Lauren's Volunteer Experience in Buenos Aires

Hi, my name is Lauren Rojos, and I'm from Southern California. I'm here in Buenos Aires with Mente Argentina. I love the place, and I really enjoyed my time here. It ended up being a really rewarding and awesome experience. I worked with children every day. Most of the time we spent a lot of time playing and working at the park, and teaching them things along the way, and it was a really great experience to be immersed in Argentine culture and to see another side of the city. I also took Spanish classes here, which were incredibly helpful. I would say that in my two months here, I learned more Spanish than I ever learned in the four years of high school that I took in California. I live in a student residence with a lot of other international students, and that's been incredibly fun. Most of the people I hang out with on a day-to-day basis here are from that residence, one of them being my roommate. It's in a great location. I actually couldn't have asked for a better location. It's in the heart of the nightlife of Buenos Aires, Palermo, which is fantastic, because that means no expensive cabs home. There's always a great place to go to dinner, and a good place to spend hours in cafés. With Mente, there are a lot of ways to meet other Mente students, which is awesome if you want to branch out from your living situation and meet other people. They set up organized day trips. I took the day trip to Colonia, Uruguay, which was really great. We spent the day in the sun, away from the city, drinking wine and watching the sunset over the ocean. It was fantastic. Other things I did with Mente were the Boca game, which was a pretty wild time. Boca is one of Argentina's main soccer teams, and you can definitely tell the passion that Argentinians have for soccer, just being at the game and feeling the atmosphere. Most of the time, when I tell people about my experience in Buenos Aires and what is a must, I say you have to go to the park on the weekends, because it's one of the best ways not only to have a great time but to be immersed in Argentine culture. You go to the park and it's a beautiful sunny day. There's usually live music, lots of street vendors, and then hundreds of families and people, groups of friends sitting there passing around their mate, chatting and having a good time. That's definitely one of the things I'll miss when I go back to the United States, because it doesn't have that same culture. I loved La Bomba del Tiempo. Mente sets up this Bomba night, and it's an outdoor concert that consists of about 20 drummers, and usually they'll have a guest instrument of some sort, like a guitar or violins. One time I went, there was a saxophone. It's every Monday night, and I was here for two months and I went four different times, so that says a lot. I definitely recommend doing that if you come to Buenos Aires. And of course the Buenos Aires nightlife is fantastic. There are lots of bars and clubs and boliches, and there's anything you would ever want to do at night here. There's something for everyone, which is great. If you're more into the boliche scene and you want to stay out till 6 in the morning dancing, then you can do that. If you want to go tango dancing and have a glass of wine with a nice dinner, you can do that. You can go to concerts. There's something to do every night in Buenos Aires, and that's great. I definitely recommend Mente Argentina. They really have your back. I ran into a few mishaps on my trip here, and every step of the way they were with me and here to help me do things I wouldn't have been able to do otherwise, such as find physical therapists. They're pretty good about getting back to you in emails. You email them and they get back to you straight away with an answer, which is great.