Intros and Expectations from Buenos Aires...

Hello Everybody,My name is Eli Wilkins-Malloy. I’m a junior, from Berkeley, CA, studying Latin American Studies in CAS. Since NYU has a program here in Buenos Aires, and I’ve always wanted to study in Latin America, it seemed like a good fit for me to spend my junior year abroad in Argentina. My classes here in BA are awesome. I’m only taking three (not including this class) and they’re all taught in Spanish: The Language of Buenos Aires, Argentine history and culture, and Borges and Argentine Literature. Another huge plus is that I don’t have classes on Thursday or Friday, on which days I’ll be interning for a very interesting organization called Fundacion Pro Vivienda Social that I found through NYU that has a micro-credit lending program for members of impoverished and lower income communities to have easier access to both obtaining and maintaining a home.

I’ve been keeping a journal here, and one of the first things I wrote about/asked myself about was what my expectations were for my abroad experience. Here’s something I wrote in the airport, waiting for my plane to Buenos Aires: “This is an incredible time in my life, as I’m about to go on what can be described as nothing less than a journey. I will aim to be as open as possible, soaking everything in, from the extreme to the mundane. I’m eagerly looking forward to the vast amount and incredible range of people I will meet and relationships I’m going to make, both lasting and random daily encounters. In short, I hope to embrace the spontaneous, because that is really my only expectation that I can control.” To add to that a bit, I think one of my other huge expectations is to really achieve a certain level of fluency in my Spanish. I’ve spent some time in Central America and taken many Spanish classes, so I’m definitely able to converse and get around, but I want to really be able to socialize and think in Spanish. Additionally, I think that this process of living in Argentina will not only allow me to learn and live a different culture and lifestyle, but will in turn strengthen my understanding of my own identity and background.