Upon arrival none of us could believe that we had all made it to Buenos Aires. Miraculously none of us lost our reciprocity fees or passports, we were all slightly rested, and we had had a great time playing trivia on the monitors in the plane. Exiting customs, with luggage in tow, we found our families and began the “ritual” of greeting everyone with un “besito” on the cheek. After a few minutes of conversation we had to say farewell with the same round of “besitos”. We each went to our respective host homes and took a nap before watching an impressive performance of Pippin.
Initially, terror struck as people rattled off strings of sentences we did not know the answer to. Our go-to responses where either an inquisitive “¿Què?”, when we didn’t understand what was asked, or an eager “¡Sí!” (even if we understood only one word). However, after only two days of immersion in the school we all commented on the improvements we noticed in our own linguistic abilities with remarks such as: “I suddenly understood like 100,000 times more at dinner tonight,” and “just think how good we’ll be by the end!”
While the language and customs differ from those in our daily lives, we’re learning how to adjust, and we can’t wait to learn more about Argentine culture in the days to come.