Six months abroad in South America
By: Francis Rugebregt
Annika Kossack has been travelling from a very young age; at the age of thirteen she moved to Germany with her family, but moved to the England three years later to attend boarding school. After graduating from high school in Bath, Somerset, she decided to take a gap-year to Argentina. This decision was not only career-motivated, as it was also spontaneous: “I didn’t feel like going to university quite yet. It was really quite random actually,” Annika said when asked about her reason to embark on the trip. “However, I already knew I wanted to study International Relations and wanted to have the experience before studying it more closely.”
During her six-month adventure, Annika started off with a one-month Spanish language course in Argentina. Afterwards, she carried out charity work for an NGO in Cordoba, where she worked for a period of three months at a local kindergarten located in the slums. “Working in the kindergarten really helped me to learn Spanish,” Annika said. “In the end, the children were the best teachers.”
She continued her journey onwards with travels to Bolivia, Chile, and Uruguay, and back to Argentina where she attended a second Spanish course. To round up her six months, she volunteered at another NGO where she assisted in translating their website from Spanish to German. This task was quite demanding, since she was not able to translate word for word yet. Therefore, it was a new and valuable experience for her.
Being far away from Europe and her familiar environment, we were intrigued to find out what cultural differences the young traveller encountered on her journey. “I really had to adapt to the distinct eating pattern in South America,” she said after a short pause. “I was raised traditional German with a cold dinner and a hot lunch, but Argentineans have a hot lunch and dinner and they eat quite late.” What she found particularly difficult to cope with at first was the mentality of South American men. Being blonde attracted a lot of attention and men tended to comment on her blond hair and gave her vile and cheesy comments. “Luckily I didn’t understand them at the beginning,” she chuckled.
In our Around The World section, we interview students who wish to share their unique travel experiences with us. In our very first edition we caught up with Annika Kossack (21), an international relations student from Johannesburg, who decided to take a gap-year to South America after graduating from high school.