Auslandssemester in Buenos Aires

Hi, I'm Lucas Baumgartner. I'm from San Diego, California, and I go to university at the Colorado School of Mines, doing engineering. I was here in Argentina for the two-month Spanish program, and then the semester at the university, where I studied history, culture, literature, economics, and all that. First, with Mente they supply you with activities and housing, and that is really important, because the vast majority of my friends came through the Mente program. I have many more friends from the Mente program than I do from the Spanish school or from the university. Try to go to the events when you can. After a while you have plenty of friends, so don't worry. In Argentina you really just need to make sure to have fun and explore, especially Buenos Aires, such a big city. Have fun doing it. There is so much to do. I have been here for six months, and I still have hardly seen anything in Buenos Aires. There is still so much to see and so much I have to do, so I am going to have to come back to see it all, of course. Don't be afraid to experience the culture. Make sure you eat a medialuna and have a siesta. If you are American, don't be afraid of the breakfasts, which are really small, with a sugary medialuna and a cup of coffee. It tastes much better if you dip the medialuna in the coffee. That is my advice if you are American. Argentina is a really big country, so my other advice is to explore around Argentina. Up north you have Iguazú Falls, which are the biggest waterfalls in the world. It is absolutely beautiful, bordering Brazil. Further down southwest, in Patagonia, you can go to Bariloche and see the mountains and go skiing if it is that time of year. Further south you can go to Tierra del Fuego and Calafate and see the glaciers. A little bit up north you can see the desert around Salta, or you can go to Las Pampas. There is plenty of that, and the culture there is really fun too. If you are in the university program, don't be afraid to miss a few days. I have missed plenty of days and I still came out on top. I have probably attended more classes than 80 percent of the students there, because the international students are so focused on traveling. The professors are very relaxed about attendance, so don't be afraid to explore when you can. With the university courses, if your Spanish is not too great, I got by fine in the classes with only two months of Spanish beforehand, and I understood most of it. It was still a great experience. As for the two-month Spanish program, the Spanish school is a really cool place. I got to meet plenty of people. It is how I met most of my friends at the beginning, and it is a good way to meet other students from Mente too. The teachers there did a pretty good job teaching me Spanish, and it is a very relaxed environment. You will find that you have a lot of fun. I actually met one of my best friends in Argentina, who works at the Spanish school.

I am a junior at the University of Alabama, and I have been studying here in Buenos Aires through Mente Argentina for about six months now, since July. I was doing the university semester program, with coursework in Latin American studies and Spanish. What I really loved about Mente is the freedom it has given me to learn about the city, the culture of Argentina, and the people here in Buenos Aires. I really enjoyed the apartment placement I got. Mente gave me a nice apartment here in the city. I have had really good luck with roommates through the program, and I have really enjoyed that. What I enjoyed most was how I was able to take what Mente offered and turn it into a real learning experience here in Buenos Aires, expand on the coursework I was doing at the university, and make that into something I can take beyond the classroom.

Hi, I'm Kathryn. I participated in the Summer Intensive Spanish program and the semester program with Mente Argentina. My favorite thing about my trip abroad, no matter where you go, is the people that you meet. Mente really helped me get connected with lots of interesting people, through outside activities and also with the other people in the program. The city is so open and vibrant to foreigners. There is always something you can do to explore the culture here, and always people to help you do it. One of my favorite activities during my time here was called Mundo Lingo. That is where we met twice or three times a week, people wanting to speak different languages, learn about different cultures, enjoy themselves, and have fun meeting people. I have made so many long-lasting friendships through that. I am so sad to leave this place. It really has changed my life, and I can't wait to come back whenever that is. Thank you.

My name is Matthew Black. I'm from Bermuda, and I did a semester at a university, followed by six weeks in international cooperation. I have had a very, very good time in Argentina. I have done a lot of things. I love being here. I love Buenos Aires. I have been able to travel around. I have been to Patagonia and to Mendoza, and I even traveled in Brazil. It has been a really great place to be situated in South America. I enjoy a city lifestyle, so I am going to miss it a lot.

Hello, I'm Madison Pelgrino, from the Mente Argentina program. Three things I'd really like to bring to your attention that made my stay here amazing. The first was my host family, Christina Camelman. It's an awesome family. You can be yourself. They converse with you. They make you feel part of the family. The second was Mente, and all the emails they gave us, always new things to do and people to meet. They really kept in contact with you, checked up on you, and made sure that you were okay. The third was the culture here, which you should really get involved with. The people are really friendly. They love people who are not from Argentina, and it's really easy to feel like you belong.

Hi, my name is Ryan Espinosa. I did the semester program with Mente Argentina. I studied at the University of Belgrano and took classes in international business, tango, and Spanish, among others. It was a great way to meet people from Argentina as well as other students from across the globe. They were very helpful with my visa process, making sure everything went smoothly with school and with getting our transcripts in order and all of that process. The living situation was great throughout the semester. They were very helpful with putting us in a good location, helping us around the city, and getting everything integrated and moving as smoothly as possible. I had a great time. I highly recommend it to anybody looking to study abroad. Buenos Aires is one of the best cities in the world, and Mente is one of the best ways to help you experience it.

Hi, my name is Kelsey, and I just finished the semester program here in Buenos Aires with Mente Argentina. I had a great time. Mente Argentina set me up with the University of Belgrano, in their international program, which is a bunch of international students taking classes in Spanish. It was the perfect level, because I wasn't with Argentine students, so it wasn't too intimidating, but I still had classes in Spanish, and my castellano has improved greatly. I also had a homestay through Mente. The homestay was awesome because, unlike most of my other friends' study abroad programs, meals were not included, which was awesome, because I would have my own food, which is cheaper, but then my husband would also cook me dinner occasionally, and I got to eat leftovers in the fridge, and it worked out great. The extra activities through Mente were great, too. I got a chance to see other parts of the city. In my first few weeks here, when you're thinking, oh my gosh, I don't know what I'm doing here or what there is to do, it was really great to have Mente there to introduce me to people in the area within Mente, as well as to get an introduction to Buenos Aires and all sorts of different things you're able to do here. There was always someone. My favorite part about the semester program with Mente was that I was able to be very independent and do my own thing, but there was always someone there for me if I had problems or needed help with student visa requirements or transferring credit back to my university. I never felt like I was alone, but I was still able to do my own thing in the city, and there's so much to do in this city, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. I had an awesome last semester of school, and I wouldn't have wanted to go anywhere else.

Hi, my name is Allison, and I'm from Korea. I did a semester study abroad here in Buenos Aires at a university, and I had a great time. My semester was great. I met some great friends and had a really good program related to my major, which is anthropology and music. Mente Argentina really helped me a lot, because before coming here I was really scared that everything would go wrong and that my Spanish wouldn't be good enough. Mente provided a good transition for me. It was really smooth, and it covered all my worries. It's really helpful to have a go-to person in a foreign country where you don't really know anyone. I also met some really great roommates while I was here, which really helped, and through my roommates I got to meet other new friends. That made it so much more exciting to be in Buenos Aires. One of the highlights with Mente was that they offer tours every weekend, and I really enjoyed them, because not only do you get to see the tourist spots in Buenos Aires, but they also have really great guides who I sometimes see on the streets now, and it's like we're friends. We're not just tourist and tour guide. Buenos Aires is great, Argentina is great, and you should definitely come visit.

I did the semester program and an internship with Mente Argentina, and both were very helpful. I learned a lot of Spanish while I was here. At my internship we did wine tastings, and we export wine to the US. It was a good industry to get into down here. Wine is big. It's a fast-growing industry in Argentina. They were very helpful and very knowledgeable. The university was great. The professors were very helpful. They worked with us a lot if you're struggling with Spanish or with deadlines on papers. All of our professors worked with us very well on Spanish, and on getting papers in if you're traveling. They're very helpful, and very good staff. Everyone at Mente Argentina was very helpful. Whether you're in the process of leaving or arriving, or trying to find out information about something, you can always shoot them an email and you'll get a good response back. They're very helpful with getting a hold of you when you need it, or figuring out last-minute situations. Travel is very fun. Whether you're going to different provinces or you want to go to Chile for a while, hop on a bus. It's quick and it's easy. I met a lot of good people at the school, a lot of good friends, international students, a lot from Europe, most from the US, and some from the UK, Australia, and Asia. There's a good international community, and it's very helpful when you want to embrace a different culture that you don't know too well. You learn a lot from these people when you're traveling. One thing I always loved about Buenos Aires is the different barrios. Each barrio has its own vibe and atmosphere, and just by walking through them and seeing the sights you get a feel for it. The air is a bit different, the people are a little different in different barrios, and there's a different scene. My favorite was La Bomba. It was a very good time. It's drumming, all percussion. It's very fun. It's in a big warehouse, and tons of people go. You can definitely manage the semester and the internship together. The internship along with school can be a bit hectic sometimes, working out schedules and making everything fall into order, but for the most part your boss will work with you. They want you there to help out, so they're willing to manage a schedule according to what you need. I would definitely recommend it. I learned a lot through my internship that I wouldn't learn at school. Thank you, Mente, for a wonderful Buenos Aires experience.

Hi, my name is Talia Girtton, and I'm from Louisville, Kentucky. I did the semester program here as well as the volunteer program. In my city, I studied music therapy at the University of Louisville, and I wanted to travel to Argentina to study music therapy here from a different cultural perspective. It was a really amazing experience. I was the only American, with a bunch of Argentinian students. There were a few people from other countries in South America, and I took five different classes. It was very challenging because I was just thrown into it. It wasn't really a program designed for international students, but I learned a ton of Spanish. I improved my vocabulary, for example technical vocabulary, and I learned a lot from the different viewpoint in psychology here, because they look at everything from a psychoanalytic perspective, which is basically the opposite of what we use in the United States. So everything I had learned, I had to kind of push aside and try to accept a new way of looking at things. This was for a semester. Afterwards I continued with the volunteer program. I worked with about 30 children, from ages 5 to 16, and I was able to arrange music therapy sessions with them. We had four different groups, and three days a week we had 30-minute sessions of music therapy, which was a really great experience for me, because I got to design everything, I got to organize everything, and I got to work with these kids in Spanish. I stayed in a shared apartment with a girl from California, a girl from Israel, and a girl from Norway. We had an international mix, and we all got along really well. We went out together, we cooked together, and it was a really good experience, in a good location, one of the nicer areas, in a really nice apartment. It was really open, with lots of windows and sunlight. The thing I love about Buenos Aires is there's always something to do. There's always something going on. One thing you should definitely do is look on Facebook, because literally every day there's something going on. I went to the International Tango Festival. I went to the Buenos Aires Blues Festival. I went to the Contemporary Dance Festival. I went to the Candombe Festival. There's just always something with music and art. I went to La Noche de los Museos, where all of the museums in the city are open free for a night, and you can just walk to all the different museums. So there's always something going on with art and culture and music. I would definitely recommend this program with Mente Argentina to other students. It's definitely more economical than other programs. One of the things I really like about Mente is they actually treat you like an adult. A lot of the other study abroad programs kind of baby you and keep you in a little bubble of Americans. They give us just the right amount of support and attention, but they also give us a lot of room to grow and explore the city.

Hi, I'm Jamie from Massachusetts, and I came here to Mente Argentina, studying in Buenos Aires. I'm studying at the University of Belgrano, and I took six classes, which is really awesome because I didn't have to pay a ton, because back home classes were super expensive. I have a really nice apartment, and all the apartments I've seen through Mente are really nice. Buenos Aires is a really fun city to be in. There's always stuff to do and to explore. Mente also helped me a lot with the visa process. It's a really long process. You have to go back and forth and back and forth, and I finally got my student visa yesterday. Everyone was there helping me, so that was good. It's a great city.

Hi, my name is Nam. I'm from Vietnam, and I'm currently studying in the US at Bennington College. I'm taking a semester abroad in Argentina, here in Buenos Aires. I found Mente Argentina on the internet, and it has been four months of studying, living, and experiencing something completely different. After four months, I think I've learned a lot, not only about Argentina but also about Latin America in general. The most important thing is that I can really think about who I am, about my country, and about what I want to do in the future. That's something I value a lot. Buenos Aires is a very diverse city, and it's really fun. It has a lot of different things, sometimes things that are a little contradictory. For example, the media and political scene is a little polemic. If you want to read the news, you read Página/12, but you also read Clarín, to have a more balanced perspective. After four months, my Spanish really improved. I made a lot of friends from all over the world, from Europe, especially from Colombia and Mexico, and that's how I learned more about their culture. What I really want to do now, moving forward, is to finish my last year in college in the US and then start my master's afterwards. But I definitely want to come back to Latin America and see how my perspective will change afterward.