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.