Becoming truly fluent in a language is a hard thing to do. One of the best way to do it is to totally immerse yourself in the culture. Katrina Mitchell, a sophomore at Westside, is doing just that. She is moving to Argentina for half of 2016 to give herself an experience few people will ever have the opportunity to have.

The idea for this experience first came from Katrina’s mother, Laura Mitchell, who went to Scotland for a foreign exchange. She wanted Katrina to have the same cultural experience as she did.

“My parents are all for it, they think its a great opportunity,” says Mitchell.

Katrina applied to AFS-USA (or American Field Service USA) which is a foreign exchange program in May of this year, and was officially accepted on Sept. 16.

“The application process was super long,” says Mitchell.

It included a mental health check to make sure she was able to withstand the culture shock of living in a different place for 6 months. Along with multiple teacher recommendations, medical records, a parent letter and an interview.

“The agency had to come to my house and find out what kind of lifestyle my family lived, so they could place me in a family with a similar lifestyle,” says Mitchell.

Going to an entirely new country, Mitchell will have to face a variety of new challenges ranging from unfamiliar foods to new customs.

“The thing I am most worried about, by far, is the language barrier. I’m still not the best at Spanish,” says Mitchell.

Katrina will be attending a real Argentinian school. Half of the school day is in English and the other half is in Spanish.

Schools in Argentina tend to be different than schools in the US. Classes are either in the morning (from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m.) or the afternoon (from 1 p.m. to 6 p.m.,) not both. Also, students stay in the same classroom the entire day and the teachers move from class to class.

Due to missing four months of school, Mitchell will have to do quite a bit of extra work to be able to graduate on time. She has only had to drop Chemistry so far, but she will have to take Pre-Calculus and Literature online when she comes back in July of 2016. If the classes she takes in Argentina don’t transfer (they aren’t expected to) she will have to participate in summer school to keep on track.