Look at me, becoming the advice blogger.  I guess it was the inevitable result of not knowing anyone who has visited Argentina recently and blindly stumbling into the country hoping to pick up on the caveats of day to day life as I went along.  So here goes Cecilia’s Big Tip #2- look into how the young people in your destination country communicate BEFORE you go.

Here in Argentina the vast majority of cell phone plans are bought minute by minute- text messages generally cost about a peso and phone calls are about 2.5 pesos a minute.  As a result the messaging app WhatsApp is INCREDIBLY popular. It’s used the way iMessage would be in the US.  Had I known this before I left I could have downloaded it to my iPhone and saved myself a lot of trouble, unfortunately I did not know and because the app sends a confirmation text my US phone could not receive, I could not download it once I was here.  I ended up having to buy the junkiest phone still capable of using the app and continually being frustrated by how poorly the stupid thing works.

So my advice to you is to figure out how you’ll be expected to communicate with friends and classmates before you leave: check blogs, ask friends or friends of friends, google could probably even help.  You’ll thank yourself for it later when making fabulous plans with all your new friends becomes infinitely easier.

Okay, this is my last advice post for a while, take this as a pinky promise the next one will be fun and exciting!