Escapisms

Dear All,

            Well it is about half two and I am leaving this evening with Chloe and flying up to New York at 8 this evening and we arrive tomorrow morning at some unearthly hour!  It will be very strange leaving here I have to say.  It has been odd saying goodbye to Ed this morning as he has gone back to London. I don’t think that I will really miss him until it is comes to leaving this evening when I will be looking around for him!  I will be sad to say my goodbye to James as well, the friendly Ozzie that we met in Foz.  It has been so nice that we have all become such good friends.  Who knows when I will next see him again though?  Hopefully he will come over to the UK at some point; otherwise I will have to go all the way over there!  I am very much hoping that he will keep in touch via email as he is going on to do a lot more travelling of South America and I am looking forward to hearing about his experiences and also what he decides to do when he gets back home, if he ever does!!

Chloe and I went on a bus tour of the city yesterday, which was good.  The main part that I particularly enjoyed was going to a part of town called La Boca, which is where all of the multi-coloured houses are.  Well from the guide book and the amount that you hear about them you would have thought that they were all over the district.  That is not the fact the case!  Instead it is about one street that has them on, probably just for the tourists.  We went into all of the tacky tourist shops and I managed to find the most wonderful albums that I will put all of my South America pictures and bits and pieces in.  Not very cheap but they will look really good once I have finished.  (We took in such places as the Teatre Colon, which we had already been inside for the opera.  We saw Atilla and sat right up in the Gods.  The girls had to sit on one side and the boys on another and it was REALLY cramped.  They were standing seats only and so we were rather uncomfortable after a while!  We have no idea what on earth it was all bout as it was sung in Italian and translated into Spanish – neither of which we could speak!  Anyway we went as the acoustics are meant to be the best in the world out there.  It was built in 1908 and is thought to be one of the world’s finest performing arts venues and the largest theatre in the southern hemisphere until the construction of the Sydney Opera house in 1973.  La Boca was settled and built up by Italian immigrants along the Riachuelo which is a waterway that is lined with meat packing plants and warehouses that separates the warehouses from the rest of the city.  The bright colours come from the brightly painted houses and the corrugated metal roofs of the Caminito, which is a popular pedestrian walkway, and former rail terminal, which takes its name form a popular tango.  The Estadio Dr Camilo Cichero, known by its nickname – La Bombonera is the football stadium of Boca Juniors, which is the former club of Diego Maradonna.)  It is not a safe area at all and, seeing as I am going now I can tell you, Mum and Dad can’t get worried about me, why I didn’t leave the hostel for a couple of days.

When we first arrived there was an Irish guy that was staying in our dorm and he got robbed at knife point, against his windpipe, in the La Boca area, near to the football stadium andhad all of his stuff taken, I am not quite sure why he had so much stuff on him but it was a lot of money and his cards, plane ticket, passport, camera and walkman. (He was leaving that afternoon and took everything with him instead of leaving it in the hostel.)  It was because of that horror story that I was a little reluctant to go out for the first few days.  We have also heard about several other people that have been mugged and so on and I am glad, touch wood, that nothing like that happened to us here!

We all went out for supper last night to a really delicious restaurant to celebrate James’s birthday, which is actually next Tuesday.  We managed to get a cake with a candle in it for him, which he was really chuffed with.  There was a piano player already playing music and he suddenly turned it into “Happy Birthday” when they brought out the cake, it was all really well done and I think that he was really chuffed.  He certainly won’t forget it in a hurry!

So onwards then.  Last email from South America, wipe those tears away from your eyes everyone! Said goodbye to one and on Friday and we say HELLO to three complete strangers.  Excellent!  No I am really looking forward to meeting them, they sound really nice, well what I have heard of them so far! They are sweetly bringing out my post from Mum and Dad’s and No. 55, hopefully it won’t have been tampered with (by Mum and Dad, not the boys!)!

I have packed already, I managed to do it at about 1:30 last night and I have no idea how but I managed to have more room this time. I have given Ed a few things to take back for me, like my guidebooks that I don’t need and a few pressies.  Not sure who they are all for so don’t all get your hopes up!

Loads of love to one and all and I will let you know a.s.a.p. that I am A OK in New York as soon as I am awake enough to send you an email, I doubt that I will manage to sleep on the plane.  Oh well at least there will be more chance of having films in English on an American Airways plane!!

This is quite weird.  I am not sure that I really want to sign off; it is a little final for South America.  I hope that you have all enjoyed the journey so far.  I do have a favour; if anyone has saved all of my messages in their inbox I would really appreciate a copy of them all at some point.  Someone in the hostel was suggesting this to me; I can then remember anything that I might not have put in my diary.  If you could let me know by email as I don’t want loads of them and I will tell you soon if anyone has managed to do so!

Once again, love and hugs to all,

            Em

            Xxx

EM – yeah I moved at the end of last semester seeing as Charlotte is going I can now move into your group.  My teacher from school thought that I would be a better Key Stage 2 teacher and seeing as that is the second person that has said that too me I have decided to change.  Keep an eye out for Ileana, she is going to V2001 in Chelmsford though, I guess that you will be going to the one in Leeds.  I so hate you for seeing David Gray.

ED – Hopefully you will be safe and sound by the time that you get this.  Could you send the films that Chloe put in my rucksack back to me at my parents unless you were getting them developed first?  We couldn’t remember between us.  Gave the things to James.  You left the bread in his room.  Hope your flight back was ok and looking forward to hearing from you.

MUM AND DAD – Ed will be sending you some stuff of mine but he will probably address it to me.  Don’t open it as it has pressie inside and things that I don’t want you to peep at before I get back.  I will call you from the USA tomorrow.  I love you.