Ok, so I have finally come to terms with me, myself and my other self. I know I’m minutes away from leaving Pax, and though this would have been relieving any other day -going home after a hard day’s work- today I feel nostalgic and even want to work extra hours! That’s they way human beings are, I guess, contradictory. However, I’d love to be transparent right now, as I write this, and have guests ask somebody else all their constant brain-damaging questions (don’t get me wrong, deep inside I like them…)

Ok,  so I told Kaylee and the blond Snowbie that there was gonna be a surprise in the blog after they came back, possibly tomorrow Monday. Well, it’s not an extraordinary present, just a recollection of the things I will remember from now onwards.

- Maria asking: ”Hay alguien en la 4 C?” (Just then, I’d check in the system if this bed was occupied – it should be empty – but somebody has slept there without letting reception know, and just then Maria would frown, slightly or strongly, who knows…)

- Nico telling a guest- who innocently asked how to get to La Boca at 6 pm- ”yo te digo, te van a violar, asi no mas”. Yes, Nico, you can be very straightforward sometimes. But I’ll also miss the fact that you could suddenly hear him speaking any language very fluently: German, Portuguese, English…

- Fausto, the day he opened the door to someone we didn’t know, and later explained to me: ”El loquito se creia que esto era la clinica”…

- Snowbie asking on the phone: ”Es posible traer por favor un cajon de cerveza?” (A beautiful translation from English ‘is it possible to…?)

- Kaylee’s usual phrases: ”Cheers, no probs!” and ordering on the phone: ”Papas al jorno” [sic]. I will also miss listening to her innocent sweet girly voice repeating phrases in Spanish: ”Que mala leche!” (I bet all my income she learnt this from N.A)

- Maxi saying ”Pone algo de Rodrigo, o reggaeton”, with his usual football shirt. And the way he called Kaylee’s name ”Kaili”

- Emilia explaining her day in detail: ”Esuchame una cosa, le tenes que cobrar a…” with shiny elegant details in her fingers and wrists.

- Pablo impatiently saying ”Caro, las llaves tienen que estar siempre aca, si?

- Manuel’s crazy hair and his  incomprehensible Portunol, and the fact he always sais ”Depois” (”later”). ‘Manuel, me ayudas con esto? ”Depois” Manuel! ”Depois”. Jajaja.

- Ruda asking: ”Voce pode trocar $100”?

- I’ll also miss the nightime invisible Irish Leprechaun who messed with the Backpack system and the files, so that the following afternoon Kaylee would find so many incoherences and spend hours figuring out what on Earth had happened… No, I don’t do drugs.

- Chris Bogin, the day he left his hotmail account open, so that I could learn many things from his secret private life…his mother Barbara, his best friend psico-analyzing him through distant mails…yeah, sorry Chris, I guess you were right after all, I’m an ARSE… and vengeance is a sweet dessert.

By: Carolina Rs

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Being surrounded by a variety of ‘internationals’ (‘foreigners’ sounds a bit pejorative for some reason), I am more aware now of my own Argentinian lexicon and general characteristics.

For instance, we tend to start sentences in a negative form. If somebody says ‘gracias’, we say ‘no’ instead of  ‘de nada’ (you’re welcome).

Upon being asked something, we might unexpectedly answer ‘nada’ and then provide a very long story which is, paradoxically, well contrary to being nothing (nada).

If something is really awesome we might exclaim ‘tremendo’ or ‘mortal’, these two originally more negative than positive.  Maybe now old fashioned, the young may have exclaimed ‘Que flash!’ (this is weird cause  specially in American English if a girl flashes you, it means she pulls up her shirt…literally!).

Someone too good at something might receive the ‘compliment’ of being un hijo de puta (’son of a bitch’)

When saying Hello and being asked on our general wellbeing, we might answer ‘todo bien’. Again, this is contradictory as we might be far away from good, but this is the best way to greet somebody briefly and continue with our daily tasks without seeming unfriendly.  Unless you want to be truly honest, in which case you may choose to say ‘estoy bien, o queres que te cuente?’ (I’m ok, or do you want me to tell you about it?)

I’ve also noticed how much non-Spanish guests seem to be taken aback when their own foreign-like Spanish is slightly incomprehensible for the impatient porteño. This is in part due to the absolute inability most of them have to mark the ‘R’ in pronunciation, as when they attempt to say Palermo, which sounds like ‘Paleumo’ to us, or ‘Pueuto Madeuro’, ‘Plaza Dourregou’ [sic]. I must confess, though, that they must also have a hard time listening to my Argentinian English (as when I say ‘Sory’ – weirdly enough we have replaced  our Spanish ‘Perdon’ with ‘Sorry’ and dropped an R) but their good manners would keep them from ever correcting me – don’t get me wrong, I love languages, and could devote my whole time to listening to all kind of foreign speakers and stand corrected as many times as I deserve it.

By: Carolina Rs

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So Christmas and New Year in BA: was it AMAZING? My friends back in England have been asking me; was it really different?
Well I don’t want to sound grumpy at all, but….. it wasn’t quite Christmas. All the little PAX elves were working hard – busy days in the hostel, and not much relaxing or enjoying to be done when there’s 45 people to check in, check out, give directions to, feed a banquet, clear up after… you know…. so satisfying to see your guests having a good time, but, no, not really Christmas. I’m suddenly filled with equal parts of respect and admiration and sympathy for all the professions for whom working over the holidays is a regular given: health workers, hospitality, the emergency services. I salute you all, but this alone is almost enough to put me off choosing one of these wholesome and worthwhile careers for myself.
Christmas didn’t start to show itself until early December here – a far cry from the mid-October capitalist rush to cash in on the season of us so-called ‘developed’ nations. And it started slow: a few big shops with a banner or two, and Christmas music (White Christmas? Really? It’s 30 degrees outside!!), then big ‘Christmas Tree’ style light installations along one of the main avenues (guarded against vandalism 24 hours a day of course), and gradually the food in the shops and the decorations and promotions on websites (it being hot, chocolate was widely and disappointingly dismissed in favour of nougat and this yummy peanutty candy called mantecol). But it was all just rather lacklustre. Accuse me if you will of being part of the Disney generation, but this is the capital of Argentina! The Paris of South America! Come on!
Apparently the government does usually make more of an effort – the word ‘recession’ seems to be cited whenever I choose to complain to a local about Christmas, or the lack of variety of food in the supermarkets, or whatever.
We felt much better once we had ‘Christmassed’ the hostel: tree up, tinsel round anything that didn’t move, fairy lights round the bar, and a whole little troop of santas little helpers set to work making paper snowflakes, paper crowns and cotton wool snowmen and snowballs.
But it still wasn’t quite right.
Yes admittedly the weather is too hot, but chatting with Ozzie passengers, they reckoned it didn’t feel right either. It wasn’t the weather.
It was only long after the asado and pudding had been cleared away, and we were sitting around a bottle of wine getting all misty-eyed and reminiscent, that we realised that what we missed most about Christmas at home wasn’t even the Barbie on the beach (Australians), the spicy dried fruits the pervade every dish (the British, of course), crackers (everywhere, except, it seems, Argentina) or filling shoes with sweets on xmas eve (Germans – don’t ask). No, it’s not the national habits or religious rites that seem to make Christmas Christmas, it’s the little things.
Its what time you open your presents, who plays Santa, those family members you only see once a year, falling asleep in front of the queen’s speech, the exact dish you always cook for the family meal, the in-jokes….whatever: it’s the little family rituals that we miss – and that’s why Christmas anywhere else in the world will never be the same.
The endless repeats on TV, the warring in-laws and too many pairs of novelty socks? Sorry, that’s Christmas too….

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This hostel is well known for it’s coolness, like those popular football players from a teen movie. No, actually, it’s a coolness like no other teen movie ever created, like… The ultimate teen movie… Anyway, what not many know is that this hostel is very intellectual too. This is such and erudite hostel, that having one library wasn’t enough. We needed two. We are probably the only hostel in the world with two libraries. You know what they say, the more the better… kind of stuff. The book collection is in one of our rooms, and it’s full with mind blowing medical books. You never know when you will need a medical book. Imagine that suddenly someone suffers from a strong attack of “Hula-hoop Intestine”. How the hell would you cure that? The medical books could be handy. And 911.

Our other library has exchangeable books. Like exchange students, but made out of paper. You give us your book, we give you ours. You could totally rip us off with that. Like, picture the situation that you got the crappiest Danielle Steele novel. It’s called “The story of a poor hot girl who falls in love with the physic culturist sailor nice tough guy with long hair. Part V: Evil step-mother returns”. Well, you could change that brain-melting book for any of our literature classics (without counting the guide books; those are sacred), like for example, “The Da Vinci Code”, “The other hand” (it’s the continuation from “The Hand”), “African Psycho” and many many many other Nobel prize winning books.

So, yes, that`s pretty much it. You know what they say, two libraries think better than one.

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So, I’m the new guy here doing new guy’s stuff. Like, learning stuff, and doing stuff and eating stuff. And telling people this is not a clinic. That kind of stuff. But, seriously, working here is no easy stuff. Woah, I’m saying “stuff” too many times. What the hell: stuff, stuff, stuff, stuff, stuff, stuff.

Stuff.

Stuff. Stuff.

Stuff. Stuff. Stuff.

Ok, anyway. There’s one thing from this hostel that I’m not sure if I’ll be able to handle: the Awesomeness. It’s just too much. Really. It’s like a gigantic Awesomeness beast with big strong fists of coolness that punch you in the face. This place is just too awesome for my little weak uncool heart. I’m doing my best, really, but the Awesomeness here is just too awesome. I don’t even know how I got this job in the first place. I just woke up one day and I was here. Maybe I was kidnapped and brainwashed. Those kind of things happen all the time. If you wake up one day doing something and you are not really sure why you are doing it in the first place, then I’m sorry but you’ve been probably kidnapped and brainwashed. Seriously.

Actually, I remember going to a job interview. There was another hairy dude who wanted the job. The job interviewer looked at the both of us. In a certain moment she asked me why did I think that I deserved the job, so I answered: “Well. First, because I’m not a monkey”. The hairy guy couldn’t say the same. He truly was a monkey. With a long a tail. I don’t want to sound racist or anything, but I told the job interviewer that I was sure that I could be a much better receptionist than a monkey could ever be. I gotta admit, though, that it was pretty impressive for a monkey to get into a job interview. And not in just any place. It’s not like he went to IBM or something. It was fucking PAX HOSTEL! The capital of awesomeness. The monkey had some talents though. A pretty impressive control of his tail, I must say. He knew how to use the bathroom too. Yeah, he was one hell of a monkey. And, besides, just picture yourself going to Latin America, to PAX HOSTEL!!! (fuck yeah) and there’s a monkey at the reception. It would be totally badass. I always wanted to have my own personal army of monkeys because you can’t kill them. They are just too cute.

Anyway, all I really wanted to say is that I got the job and I’m happy and I just hope that I can survive the unbelievable awesomeness from this place.

I wish you a good day and a talking rock.

Pancho

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