A Summer in Argentina

In the summer of 2014, I found myself in a small hospital in the Argentinian country side, wondering how lucky I was to have found a program that gave me this opportunity. When I first began my search for a program to do over the summer, I was pretty conflicted. I really wanted to study abroad, but I also really wanted to do some sort of medical program since I would soon be heading off to college and wanted to confirm that I wasn’t making a huge mistake doing pre-med. To top it off, I couldn’t do a program that was the entire summer either. The search wasn’t looking too great, until I found Projects Abroad. I went abroad to Argentina with Projects Abroad on their High School Specials’s Medicine and Spanish in Argentina. It combined going abroad, medicine, and flexibility.

After the uphill battle of convincing my over protective parents to let me go (the staff of Projects Abroad helped by providing other volunteers each other’s email addresses so we could coordinate plane flights and know each other a bit before getting there), I was off to Cordoba, Argentina. There, I visited various hospitals from the city to the countryside, viewed surgery from right behind the shoulder of surgeons, received a workshop and a lecture by a surgeon, had a tango lesson, went to a karaoke party, visited La Cumbrecita, to name a few activities.

I also met amazing people, none of whom I’ll ever forget: the staff, the other volunteers, as well as my host family. My host family from the very first day, made me feel like a part of the family too. The encouragement they gave me when I attempted to speak Spanish, the conversations we’d have at the dinner table, the jokes we laughed about; all are memories that I’ll cherish forever. For anyone debating whether or not to go abroad, I strongly recommend that you go out and experience the world.