In the year 2021, a number of young students from different parts of the world arrived in Uruguay, Canelones to be more precise, as a part of one of AFS programs, an organization that encourages exchange experiences for young people around the globe.
AFS “is an international, voluntary, non-governmental, non-profit organization that provides intercultural learning opportunities”, helping people to improve their skills and knowledge in foreign countries. With this objective, young students travel abroad to different destinations like the United States, Australia, France, Belgium, China, Argentina and those same countries welcome other students that are taken in by local families.
Among those students that arrived in Uruguay, Annie Philp (18 years old) from the US and Nils Hekkert (19 years old) form the Netherlands, are staying in Canelones. Both students were interviewed by HOY CANELONES about their experience. The meeting took place around noon, at ‘18 de Julio’ square, where they communicated in English and, sometimes in acceptable Spanish, about what they have lived in Canelones and their goals for the remaining four months of their stay.
Why did you decide to come to Uruguay?
Annie: I was looking forward to learning Spanish, because I want to work with immigrants in the United States, with people between Mexico and Arizona. There are a lot of problems at this moment, so I need to learn the language. I wanted to go to a place in South America, because its culture is very different from the US. I live on an island in the state of Washington, with little population, we are very close and have a great community, but there isn’t a lot to do. For me, it’s very important that students in general, that have the privilege of traveling and experiencing another culture, can seize that opportunity.
It’s kind of similar from here…
Annie: Yes! It’s very similar, but people here are very friendly and I love that.
Nils: I’ve already signed in for an exchange in december 2019; first of all I wanted to go to the United States, but with Covid it was not possible and it got postponed over and over again. Then I signed in for Argentina, but the border there was closed, so also not possible and then at one point I got a message that Uruguay is open, there are families there, so I could come here, so I said: ‘Let’s go to Uruguay’, and now we are here.
What did you like the most when you first came here?
Nils: For me, the people. They are so different from the Netherlands. Here everybody is warm and welcoming and tries to do stuff for you. In my country it’s a bit colder.
Annie: Me too, but my relationship with my sister here is fundamental for my experience because we are very close and that’s impacted my exchange a lot. But also, like Nils said, with the people here, we’ve been able to make friends really easily. It wasn’t like we tried to reach out to a lot of people, because right when we got here, people were already reaching out to us, trying to make us feel included, and a part of the community. We’re really interested in learning about them as well, so it’s mutual.
What have you been doing since you got here? Did you meet other places here in Uruguay or in Canelones?
Annie: We went to Artigas to Carnival, with other students. I liked it a lot and there isn’t a lot to do here in summer, because everyone goes to the beach. At this moment we go to the gym and to the park with friends, we drink mate and go to highschool as well. Next week we might be taking tango classes.
Because you are interested or did someone invite you?
Annie: Yes, there’s more students in Canelones, two Italians and two girls from Germany. the italians wanted to take tango and I wanted to as well, so…
And have you done other typical activities? Like going to football matches…
Nils: Yes, I’ve been to Nacional matches, two times and I went to Uruguay against Venezuela, then carnival that’s also typical in South America.
What are the most difficult things to adapt to here?
Annie: Student’s experiences here are very unique, some have problems with their families, with friends or highschool and others have problems with language. For me, I want to learn more Spanish, I need more vocabulary.
Nils: I obviously don’t speak Spanish very well, but for me it isn’t a problem, it is more of a problem for the other people here. I haven’t really had problems. Maybe adapting to the climate or something. It’s way warmer here. In the Netherlands, in summer it’s like 25°C at the maximum and here one day it was like 40°C.
What do you expect to do in your remaining time?
Nils: Go to school. I’ll go to Chile for almost two weeks next month. I’m gonna play football in Darling, those are the activities that I’ll have, practice, matches, travel a little bit.
Annie: For me, both of us have made a lot of really good connections here, we have a really good group of friends and Ithink furthering and strengthening those relationships before I go back. Learning as much as possible before I go back so that I can continue remembering the culture before I come back to Uruguay, which is inevitable.
Which are your personal interests? Nils, you said football, for example…
Nils: Yeah, I do it everywhere. When I arrived here, in the second week I got my first practice with Darling, but I didn’t have the papers for the matches. For this season I have the cards so I can play matches, I play ‘Fútbol 5’ with my friends, I’ve got a special team for that and ‘Fútbol Sala’, I play football five times a week.
Annie: Before coming here I was working on an organization and the purpose of that was to implement new classes into my highschool back home, that focuses on equity, social justice issues and climate crisis. A lot of the work that we were doing in those classes and a lot of the things that we were doing in the community, is what encouraged me to go and experience a different culture because there’s a lot of parallels that I see between the problems here and in the US. Of course, there are different levels, a lot of the problems in the US are pretty extreme right now, but there are still some parallels. That has been really interesting for me to see, I’ve a lot of friends here that are also socially active people, so I guess, continuing to know about what people and kids are doing here right now is what I’m interested in right now, and taking that back to Washington
Martín Romego
