"You are from England?? Seriously?? Take me with you!!!” For real? I can’t think of any good reason why anyone in their right mind would exchange sunny, friendly Argentina, for a sodden island hanging onto Europe’s shirt sleeves like a child in a tantrum. But it would seem that England has some irresistible appeal to the people of this country that goes beyond wealth and history. Such is the appeal of this “greener grass” that complete strangers who have never visited our sceptered isle regularly spout odes of romance about the joys of life in England, until I also find myself imagining apple-cheeked maidens and lambs skipping gaily hand in hand. This week it has been hard to decide exactly what to write about because life is beginning to feel so very normal. I go to work at the magazine, return and chat to my funky-to-the-core host mum, help to make supper and then go out with friends. In many ways, life in Wiltshire was not so very different, but it has still been far easier than ever expected to slip into a new mould and become semi-argentine to the point where I begin to believe the mysterious rumours of this other land on the other side of the Atlantic that I have called home since birth.

It is easy to understand why Argentines are charmed by the idea of England. When I tell them I live in the countryside they all ask “ooooh, is it like in the movies??” I duly show them photos of the fields around the Avon, the Salisbury plain or the rustic little village of Lacock and they squeal with excitement. "It is like the movies!!!" They peer at the picture intensely, as if there really is an apple-cheeked maiden tending her flock with a hooked staff, but she was too coyly British to show herself in the photos and is hiding behind one of the timeless oaks. I suppose we should be grateful – patronising though this image might appear, our cousins across the sea come off worse. Is America like the movies - full of gun-touting gangsters with junkie girlfriends and dodgy deals on the basketball court? I would take the “Railway Children” image and be grateful.

Yes, it would appear that England and Englishness is flavour of the month over here. And yet there is no greater compliment for me in Argentina than when someone mistakes me for a local, asking directions or advice on the local night life. I can see no greater pleasure than sipping mate wrapped in the glow of the argentine sun and letting the delicious language roll off my tongue. I would love to be Argentine with a similarly intense and illogical intensity.

So why is it that I am so jealous of the Argentines? I know that the Argentina of the movies is not the reality – they aren’t all swarthy Latino types lurking round corners, flicking their hair and wrapping themselves around tango ladies with the cling of a wet sheet. I have also seen the hallmarks of the difficulties that even wealthy people come up against daily. Imagine a country where the A&E department of the city hospital has a paper sign stuck on the door saying “closed for the holidays. Sorry for any inconvenience…” Inconvenience??? No, having to crawl away half-dead while the doctor sips cocktails in Uruguay isn’t sat all inconvenient. Imagine a country where the doors of the national bank are boarded up after people stormed in, in 2001, and ripped down the ancient doors to find their money had gone and their country was in ruins. I can see why argentines are weary. However, this country is so startlingly beautiful, so full of resources and raw opportunity, that I cant help thinking that people here need to don a blindfold, spin around a couple of times and take a second look. England has its charm, and rightfully so. But Argentina is unique aswell, with a flavour of every culture and a taste all of its own. I short, Argentines should feel proud to be argentine.