Into the land of Argentina

During the week, the Argentinean that is in charge of Sales and External Relations of AIESEC at the level of Southern Cone (Chile, Argentina, Uruguay) came to Viña del Mar in order to give us trainings on selling and making our Local Committee better trained to sell the internship opportunities to companies. I also began work as a Facilitator in planning the sessions for the AIESEC National Leadership Congress that was to be held in Tandil, Argentina in August. In August, I will also be giving the sessions to present knowledge on where do I want to go in life, how do I build a team and create results, and how do I make use of my external environment all to help them in and out of AIESEC.

I then set out for Argentina to meet up with some AIESECers that I had met at conferences and with whom I work with in AIESEC. I got on a bus that took me the 24 hour trip to Córdoba, Argentina, a city in between Mendoza and Buenos Aires a little to the north. The city is rather large and has a little bit of a European flare for me. It has a good number of very old churches that give the city character. The difference in Spanish between Chile and Argentina is very notable and at times there can be some communication difficulties between the Argentineans and me, but it’s all good. We did a tour of the city just to see everything. It seemed like everywhere we walked it was absolutely full of 15 year old kids with nothing to do. Especially in the mall when we were walking around, it was hard to take a step in front of you without stepping on one. I met a German guy at the hostel from Berlin where I was staying for one night who talked about how he had joined the German army for some time to earn the money to be able to go and travel through Argentina for 2 months. He spoke Spanish very well; I almost thought he was Argentinean. The following day I went to one of the team meetings of AIESEC in Córdoba that is responsible for sending Argentineans abroad to fill internship positions in the 107 other countries. I met an American girl from Madison, Wisconsin that was doing an internship through AIESEC with an NGO in Córdoba for 6 weeks. I stayed in the house of one of the AIESECers who lives on the outskirts of Córdoba. In Chile and Argentina, and for the most part all of Latinoamérica, the children live with their parents until they graduate from college and are about to get married. If they go to the university in a city that is different than where their family lives, then they would live in an apartment with other students or something of that nature. Due to this cultural tendency, it’s strange for me to see the relationships between college students and their parents, because for me it looks exactly like high school. And for the most part, mothers in the households do not do work other than that of housewife such as my host mother in Chile. Empanadas are pretty popular in Argentina filled with everything from beef and chicken to corn and cheese. Long promenades in Córdoba are home to those selling newspapers, magazines, umbrellas, trinkets.