Living on the Edge in the Immersive Princeton in Argentina Course

When I signed up for Princeton in Argentina, I never imagined the summer course would involve hanging off the side of a cliff in the Andes Mountains, looking over a creek of running water with mountain goats peering at me from above.

Throughout our two-and-a-half-hour hike, I was convinced my first time outside of the U.S. would be my last. Our Indigenous tour guide, clad in well-worn tennis shoes, held out his hands for each of us to step into, helping us jump off a boulder and onto a landing. The view was of a small, glistening waterfall hidden within the large rocks.

While I told myself I could not climb any farther up the mountain, my classmates encouraged me through every step, and when we finished our rock scrambling after multiple falls, scrapes, and drenched socks, we took a collective sigh of relief, stepping onto solid land.

“I definitely thought we were going to die,” I told my roommate as we returned to the bus, to which she added, “They absolutely cannot do that next year.”

I had applied to the Princeton in Argentina program in February, and by the time I stepped off the plane in late May for my first trip abroad, my nerves were fluttering. The majority of the 18 students who made up our cohort were strangers.

At the airport, my host mother, Cecilia, kissed me on the cheek — a common greeting for the affectionate people of Buenos Aires — but my first instinct was to pull back in puzzlement. After my roommate arrived, Cecilia drove us into the artsy district of Palermo, where we would spend the next month living as intercambio students.

Her rustic, 20-foot-high ceiling apartment, tucked behind a skinny doorway, was as colorful as it was cold (winter was about to begin in the southern hemisphere). Most nights I wore thick pants, a sweatshirt, and wool socks as the rooms seemed to never heat fast enough. I was grateful to spend evenings with my roommate in the cozy living room with an antique furnace.

Read more at https://paw.princeton.edu/article/living-edge-immersive-princeton-argentina-course