As much as I like to think I can communicate fairly well in the good ol’ castellano, I’m also painfully aware that my complete inability to trill my erres stops me from sounding like a native argentina. My flaming orange hair hardly helps – hardly screams ‘local’, does it? Being a secret perfectionist, who normally hides under a thin guise of laziness, I tried a few classes in Spanish Pronunciation.

Lee Se Yoon entered the classroom, her cupped hands spilling over with violet jacaranda blossoms. She piled them on the table, greeted me warmly and went to look for a translator for our interview. Meanwhile, I waited in the classroom surrounded by the students each with banners of white paper, blocks of dye, and longhaired paintbrushes.

Roberto Carlos Bringas is a professional juggler from Veracruz, México. He usually works performing in fire shows in hotels in Baja California. He came to Buenos Aires to train at the Circo Criollo circus school in the Montserrat neighbourhood. A normal day in México sees him waking up with yoga, going to the beach to snorkel, juggling with friends, cooking his own food, performing in the evening, and then going to a bonfire on the beach. It’s a rough life.

Seth Wulsin is a 26-year-old artist from Spring Valley, New York currently living in Buenos Aires. One of his recent and well-known works is an on-going project that he began upon his arrival a year and a half ago at Caseros prison. Channeling light and space he created images of faces of the prisoners on the walls of the prison, where inmates were starved of natural sunlight amongst other human rights violations.

Paul Perry is a man of many talents. Writer, English teacher, actor, translator and tour guide, he left the comfort of his Philadelphia upbringing, and has been building his home and life here in Buenos Aires since the nineties. He has just launched his new book, ‘Buenos Aires Chronicles…Poetically Porteño’ – a collection of poems that depict life here in Buenos Aires from the perspective of an onlooker.

Claudio de Oliveira owns a Brazilian dance studio called ‘Bailao’. While he is sitting in front of me at the reception desk, the phone rings and he answers: “No we don’t offer salsa classes… no… no salsa…”. He is both a dance student and teacher in Buenos Aires. While he studies ballet, tango and modern dance, he teaches samba, lambada-zouk or axé in his own private school.