The Staff Welcomes You!

Hey everybody! I´m Mike and I´ll be your Teach Argentina liaison for your time here in Argentina. I´m 24 years old and originally from Washington DC, but I´ve been living here for just over a year. Anything you need during your trip, or any questions or concerns you have, I´m your man.

Hello! My name is Fernando and I'm the CII director. In a few months you will be saying goodbye to friends and family and will be boarding a plane to Argentina. Get ready for an intense and fun experience. I'm looking forward to your arrival. We will be seeing you very soon for what will certainly be a good time.

Hey everyone! I´m Carla and I´m the Experience Argentina coordinator. I´d like to welcome you to Argentina for what will hopefully be a life changing experience. We´re looking forward to welcoming all of you as you get off the plane. See you soon!

CII Teach Argentina

Orientation Meeting at the University of Limerick, October 2010.

Group of UL students doing their CoOp Placement with Colonias de Inmersión al Idioma between March and July 2011.

CII Teach Argentina

Fernando meets at the University of Limerick with Kieran Phipps and Colin Dignam (Exchange Students in Argentina in 2009) and David Atkinson; Spanish Lecturer.


Fernando Carro, Programme Director meets in Dublin with Madelaine Molineaux (Exchange Student in Argentina in 2001) and Joe Garvey (Exchange Student in Argentina in 2005).

CII Teach Argentina

Keith O'Farrell with his new host family in Olivos.

CII Teach Argentina

Christy Vickers surrounded by children at the school in Bahia Blanca where
he was doing his placement.

CII Teach Argentina

I have been here in General Villegas for almost 2 months now. It’s hard to believe that it’s September already! I am teaching the New Westlands School and I work about thirty hours a week. My classes vary from teaching adults one-on-one to assisting children with their oral exam preparation. The children attend the school outside their normal school hours and mostly the juniors come in the morning and older students arrive in the afternoon. They even have a kindergarten class. Although it’s an institute, it really feels like a normal school to me as there are classrooms, lots of books, skipping ropes in the playground and even a school t-shirt.
Villegas is bigger than it seems. The population is about 20k and there a substantial hinterland. I have become a regular at the park and ice-cream parlor, although the local night-club has not been receiving my custom yet! My host family has been giving me a crash course in all things Argentinean and they have been very welcoming. I think I have also though them a few things about the norms and customs of Ireland. I will never forget the look on their faces when I made a cup of tea to drink after dinner!! I have worked at two of the weekend English Immersion camps. They were on at an estancia near Pigue called La Nancy. It’s a beautiful place; wide fields, beautiful sunsets and striking mountains in the distance.
Additionally, I have started my Spanish classes. We are reading the BFG by Roald Dahl and I love it. The bar was set high at the beginning, as we started reading a famous Argentinean novel which was recently adapted on screen and won an Oscar for best Foreign Film. It didn´t work out! Next we tackled some Jorge Luis Borges, a emblem of Argentina. It was all so atmospheric, reading a classic and drinking coffee. Another failure! I am content with the BFG at the moment! I am hoping to go to Iugazu Falls in October and perhaps fit in some more trips at the weekends between camps. So far, I am enjoying my experience. I feel that I am learning a lot about myself and life in a country like Argentina. It’s so far away from Europe so I´m interested in finding out about the way they view the world here.

By LIANA LEONARD

CII Teach Argentina

I am in Bahia Blanca teaching in a school called Colegio del solar. It is a bilingual school. My first day here was a blur because of how tired I was. I had just arrived back in Buenos Aires from Necochea and was ready to sleep when i received a call saying that I had to leave straight away and get a taxi to the bus station and then get a bus down to Bahia Blanca. When i arrived to the station I was greeted by a teacher from the school and brought to the school to meet the headmaster. But I got dropped in at the deep end and had to teach a class that day. I basically spent the class half asleep. But after school I finally got to go home to my host family and sleep. When I woke up I had dinner with the family and was feeling right again. And from that moment on what can I say. It has been an amazing experience. I quickly got set up with a rugby team called Nacional that have really been good and have taken me under their wing. We start a new competition on the 24th and I can't wait to get stuck in. The kids in the school are great although I am still getting used to the amount of affection they show and their obsession with me not having a girlfriend which seems to be an alien concept to the people of Argentina. The nights out are fantastic and the gym I have joined is also full of the most friendly people I have ever met. Basically it has been one of the most exciting and greatest experiences of my life to date and I hope it keeps getting better. But as much as I love meeting all the Argentinians and getting to know them, I still miss home like crazy and above all the people I have met in Argentina my irish/american creeps still hold the highest place. That is not putting the people from Argentina I have met here down, it is just putting the group of creeps up. But all in all, I couldn't be having more fun.

CII Teach Argentina

DeAne Frazier

Argentina Family

My experience so far here in Argentina has been amazing. I am living in Carlos Casares, a small town where everybody knows your name. It’s a lovely and welcoming place. When I first arrived in Carlos Casares many of the students went out of the way to greet me, and make me feel like a celebrity. I have only been here a little over a month, and I already feel like Carlos Casares is my home. My family is nothing but the best. My first weekend in town my family took me on a tour of the town showing me the train, the shops, the petting zoo, the race tracks, the many big parks, and the airfield where we went up in a plane! My mom Adrianna is the sweetest and most concerned mother, and reminds me so much of my own mother. Adrianna has very little English and I have very little Spanish (as of right now), but we talk all the time. We run errands together, and go to yoga as well! My sisters Fiore and Naza are the coolest people ever. Fiore is at school in La Plata, so I only see her on some weekends, but it is so much fun to hang out with her and her crazy friends. Naza and I play Spanish pictionary and watch bad soap operas. She loves the soap opera; I watch because they are funny. My brother Artu is a musician, and is studying in La Plata. When Fiore and Artu come home we go out to the discos, hang out in the center city drinking mate and playing music, or have everyone over for a big dinner. There is constant laughter at the house with me trying to learn Spanish, and Adrianna trying to learn English. I truly feel at home here, and it is going to be a sad day for me when I must leave.

CII Teach Argentina

DeAnne Frazier

Pirate Camp

I just came back from my first camp! It was an ARRRGH Blast! We had a pirate themed camp with 25 kids from the ages of 10-12. It was a 3-day weekend of nothing but games and fun. We had a bonfire where I taught the kids the correct ways of roasting a marshmallow to make the perfect smores. The kids put together team banners and team skits about the life of a pirate. My team was voted for the best skit. It was so much fun to hear the kids speaking English, and to hear the classmates yell at others when they started to speak in Spanish. I enjoyed the camp so much that I wished it could have been longer. The group was amazing, and the counselors were just as competitive and loud as the campers. Sometimes I think it was hard to tell the difference between the campers and the counselors. I can’t wait for the next camp!

CII Teach Argentina

Elenor Fields

Ok, 2 weeks living in Plaza Huincul, Neuquen and I can honestly say I LOVE IT!!!!
I couldn’t have asked for a better placement!
To start with my family are a perfect match to my personalyity and interests. We all share the love of music and since I arrived have been sharing knowledge of songs and repetoires, there have even been a few singsongs on several occasions.
When I arrived they made me feel so welcome and at home and already treat me like one of their own.
“Rainbow,” the english institute I have started to work at is a joy so work in. Like my family here, the staff although small in numbers, are huge in personality and they like the students were all very excited and happy to have me working with them. There is such a fantastic, positive atmosphere about the place constantly and this makes working here with everyone such a pleasure and every evening I feel satisfied and content that I have helped people.
I have now been in Argentina one month, I can’t believe it! The next four are going to fly by! What a great choice of co-op I made!
That’s all for now!
Elenor.

My Argentinian Family!.....party animals!!!