I woke to an email from Bamba experience saying there had been a problem with my Paypal payment. i spent the morning going through security with Paypal, confirming receipt with Bamba then confirming we had been booked on the bus leaving tomorrow. Once i thought everything was sorted Bamba replied telling me there is a strike so the bus may not be running. I replied straight away letting them know i'd enquired and had been assured before i booked that Bamba was not effected. I got an instant reply saying that id been incorrectly informed. aaahhhh. I left it with them to sort out then me and Lee left the apartment to buy the ingredients for our thank you and good bye meal. I'd written the list in English and next to it I'd done a list in Spanish. First we headed to the Main Street to get some bowls. Maxi lives near everything so they were easy to find. We went to a shop to buy mate cups and straws. The cups were easy to find but we couldn't see the straws. Because Maxi doesn't live in the tourist area the majority of people in the shops do not speak English and they don't normally meat a lot of English speaking people so, in Spanish, i let the man know i only speak a little spanish and asked where the.... I dont know the word for straw (this is why its embarrassing trying to speak in another language when you don't have the vocab). I picked the mate cup up and mimed a straw with sucking action. He got it! ahh bambisha! The mate cup and straw came to 33 pesos!
Next the cake shop for a cake for Nati's birthday. In this one we could just point but then the lady said something... I told her my 'I speak little Spanish'; Hablo un poco español, los siento. I added 'mas lento' to see if I could understand if she spoke slower... Nope. I turned to Lee to see if he'd understood. Lee said 'she asked if you want the cake in a box' so I turned to the lady and said si, si por favor. Turns out she'd asked if we want anything else. So we had an awkward minute or so where she was waiting for me to tell her what else and I was waiting for her to put it in the box.
Next the butchers to try and buy beef for our scouse. So I started with 'Hablo un poco español, los siento'... Puedo tener carne de vaca. I've basically gone into a butchers and asked for cow meat.... I knew the question was coming but I didn't know what cow meat. Luckily I'd googled the word for stew so the man was really helpful and gave us just under a kilo. It came to 33 pesos! Bargain.
Finally the 'chinos' around the corner from Maxi's. The lady who always serves us was sitting at her till. She waved us in and we headed for veg. That's easy. A man measures and puts the price on the bag for you. We wanted beans but we later found out Argentina don't have Heinz baked beans?!
We got back to the apartment and began to prepare the food.
We made mini cheese on toasts and oven chips for nibbles and carrots, crisps and peanuts (we couldn't find any dips in any shops) for the main meal we had scouse then desert was Nati's birthday cake.
Maxi arrived first then Julian and Marti. Nati had an exam at 9:30pm so she arrived about 11pm in time for scouse and cake. All went well except lee put the bread in the oven without the cheese, burnt the bread and in an attempt to rectify it he put the cheese on and popped them in the microwave. It didn't save them but people still ate them. The spuds and carrots weren't very soft but the meat tasted nice. Woo hoo me and lee are like chefs! That was our 1st scouse!
When we sliced the cake lee got the hazelnut baileys to poor on like sauce. Sounded like a good idea. It wasn't. When you poor baileys on a cake that nice creamy flavour disappears and it tasted like lighter fluid (not that I've tasted lighter fluid but you can imagine).
It was gone 1am before we gave our hugs and thanks to them all and said goodbye. They left and we went bed.