Rio Negro Province:
As you can see, I am in Patagonia! Before I got my placement, I knew I would be extremely enthusiastic about being placed ANYWHERE in Argentina (or Uruguay), but I knew that, if I had a regional preference, it was Patagonia, thanks to its unique history and geography.
Disclaimer: Do not take any of the following statistics as fact! This is simply based upon the best information I had at the time, and I really do doubt that the 15 number I was going off of was right.
Before I got my placement, I spent an almost embarrassing chunk of time going through, individually, the AFS Argentina chapter pages. A few weeks ago, some of us on the Argentina 2013/2014 Facebook group were tipped off that some of the AFS chapters had been posted little chunks of info about students in order to try to find host families. There wouldn't be much info, but a lot of chapters had posted first names and countries of their incoming students (coming to an area pending on receiving a placement in that area, of course). I went through each page individually - I had heard that there were 15 Americans arriving in Argentina in August (I don't know if this is correct, so don't take this as fact). I found two Americans going to Rosario, two to Santa Fe, two to Tucuman province, one to Ushuaia, and one to General Roca (not me), meaning, according to my shaky statistics, I knew where 8/15 Americans were going. I also found references of unnamed one American going to Sampacho (near Cordoba), one going to Mendoza, and one going to Corrientes province. On the Facebook group, a significant number of people (probably maybe ten or eleven by now, I know that I personally found two people from the Facebook group on chapter pages) had found out where they were going from the chapter pages. When I couldn't find myself, I figured that, since my application hadn't been in the pool for long, it was probably true that no chapter had picked me yet. But, that was an incorrect assumption, as in fact, I already had a host family!
Last Tuesday, around 12 in the afternoon, while I was doing some research for a school project, I clicked on some Yahoo link. In the top right corner of the page, I had a little "new email" icon. I don't know why I checked it so enthusiastically - I wasn't thinking about host families AT ALL (I figured I wouldn't get a family at least until I returned from Senegal), but when I opened my email, the new email said something along the lines of "AFS: Placement Information".
The email directed me to open my AFS global application page, where there was new information on my host school and host family pages. Opening my "host family info" page, I saw a list of the members of my host family - my two older host brothers (one who is 21 and another who is 15, only ten months older than me), and my host parents! It registered in my mind that I had a host family, and that I was going to have older host brothers! Being the oldest of two girls, I was so excited! I then proceeded to look at our location on the bottom of the page: General Roca, Rio Negro province. This name sounded familiar to me, but I remember racking my brain, trying to picture exactly where General Roca and Rio Negro province were (I thought maybe in the Pampas). I pulled up the wikipedia page for General Roca, and saw that I was going to Patagonia!
I've exchanged a couple of emails with my host family (In Spanish, can you believe it?) since then, and they are wonderful. My host parents are so nice, and can you believe it, my host brothers are tennis players like me! I've learned a bit about my school, too - I'm going to write an update of my school and city soon.
Or, well, "soon" in blogging time.
