Been a while since the last blog and this is mostly due to life starting to settle down into a routine. We discovered that the entire population of Mendoza does it's banking on a Thursday morning, precisely when we were trying to get some of ours done, massive ques stretching outside the banks and down the street. It wasn't too bad though because we got to fully explore the centre while it was busy and it was good to be part of a busy Mendozian morning. I've decided I NEED to buy a Pumas shirt before i leave but they're quite pricey so I'm going to save up and then proudly wear it to a training session.

The most interesting day of this week was Saturday which was supposed to be our first game for the rugby team. However, we discovered we couldn't play due to incredibly stringent medical laws from the league. These require you to do a a full electrode test and also go to the hospital to have a sample of blood taken so they can test it before you can play in a match. It looks likely that we won't be able to play until we sort that out so we're on the case. We watched the game anyway which we won though it was a little awkward because the team we beat happened to be the one we had trained for before and we got a few evil stares for being on the opposite side. During the game we got chatting to a girl with excellent English who was using us as practice, this appeared to be fine until we discovered she was the girlfriend of one of our players. We had no prior knowledge of this but now he won't talk to us, which seems a little harsh. The coach explained it by saying Argentinean men are a jealous sort but I'm sure he'll get over it.

After the match we were invited to go and watch Mendoza play (the equivalent of a county game) against Córdoba. It was good to spend some time outside training with the team and I think we made firmer friends with everyone. Mendoza got completely smashed by over 50 points but everyone was expecting the result so nobody seemed particularly upset. Yesterday we watched the England game at our usual bar and had our fist taste of crime in the city as a kid tried to steal Ben's phone. Fortunately we spotted him pocket it from off the table and made him give it back. A bit of a wake up call in keeping an eye on our possessions though.

We have a meeting with Alexandra this week to decide exactly where we're going to start work so I should be able to give information about all of that in the next blog.

Sam