Buenos Aires

Hola! I am Kathinka de Veer and this semester I have the one-in-a-life-time-opportunity to enjoy 'the student life' in Buenos Aires, the largest spanish speaking city in the world! I fell in love with this city because of the wonderful stories I heard. The stories are true: The city is huge(!), but if you are living here it feels like a cozy village at the coast (don't think Buenos Aires has beaches though;)). To me, Buenos Aires is also the perfect opportunity to learn speak and understand Spanish. You will never learn another language as fluently as when you are living in a country where the language is spoken. South America is on the other side of the world, which might be scary for some, but which for certain means a lot of new experiences and getting to know a whole different lifestyle/mentality. Believe me, its the most precious experience in life!

Its pretty strange to read others still need to go on exchange or just arrived, while we are already in Buenos Aires for 1,5-2 months. We left with 5 students of Tilburg University and we all found our place and built up a life here in Buenos Aires. The reasons we are here already for such a long time is because the seasons are the other way around (its here the 2nd semester, which starts earlier) and because of the best advice given to me regarding my exchange: take the language course at Torcuato di Tella before your regular classes start. We left 1 month before our classes started to Buenos Aires and had the time to get used to the city, language, culture and meet a lot of other exchange students! The first weeks were amazing, the sun was still shining, we searched for apartments and learned Castellano, pronounced as 'Kastesjano'. Buenos Aires-Spanish differs a lot from traditional Spanish. The course learned us all the differences and introduced us to the wonderful city and country, from the beautiful sights to the voting system. Between the course and my classes I had one week off, so I decided together with Debbie to make a trip to Salta. Salta is in the north of Argentina and is really beautiful and so different from Buenos Aires. We enjoyed the silence and the peace of the mountains in Salta. If you like big cities or not, you need to get used to a big city as Buenos Aires when you come from a small city as Tilburg. We also discovered in Salta that Argentina is not that developed as many people would think. The people there live pretty primitive and even when its freezing outside (-5 celsius) a heating is too luxurious. It was cold, but it makes you realize you can say we are 'spoiled' in the Netherlands. Besides this lesson you will find the most beautiful mountains ever, mountains with 7 different colors: amazing!

When I came back from the trip I could enter my new apartment immediately. I live with Pim and Tim from Tilburg University, with a girl from Germany and a guy from New York. We live in the best area of Buenos Aires: Palermo Soho close to Plazo Cerrano, the most famous square with bars, a Starbucks on the corner and a lot of bars/restaurants and shops everywhere. Though the most beautiful neighborhood is Recoletta, but you need to make a choice between beauty and fun;).

So far: Buenos Aires is the Walhalla to party, to experience the most extreme things and to live the easy life. The following post will be about my experiences at the university, trust me: its different as Tilburg, way different!

Ciao, beso