In that weather, some might argue that being a skinhead is not the best choice of haircut, but its been getting a bit unruly lately, halfway down my back, Rapunzel style, so I popped in to the hairdressers around the corner for the customary all off the top, nothing on the side that Ive been wearing lately. The hairdresser was most amused.

Newly shorn, I went along and checked my e-mails before going along to the Welsh centre for the days lessons.

Upon entering the centre, Jayne explained what had gone wrong the night before. Everything!

First, shed been out ski-ing and had given her keys to someone to look after, she had then given to them to her brother and he had put them in his bag. Then, only after he had left, she went to get the keys and realised that they were, in fact, somewhere towards Comodoro Rivadavia, six hours away. Oops.

I guess it was around that time that I arrived at the centre, while they were driving around town trying to find someone with the keys. Then, after getting into the centre, they found that the electric was out in that part of town (hence the reason it was so dark the night before!). It never rains, well, actually it had been so maybe that was the problem!

The first lesson started at 2:30, so I sat in on that and introduced myself and my work to the two ladies who attended, one of whom I had already met on Saturday at the dinner.

The lesson was interrupted after about twenty minutes by a knock at the door from someone called Aled, a trainee doctor who was spending a few weeks in the area and whom Jayne had been expecting for a few days. As I wasnt being much use in the lesson, I went out with Aled for a coke at the confiteria on the corner and a quick chat.

We had been together for, oooh, five minutes before discussing music. A quick scoot through the Welsh music scene and we had managed to bring up the GLC, Shaped By Fate and Welsh language group, Ashokan, of whom Aled happens to be a member. It is a very, very small world, we agreed, as I explained that I happened to have the Ashokan album with me on my diskman. Unbelievable. We arranged to meet up later on for a pint and a longer chat.

I went back to the Welsh centre, where Jayne was dropping the bombshell that she was leaving Esquel in a few weeks, and I spoke briefly to some of the others whom I had met on the weekend.

That was followed by a few smaller classes, one of beginners for which, sadly, only one person attended, a Meithrin class for children and then a more advanced class, one of whose number, Luis, is moving to Wales with his girlfriend before Christmas.

After the end of the classes, I went to meet Aled at his hostel, only to find that he had already left for dinner, so the owner gave me a little map with instructions for where he and a German doctor called Uve were eating. I turned up there a few minutes later, spotted them in the window and the owner gladly added an extra table to the group for me to eat alongside them.

We had a strange multilingual conversation, as I strained to remember my German with Uve, with the three of us speaking, rather unnaturally, I felt, in English and then in Spanish with the waiter.

Following dinner, we walked across the road to a bar called El Argentino, a hostel which has a reputation for getting lively around 3 in the morning.

This was 11:30 on a Tuesday, so it was gently quiet, apart from some Australians on a ski-ing holiday who halloed us through the door, bought us some drinks and held a long conversation about identity and ancestry. I just cant get away from work out here! Honest!

The conversation drifted to a close as a long day came to a head, and we left around 1ish to go home and get some sleep.