Great for Spanish learning and in-country travel! March 06, 2023

Academic rigor, intensity, resources, etc.

This program is definitely academically focused and I was pretty satisfied with the overall academic content. Our classes offered us relevant context for learning about the public health context of Argentina and took us on interesting experiential outings all over the country. The content was sometimes repetitive (especially for students who have taken public health or research methods classes before), but it was nice to not be dealing with anything too difficult when all of our classes were in Spanish. I also had a great experience with my Spanish class (the only class taken through a separate university) and felt like I improved on Spanish a lot through both this class and the thematic seminars. We did spend a lot of time in class and had pretty regular homework, which sometimes felt like it impeded my ability to explore the city.

On-site administration of your program

The in-country staff are clearly so dedicated to their job and invested in making sure we have the best experience possible. They really made an effort to be accessible for both personal and academic reasons and facilitate our immersion into the culture through answering all our questions and leading some activities to get us acquainted.

How satisfied were you with your living arrangements?

The host families provided are a fantastic learning experience but will inevitably come with challenges! I thought living with a host family was essential for improving my language skills and I felt very welcome in my host family's home and appreciated that they cooked meals for me. However, I think there are challenges with navigating unfamiliar cultural/family dynamics and living separate from your friends on the program can be difficult sometimes, when you can't really hang out at home with one another.

Overall, Argentinean food is a lot of bread, meat, and cheese with very little seasoning and it can be hard to eat enough vegetables. Buenos Aires is of course a large multicultural city with some really delicious options, but the good food tends to be more expensive and far away from the area our program was situated in.

How integrated did you feel with the local culture?

I definitely learned a lot about Argentine culture from living with a host family and traveling to different parts of the country. Buenos Aires is a very exciting city with lots of culture and nightlife to explore, but I sometimes felt limited in my ability to do so because of the intensive program schedule and feeling guilty about ditching my host family. Most of the people in our program didn't meet many people outside of it, but this is definitely about personal motivation as much as the program itself!

How well were health issues addressed during the program?

I did not personally experience any health issues but reports from friends were that the insurance they provided us was difficult to navigate and they felt somewhat uncomfortable with different standard of privacy in the hospitals. However, there was abundant and good quality healthcare available to us in all of the locations we visited.

Buenos Aires is a large city and that comes with safety concerns -- most notably, there is a lot of pickpocketing (I never felt concerned about more violent crime). However, this is totally avoidable if you take precautions such as carrying your valuables in front of you and keeping a hand on your purse when you are in crowded situations and not walking alone at night. I felt comfortable using public transportation, even at night as a lone woman, and walking around alone during the daytime.

My experience was not the idyllic, fun-filled study abroad experience many have, but I enjoyed the mixture of personal challenge and fun that I had and especially loved the travel component of the program!

(1 = not very easy/$200+ on food & personal expenses/week, 2.5 = $100/week, 5 = very easily/minimal cost)

Our breakfasts and lunches were provided by host families and they also provided us a daily stipend to cover the cost of lunch and public transport, so it would have been theoretically possible to go the whole semester without spending any money. Of course, in order to eat more varied food and go out and about, you will have to go slightly over the budget but can have a great quality of life and get plenty of souvenirs on an additional $20-50 a week.

0 = No encouragement, 5 = frequent encouragement to use the language

We used Spanish in class and with our host families, but they did not pressure us to use it with each other in more casual social situations.

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• Host Family

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• Host Family

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• Americans

• Travel
• Friendly staff
• Spanish learning

• More free time
• Better facilitation for meeting locals
• More variety in academic content

The Academic or Linguist