Mike volunteered as an English teacher in Argentina
Phrases like ‘life-changing’ and ‘incredible experience’ are thrown around too liberally nowadays if you ask me. However, a trip that I took over the past year with Lattitude Global Volunteering in Argentina really did change my life, and it really was an incredible experience, so what’s a guy to say?
Before I found Lattitude Global Volunteering, I had been thinking of simply travelling; hoping for decadence, an endless string of luxury hotels and touristy convenience. But I realised that, along with this approach being far from economic, it was also a tasteless and self-serving way of seeing the world, and I felt I could do better. I could perhaps make a difference in the place I visited. So I began looking for volunteering programmes in South America, my chosen ‘exotic place’.
Lattitude Global Volunteering instantly stood out. With a well presented website and a professional knowledge of my potential placements, I held that I could trust them to look after me during my time there. I decided on an English teaching placement in San Luis, Argentina, a small city in the middle of the country, dwarfed by the beautiful sierras that surrounded it. I would be teaching at the ‘Instituto Saint Louis’, housed in an old colonial-style building, and run by a sprightly group of the most helpful, welcoming and downright lovely people you could ever hope to meet. I fell in love with the place immediately. I would be staying at the home of one of the teachers at the institute, Nahuel, and his family, and they continued to provide me with a caring, comfortable and sometimes hilarious environment to keep my spirits up as I started my new job as a teacher. I won’t lie, teaching, at first, is hard.
But that difficulty is exactly the catalyst someone needs to grow. The challenge it presented me with could not be ignored; these kids (and adults) needed me to provide them with a decent grounding in the English language, and that’s exactly what I told myself. I believe, looking back, that the time I was teaching was one of the happiest times in my life, because you’re affecting someone else’s in a truly profound way, offering knowledge and guidance to someone who wants to improve their own understanding, and by the time I finished my placement, I’m glad to say that everyone in the classroom was a friend, and teaching was just a small part of the experience
