Photos

The first is a shot of the Rosario city centre from the far side of el Rio Parana. The second is of some of the tens of thousands of Argentinians assembled to watch the President making her speech and the third is the view from my plane as we flew over the Andes. To say that the Andes were awe-inspiring would be a gross understatement.

By the way, excuse my mistakes in the previous post. I'm finding it very hard to write after spending so much time practising and learning Spanish and speaking a simplified form of English to my German, Dutch and Spanish speaking friends.

Rosario

After twenty four hours of travel including stop overs in Aukland, Chile and Buenos Aires, I finally arrived in Rosario on Friday night (local time). In Rosario I am staying at the local Spanish school with eleven other exchange students for an orientation week where we take Spanish lessons and get to know the local culture. Our little group includes a Swiss girl, a Dutch girl, three Americans, a bunch of Germans and another Australian.  Thankfully everybody is all-but fluent in English so communication is very easy. It is fascinating with several different flowing around the table - I sometimes feel that by the end of the week I will know almost as much German as I know Spanish.
Most of the students have also never met an Australian before so I've given a couple of lessons on our culture, biology and history. I also learnt very quickly to tone down my accent so that the people that don't have English as a first language can understand me.

The Argentinians are amazing! Their sense of humour is great and they are astoundingly friendly! It feels to me as if they have taken everything that is good about Australian people and made it better. Greetings are quite different to at home - when meeting new people we are introduced with a hug and a kiss to the cheek by women and a handshake/man-hug and a kiss to the cheek by men. There are so many differences in the culture and atmosphere that I will not attempt to list them here, however at a later date I will probably give a description of my favourite feature of life in Argentina so far - the drinking of yerba mate.

Other than the Spanish classes and chilling at the accommodation, we have been taken on several trips around Rosario, including a walks to the cinema, the river (Río Paraná) and to see The President make a speech. Again, there is far too much for me to try and describe in detail here but hopefully I can elaborate in later posts.

All in all, I am having an amazing time here - I doubt I could find anything negative to say! I hope you Australia is treating everybody well. My next post will probably be in around a weeks time when I am settled in with my host family.

Visit to the Consulate

I thought I should probably get round to posting something else so that this blog isn't just sitting here with one post for the next week. My excitement for my upcoming trip got a major boost last week when I went to visit the Argentinian Consulate to get my visa sorted out. The few people that I dealt with there (including the consulate) where some of the most friendly, good humoured and infectiously enthusiastic people I have ever met!

From a warm smile, a wave and a cheerful "Hola!" from a man passing through, to the joy of the consulate at the simple fact that I had chosen Argentina as my destination for exchange, I can hardly think of a more positive atmosphere. I struggled to wipe the giant smile from my face!

They were very insistent that the province that I will be calling home (Neuquén (which happens to be a palindrome if you ignore the accentuation (thank you Wikipedia))) is one of the most beautiful in their country and that I will thoroughly enjoy my time there. Struggling to find words to describe it, the woman that was present said that the positive and natural energy that Junín de los Andes radiates is nearly unsurpassable. If it is anything like what I felt in my few hours at the consulate, I'm in for an amazing five months.


Also, if I'm lucky, the average height of Argentinians will remain consistent with that of the few Argentinian people that I met. For the first time ever I was the tallest person in the room!

All in all, I am heading into this week with very high hopes for my coming travels!

Intro

In less than twelve days time I will be heading off on what I hope to be a very memorable, enlightening, challenging, and fun-packed (insert other appropriate adjectives) adventure to the beautiful South American country of Argentina. There I will be spending the next five months of my life in another family's household for a student exchange through the organisation World Education Program (WEP)

I thought this would be an awesome way to keep my friends and family (and interested Google+ contacts and any other sidetracked Internet users) up to date on my adventures over there.

With any luck I'll keep this fairly regularly maintained and hopefully you'll enjoy reading!