* Get a credit card. Discover is easy for students. Pay the bill every month. Do not (even once) hold a balance. Do not do balance transfers. Do not churn. Too easy for a newbie to get wrong. * Get a local bank account. Turn off the thing called 'overdraft protection'. It's a loan mechanism. * Find the other foreign students in your class. They'll know where to pirate all the textbooks. Never pay for a US textbook. E…
As a former international student wish someone gave me this advice before coming to the U.S.
You can sometimes find yerba in Hispanic supermarkets, but the best place to get it is usually on Amazon. It costs about $10 (US) per kilo here. Relatively speaking, wine is very expensive, too. People's notion of promptness as it pertains to social functions may be different than what you're used to. If you're going to a party, show up an hour or so after the indicated starting time, but if you're meeting with a few…
>"Public display of affection like that which Argentines are accustomed to is frowned upon here." Are you referring to the single cheek kiss used as a greeting? This is generally reserved for friends, friends of friends and family. The term PDA is generally used in a romantic context. I have travelled pretty extensively in Argentina - from BA to Mendoza and from Salta down to Ushuia and PDA is not a characteristic I…
> Are you referring to single cheek kiss used as a greeting?
No. I'm referring to full-on making out with your significant other in a public setting. Like in a park during the day, in McDonald's next to the kids bouncy ball pen, on the bus, etc.
>"Public display of affection like that which Argentines are accustomed to is frowned upon here." Are you referring to the single cheek kiss used as a greeting? This is generally reserved for friends, friends of friends and family. The term PDA is generally used in a romantic context. I have travelled pretty extensively in Argentina - from BA to Mendoza and from Salta down to Ushuia and PDA is not a characteristic I…
> Are you referring to single cheek kiss used as a greeting? No. I'm referring to full-on making out with your significant other in a public setting. Like in a park during the day, in McDonald's next to the kids bouncy ball pen, on the bus, etc.
It's not any more or less than you might see in any American city.
Something to keep in mind is that the culture here is different per state, city and maybe even neighborhood depending on the city. It's a big place, especially out west, usually my foreign friends struggle to realize how far away things are (hours or days of driving). On that note unless you live in a huge city like NYC having a car is almost necessary, it's just the way the infrastructure was built in the 60's and v…
> get a cheeseburger, have some regional specialties like BBQ OP said they were from Argentina. My advice was literally going to be "Don't expect meat when you order it in the States, because it's going to be a sad comparison to what you're used to."
I’m from Southern Brazil (very close to our hermanos in Argentina) and yes this is very true. I really look forward to eating steak when I go visit family and friends down there.
> Are you referring to single cheek kiss used as a greeting? No. I'm referring to full-on making out with your significant other in a public setting. Like in a park during the day, in McDonald's next to the kids bouncy ball pen, on the bus, etc.
It's not any more or less than you might see in any American city.
I lived in BsAs in addition to a few American cities, and I beg to differ.
>People who know Mexican Spanish may not be able to understand your Spanish, especially the ones who didn't learn Spanish as a first language. I think this is an exaggeration(Like saying a Brit can't understand an American or something). The meaning of some words may be different but to say they can't understand each other is a far stretch. Some countries still use the vosotros conjugation but I don't think that is g…
I am using myself as the example. I can understand a lot of Mexican Spanish, but I can understand zero Argentinan and Chilean. I am not a native Spanish speaker.
It's definitely a problem for us non-native speakers, but not really for native speakers. Argentinians probably have an easier time understanding someone from Brasil speaking Portuguese or an Italian speaking Italian than I do a Puertorriqueño or Spaniard speaking Spanish.
Though it does remind me of the time a friend and I wandered into a Billy Connolly (the Scottish comedian) stand-up performance in Dublin, and we both spent the first 45 minutes not being able to understand a single word the guy said. Which was doubly frustrating since the Irish audience around us was laughing their asses off.
Something to keep in mind is that the culture here is different per state, city and maybe even neighborhood depending on the city. It's a big place, especially out west, usually my foreign friends struggle to realize how far away things are (hours or days of driving). On that note unless you live in a huge city like NYC having a car is almost necessary, it's just the way the infrastructure was built in the 60's and v…
> get a cheeseburger, have some regional specialties like BBQ OP said they were from Argentina. My advice was literally going to be "Don't expect meat when you order it in the States, because it's going to be a sad comparison to what you're used to."
Yeah, it's like the average here in the U.S. is what you would feed your dog in Argentina, and our absolute best is on par with a typical Sunday asado.
I have studied the language for years when I was younger and was conversational in it and had no such problem. Are you sure it's not the accent/pronunciation and the speed at which some people speak is what you have a problem with?
I spent a lot of time w/ latinos in college. Argentinian spanish does have some peculiarities that make it more difficult to understand than other countries' variants - most notoriously, 'y' sounds like throaty `j` (bordering on `sh`), and some vocabulary In my experience, latinos in school often end up congregating with other latinos and they're usually able to get past the linguistic differences fairly quickly (and…
Rioplatense Spanish has a few different sounds, sure, and Argentine slang can be fairly diffuclt, but it's absolutely ludricrous to think that an Argentine would have difficulties communicating in Spanish with another Spanish speaker, native or not.
* Get a credit card. Discover is easy for students. Pay the bill every month. Do not (even once) hold a balance. Do not do balance transfers. Do not churn. Too easy for a newbie to get wrong. * Get a local bank account. Turn off the thing called 'overdraft protection'. It's a loan mechanism. * Find the other foreign students in your class. They'll know where to pirate all the textbooks. Never pay for a US textbook. E…
> Americans are almost universally wealthy.
I would beg to differ. Sure, the average standard of living and "lifestyle" in the US is above many countries, but to say that everyone is wealthy is a flat out lie.
Better study in EU for free and then come to the US (or not).
Argentines already have free university education in their own country. (Look up the "Reforma Universitaria"). The options in the EU - for a student speaking Spanish or English - aren't free, even if they may be more affordable than the US.