I feel ridiculous to be learning all this after 8 months here:I'm still just cracking the cabezada thing, and I'm only just getting over the almost constant necessity to dance with strangers. I'm getting there, having had a long overdue injection of male solidarity - thank god for N, and what the hell am I going to do now that he's not here?

It's been an extremely long road, and I'm just beginning to realise that my shyness might possibly have burnt a few bridges with some locals - no I haven't been one to go around and kiss everyone in the room hello when I arrive; too shy. But I think for some people it's rude not to. And frankly, now that I think about it, I've spent 8 months seeing the same people Sundays and Wednesdays, week in, week out, and I'm actually acquainted with very few of them.

Now that I'm capable of putting myself out there a little (and taking it all a little less personally), there are a whole new raft of issues to face. For example, I'm terrible at remembering names, and often faces. But now I have to remember who I danced with last week, what their name is, what language they speak, how long they're here for... I made a complete shmuck of myself on Monday night at Canning with a German lady (B) - keeping to the standard smalltalk entre tango y tango, I asked her where she was from. She told me a little indignantly that I'd asked her that on Sunday, when I danced with her at El Beso. Argh! I couldn't remember her name, let alone whether it had been the night before or a week before! The worst thing was that she's a lovely dancer - one of the best around at the moment, and apart from feeling terrible about what effect it might have on her self-esteem to be so profoundly forgotten, I really wanted to be able to dance with her again.

But she can't have been too offended; the other issue I currently have no coping mechanisms for is being relentlessly hit on by tourists looking for a quick fling in an exotic city.