AFS Year and Semester High School Abroad in Argentina

Amazing! The people, the culture, the country…so stunning for a young girl from Connecticut who landed in Sant Fe, Argentina. Only wish that when I wanted to change host families after 6 months of a year stay that they would have supported my request. It made my remainder of my year stay impossible to be happy and emotionally free to experience Argentina fully. Instead it was through my lense of emotional discomfort, sadness and unhappiness that I endured my year abroad for what I had dreamed and occasionally experienced in Argentina with other host families as an accepting, welcoming, and open hearted life experience.

Last august, I left Europe and went for my first time ever to Latin-America. I was going on exchange to Argentina. I had a great familie in a lovely town, made friends for life at school and had my first relationship.

My big problems with AFS started with the start of my relationship. Before that, they already refused to pay for my school (although my contract said they had to pay) and refused to help another exchange student who was in a very difficult situation with her host family. They tried to keep it quiet for their own image and only helped when the situation in the host student's family became untenable. This later happened with several exchange students. I got really lucky with my family and had no problems at all with them. Until then it was not so bad for me.

But then I got into a relationship... Less than 1 week later we were suddenly (and in a very rude manner) convened for an emergency meeting to talk about 'all the problems we caused'. The volunteers even got angry if we didn't respond to their messages immediately, while sometimes I just had school! But, back about the meeting, one of the volunteers started telling us that we were making their lives difficult by causing problems all around. He said we shouldn't bother them with all our problems. Because apparently we don't pay thousands of euros for that?!? We only asked them for help with our problems because we could not solve them ourselves. In addition, they had simply accepted host families without thoroughly screening them, leaving several exchange students with problems with their host families. A little later the volunteer said something that made me very angry. We COULDN'T have any relationships. He said they could decide this and that these were national AFS rules. Obviously this was a lie. No exchange organization can prohibit its participants from having relationships. Obviously, I didn't quit my relationship.

One of the exchange students told a few friends at school about the problems with AFS, she was having a hard time, and as is often the case in a small provincial town, such things soon went around. Her contact person from AFS got angry with her, and the volunteers tried to force her to change school. When this failed and she was in a second (bad) host family, the AFS volunteers tried to force her to talk to a doctor about her 'mental problems'. We soon realized that they wanted to try to have her declared crazy so that they could send her back. Fortunately, she contacted the AFS office of her own country and intervened. She could stay but would eventually flee herself for the AFS volunteers. But that's her story.

Okay, now back to what they did to me. Let me briefly sum it up: they lied to my parents about my relationship, they tried to contact my friend, probably with the aim of setting him up against me and lying to both of us. After all, they had already done this that year with 2 other exchange students who had a relationship together. They manipulated, lied and deceived friends, families of several guest students!

The volunteers of my AFS committee were the biggest problem of my exchange. Quite funny when you consider that they were there to solve our problems. I have long hesitated to mention names and places. I wanted to write this story to warn people. You can be lucky but also have bad luck with your AFS volunteers. I have decided at least to state clearly who did nothing wrong. My own contact person was a very nice person who helped me learn Spanish and was always available. Whether she always helped equally well is another matter, but she always did her best. Except when I inquired about the AFS rules in Argentina regarding travel, that was a mistake that she will hopefully not make again. This has ensured that during my exchange I have not seen anything of beautiful Argentina. I want to tell everyone: enjoy your exchange and if you are unlucky with your AFS volunteers, just keep them out of your life as much as possible. That is the best thing you can do to protect you, your wonderful exchange, your friends and possibly boyfriend / girlfriend. Good luck and have fun! 😀🌎

My year in Argentina truly was life changing. I made life long friends and another family (host family). I still use my Spanish quite regularly. I ended up studying global studies with a focus on Latin America and a dual degree with Spanish in college (if that tells you anything about impact my exchange year had). Even though it’s been 6 years I think about my study abroad year almost daily. I would encourage anyone that has the means and ability to study abroad with AFS. I also ended up study abroad in college for a semester in Madrid because study abroad ended up being such an important thing to me. If you study abroad it will leave with lifelong memories and skills, you will have a global understanding. I even wrote a blog when I was abroad http://chandlerinargentina.blogspot.com/?m=1

My first week I was invited over to a classmate's house with some other girls, and we baked a pizza from scratch. I was excited because I knew Argentina has some pretty good pizza and was looking forward to making and trying it. We then all went out together and it was a great first experience.

in the middle of nowhere. I grew up in the suburbs of NYC, where everything is accessible all the time, and so I panicked when I got my family assignment and googled their town and it barely seemed to exist. There were no pictures on Google Images! But small places are the best place to do your exchange - there, you get to be special. People pay attention to you or, in my case, all know your name. So I got lucky!