November is the final straight before the summer holidays, a strange mix of swatting up for exams and end of year festivities.
On the exams front, this means a ramping up of tutoring and early morning revision, as if they don't pass their end of year exams, they can't move up into the next school year. The last exam was on the last day of the month, and all seemed to go ok as far as we can tell, fingers crossed.
Millie doesn't have exams yet, but she did 'graduate' from kindergarten. She was a bit sad about this, as she's enjoyed it a lot, and she feels a bit like the age of innocence and freedom is coming to an end now she's hit the dizzying heights of 5 and a half.
The November weather has been hot, too hot at times, so it’s been a bit barmy while preparing for the exams as well as our imminent holiday - and Christmas too, as we get back on the evening of 24th December - all interdespersed by the nutty end of year actos (plays).
First up was Millie’s kindegarten’s end of year extravaganza in Salta city theatre. It was our seventh and final one of these bananas events, and as ever it was filled with overly-loud music, costumes, fireworks, lasers, lightshows, dry ice, big screen projections (including of my ma for a few moments, filmed during her talk to Millie’s class about what it’s like living in England last month ).
Funnily enough, although we’ve spent the last 7 years longing for the day when we wouldn’t have to go to these any more, this time it was sad to think that it was our last.
We did at least finish on a high though: as Millie is able to do the splits, they utilized her doing this repeatedly, so she was the star of the show, really.
There’s lots to love about living in Salta, but one thing that’s been frustrating over the years is that it’s quite hard to get to Santiago de Chile from here. If there was a direct flight, it would take just a couple of hours, however you either have to fly to Bs As first so doing two sides of a triangle, or drive 8 hours to Cordoba airport to catch a flight as we did in April, or drive 12 hours to Mendoza to catch such a short flight that you may as well drive the extra few hours over the Andes, as we’ve done two or three times.
It was announced this month though that a new direct flight is starting from an airport 2.5 hours up the road from Salta. If only they’d got round to this sooner!
One reason why northern Argentina is opening up this way now though is the combination of a stable, non-populist national government, and the fact that they’ve just realized that there's the world’s largest supply of litium just north of us, which is suddenly in demand as we enter the age of electric cars, for batteries. So Chinese, Korean, and US companies are suddenly all over the mountains just to the north of Salta, apparently. (Come on, wake up Global Britain!) Apparently foreign investment in Argentina this year is already 10 times what it was 2 years ago, and rising fast. So at least we’ll be leaving the place in ruder health than we found it.
It was a good month for England rugby, in that we beat Australia, who had recently beaten the Kiwis, and also the Pumas and Somoa, which were both easier rides.
Because we haven't been able to find a nice family to adopt Avon our border collier yet, we needed to find a house/dog sitter before we could go on holiday. We thought a friend of a friend was interested, but he bailed out just days before we were due to leave. Luckily, a Brit violinist we know who was looking to do more walking in life and his pregnant Saltena wife needed a place to stay in December, and they jumped at the chance - a holiday with built in dog walking excercise away for him, a restful time for her, and tranquil house sitters for us. All in all, everyone wins.
On the exams front, this means a ramping up of tutoring and early morning revision, as if they don't pass their end of year exams, they can't move up into the next school year. The last exam was on the last day of the month, and all seemed to go ok as far as we can tell, fingers crossed.
Millie doesn't have exams yet, but she did 'graduate' from kindergarten. She was a bit sad about this, as she's enjoyed it a lot, and she feels a bit like the age of innocence and freedom is coming to an end now she's hit the dizzying heights of 5 and a half.
The November weather has been hot, too hot at times, so it’s been a bit barmy while preparing for the exams as well as our imminent holiday - and Christmas too, as we get back on the evening of 24th December - all interdespersed by the nutty end of year actos (plays).
First up was Millie’s kindegarten’s end of year extravaganza in Salta city theatre. It was our seventh and final one of these bananas events, and as ever it was filled with overly-loud music, costumes, fireworks, lasers, lightshows, dry ice, big screen projections (including of my ma for a few moments, filmed during her talk to Millie’s class about what it’s like living in England last month ).
Funnily enough, although we’ve spent the last 7 years longing for the day when we wouldn’t have to go to these any more, this time it was sad to think that it was our last.
We did at least finish on a high though: as Millie is able to do the splits, they utilized her doing this repeatedly, so she was the star of the show, really.
There’s lots to love about living in Salta, but one thing that’s been frustrating over the years is that it’s quite hard to get to Santiago de Chile from here. If there was a direct flight, it would take just a couple of hours, however you either have to fly to Bs As first so doing two sides of a triangle, or drive 8 hours to Cordoba airport to catch a flight as we did in April, or drive 12 hours to Mendoza to catch such a short flight that you may as well drive the extra few hours over the Andes, as we’ve done two or three times.
It was announced this month though that a new direct flight is starting from an airport 2.5 hours up the road from Salta. If only they’d got round to this sooner!
One reason why northern Argentina is opening up this way now though is the combination of a stable, non-populist national government, and the fact that they’ve just realized that there's the world’s largest supply of litium just north of us, which is suddenly in demand as we enter the age of electric cars, for batteries. So Chinese, Korean, and US companies are suddenly all over the mountains just to the north of Salta, apparently. (Come on, wake up Global Britain!) Apparently foreign investment in Argentina this year is already 10 times what it was 2 years ago, and rising fast. So at least we’ll be leaving the place in ruder health than we found it.
It was a good month for England rugby, in that we beat Australia, who had recently beaten the Kiwis, and also the Pumas and Somoa, which were both easier rides.
Because we haven't been able to find a nice family to adopt Avon our border collier yet, we needed to find a house/dog sitter before we could go on holiday. We thought a friend of a friend was interested, but he bailed out just days before we were due to leave. Luckily, a Brit violinist we know who was looking to do more walking in life and his pregnant Saltena wife needed a place to stay in December, and they jumped at the chance - a holiday with built in dog walking excercise away for him, a restful time for her, and tranquil house sitters for us. All in all, everyone wins.