanish conversation with him over the last two months, we've become very fond of him and discovered a lot about this his life. He's a great teacher, mainly because he tells us a lot about his life too, breaking down the usual teacher-student barrier. It's been great, as we've been able to see a real snapshot of Argentine beliefs.

Mariano, 39 is married to a very beautiful, young 24 year old Equadorian girl. They've been married 6 years and she's now 3 months pregnant. From their own admission they fell in love at first sight as Mariano was a good friend of her father. As her father was dying, she used to type out all of his emails for his friends. Mariano was one of these people and she loved his witty, dark humour. Then, when she saw him, she actually fell in love with him as well, without knowing that he was her father's witty friend. After her father died, they got married to her mother's disgust, under a tree on a hill in Equador. A very simple affair.

He's got the same sense of humour as Stuart and a love for travel as well. I think we'll be seeing him again. As you can see from our last dinner, we managed to polish off a few bottles of wine. We left his house at 4am in the morning in the lashing rain. We were soaked! When we woke up the next day, our clothes were still wet!