My first
two weeks in Buenos Aires went by way too fast. And still it seems like I have
been here for an eternity already.
When I got
to the airport, a private car service picked me up and dropped me off at the university,
where I met Hyun Ah. She works for FrontDesk, an organization in the university
that is taking care of a bunch of us exchange students. I booked my housing
with them so they still needed to give me my contract and keys to the
apartment. After that, Hyun Ah brought me to the apartment, which is about four
blocks from the university – very nice.
I live in
Belgrano, one of the nicest, richest and safest parts of Buenos Aires. The
German Embassy is just down the road from where I live and so is Palermo Park,
a beautiful park with a couple of lakes and nice paths to go for walks.
In the
apartment I met my 6 roommates: Karen, Yahaira and Edgard from Mexico, Murray
from Mississippi, USA, Larissa from Switzerland and Nicolas, half French, half
Texan. Until now we all get along very well, have a lot of fun and share lots
of laughs and wine. Wine here is very good and not very expensive, so sometimes
it seems like we drink more wine than water... I have finally discovered my love for red
wine here.
The
FrontDesk people, Hyun Ah and Alfredo, live in the apartment next to ours and
provide breakfast for us every morning, which is really great. They also love
to bake! We already got our first homemade almond cake and they let us try some
Macarons (which they promise to make A LOT while we are here).
On my first
Monday here, July 20th, we had Orientation Day where we met all the
other exchange students (there are about 280 at the University, from all over
the world) and received a load of information about the University, the city,
problems that might occur and how to handle them, how to receive a student visa
and a lot more.
During the
orientation I met Corinna, a girl that goes to my university in Germany. Since
she doesn’t study business, she goes to another part of my university, which is
in a different town, so we haven’t met before. Here we also don’t have any
classes together but we’ll probably still see each other quite a bit.
The rest of
the first week nothing really happed in terms of university. Each student had
an appointment with an assigned advisor to figure out the schedules and
everyone had to go and get their ID card for the university. Other than in my
home university, here we have to attend class and need to swipe our ID cards to
prove that we were really there.
The rest of
the time we took some trips to see more of the city and I finally met Randy.
Last week
was a lot more interesting - classes started!
As exchange
students we have different options here: we can either take PALAS classes,
which are classes in English, PEAL classes, which are the same classes but in
Spanish and the professors are prepared to teach only exchange students, or we
can take the regular faculty classes. PALAS and PEAL classes are offered only
to us exchange students. I had decided to take 3 PALAS classes and 2 faculty classes.
I was
pretty excited about my classes and my schedule but it only took me until day
two to figure out, that this wasn’t going to work. The PALAS classes were good!
But the first faculty class showed me the harsh reality about my Spanish – I
would not be able to listen and take notes at the same time. And it pretty much
looked like we had to write down everything by ourselves without getting a
handout.
So I
decided to change these two classes in my schedule and ended up changing it a
couple of times until I only had one of my original classes left and 5 new
ones. 3 PALAS classes and 3 PEAL classes - we’ll see how that works. Luckily my
professors at home approved the classes very fast so I can finalize my schedule
now.
The classes
I attend now are:
-
International
Business in the Southern Cone (English)
-
Política
Económica Argentina (Spanish)
-
Economical
Integration in Latin America (English)
-
Estudios
Culturales (Spanish)
-
America
Latina y Economia Global (Spanish)
-
Social
Economy (English)
The last
one might already be my favorite class – we’ll talk about NGOs, how they work
and the difference in managing different kinds of businesses and social
businesses. I attended that class for the first time yesterday and we had
visitors from TECHO, a Latin American NGO, who told us about their work and who
are looking for new volunteers…
Since I
have every class twice a week, my schedule is a little full but I still have
Fridays off, which gives me time to go on some weekend trips. I will tell you
about these when I get there.
Next week
is going to be another week for us exchange students to figure out our
schedules but by Friday we need to confirm them and then we can’t make any more
changes. After that, the introduction phase will be over and the classes will
really start.
Other than
that I am doing really well here! I enjoy the new people and the new
surroundings a lot and I already really like Buenos Aires. Can’t wait to get to
know more of this city and the whole country in the next couple of months! The
weather is all right so far, just a little cold. But it’ll get warmer soon, I
hope.
I think
that is it for the moment.
