The Life-Changing Poster at USAL

It was my third week in Buenos Aires and I was sitting in my first class of neurociencias (Neuroscience) at la Universidad del Salvador, I was extremely intimidated, being the only foreign student in the class. Looking around seeing all of the students speaking very quickly in a Spanish that was difficult for me to understand. A poster in the back of the room caught my eye, advertising tryouts for the university's women's soccer team. After much debate, I decided to go to the first day of tryouts that evening. Being on the soccer team changed my life. I now consider my teammates and coach to be my best friends and a part of my family. They helped me to become fluent in argentine spanish, learn the way of life and culture in Buenos Aires, and to eventually feel as though Buenos Aires was my home even more so than Chicago, IL where I had lived my entire life. They were the reason that I extended my stay from 5 months to a full year, July 2014-2015. My favorite memories with them include our weekend asados (Argentine BBQ) that lasted for hours, going together to professional soccer games, traveling with them to out-of-town tournaments in other areas of Argentina, getting dance lessons (salsa, cumbia, and bachata) from my teammates, and making them American foods that they had never tried before such as PB&J and pancakes. The lifestyle, culture, language, food, and people in Buenos Aires are my favorite in the world, and one of the hardest things I have ever done was to leave two months ago to return to the USA, but I still communicate with my team every single day and have grown in ways I could never imagine because of them.