As a foreigner in Argentina
How I experienced coming to Argentina as a foreigner.
Coming to Argentina nine months ago meant mainly one thing for me: being very obviously a foreigner. I have been in similar situations in other countries before – and I never liked it too much. This mainly resulted in me assimilating quite quickly and picking up the language and the accent quite quickly.
However, here in Argentina something happened that I never experienced before: in all the time I have been here I have not had a single negative experience related to the fact that I am a foreigner. All the people that I met and that I started talking to reacted very positively to the fact that I was from Europe. In fact, the majority had some kind of family story to tell me about their ancestors who at some point in history had come to Argentina.
The country prides itself with its history of immigration and with its mix of cultures. In Buenos Aires, the different immigrant communities get celebrated on weekends (almost every weekend a different community and their heritage get celebrated) in the city centre and thousands (if not more) of people join in. There are community centres which you can visit and often you can eat there as well. For example, the Armenian community centre offers authentic meals (cooked by Armenian mothers and grandmothers) once a week and the money raised through the sales go towards the final year trip of the high school students from the Armenian school so that the adolescents can get to know the country of their ancestors first hand.
I picked up Spanish quite quickly. However I have still got a long way to go until perfection. My Argentinean friends are very keen on teaching me the Argentinean Spanish with all its unique expressions (there is more to it than just che and boludo I would like to add) and they are very proud whenever I use one of the naturally in a conversation.
I realized that the prejudice of the proud Argentinean is quite true though. They do recognize that there are things going wrong in the country but it will not keep them from telling you that it is the best country in the world. And even though the country and its people welcomed and accepted me with arms wide open, the wound from last year’s football world championship still hurts...and now and then someone cannot hold back a comment directed at the fact that they lost against the German team...