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STUDENT PERSPECTIVES
I had managed
to make
my time in
Argentina
coincide with
the 30th
anniversary
of this most
controversial of
conflicts
to Argentina and Uruguay, was not as easy to
understand as I had hoped. Furthermore, the
content of the documentary provided me with one
final pang of concern – it was an account (and a
distinctly one-sided one) of the Malvinas (as the
presenter resolutely referred to them) war. Ah
yes, I had managed to make my time in Argentina
coincide with the 30th anniversary of this most
controversial of conflicts, the mere mention of
which seemed cause enough for a citizen of my
new country to launch a vituperative invective
against us Brits.
And so it was, as the wheels of the plane
touched down at Ezeiza International, that
my gratitude at having received a generous
share of the Antony Edwards Travel Bursary reached
an all-time high. In a rare moment of year-abroadplanning-foresight,
I had applied for this award,
thinking that it would be useful to be able to attend a
course upon arrival in Argentina, in order to sharpen
those somewhat neglected Spanish skills. It had
allowed me to book a residential Spanish course with
a school called Grupo InterCambio – Argentina (GIC),
so, for the next two weeks at least, I had something
to do, somewhere to live, and, hopefully, some way
of refreshing my Spanish. I was pleased to find, after
a couple of lessons, that I had indeed retained a
reasonable level of knowledge of the Spanish language,
which was at last emerging from the dark depths of
my memory, and that the local dialect was not so
hard to master as had first appeared. My next tasks
involved finding a job, and a place to live for the long
term. The former I managed relatively painlessly - it
transpired that an organisation called Road2Argentina,
was happy to offer me a position working as a
marketing intern for 3 hours a day, in exchange for 3
hours a day of Spanish classes. This turned out to be
an extremely fortuitous arrangement that benefited
my Spanish learning considerably.
The latter (finding suitable accommodation), was
not so simple. There were several rooms advertised
in houses for foreign students, at a rate in excess
of US$800 per month! I desperately needed an
arrangement that would provide me with a fully
immersive linguistic experience (i.e. in a house
with Spanish-speakers), and that would not be so
damaging to my bank balance. After many wild-goose
chases, involving countless hours on the Buenos
Aires ‘subte’, I eventually stumbled across what I was
looking for – a reasonably priced room, in a welllocated
apartment that was, most importantly, shared
with three locals.
Having succeeded in setting up these arrangements,
thanks in no small part to the nerve-settling first
two weeks of language courses (facilitated by the
Antony Edwards Travel Bursary that I received) I was
able to make the most of my year abroad, enjoying
the unique opportunity to spend six months living
and working in a foreign country, making lasting
friendships with the locals, and appreciating all that
the spectacular city of Buenos Aires had to offer. n
ST CATHERINE’S COLLEGE 2012/37