Intercambio, IFSA cliques, and mendocinos

    Every Tuesday night a bunch of foreigners get together at a restaurant in Mendoza to practice different languages and get to know other travelers and students in the area. I have class til 9 on Tuesdays, and normally after that I just want to eat dinner and go to bed, so I hadn't been to the intercambio meeting before, but this week I decided to go because my class was canceled (found that out after I walked 45 minutes to get to class). There were probably 10 kids there from IFSA, which is becoming a normal occurrence, since there are 40 of us and we travel in packs around the city. We've actually become really cliquey and broken off into 3 or 4 groups that have become even closer. It's very obvious, too, who we've been hanging out with because it's the same group every time, and then there are a few of us who have branched off on their own and spend all their time with the Argentinians they've met and don't really hang out with all the IFSA kids. I give these guys so much credit for that; if my Spanish was better I would try to spend a lot more time away from all the IFSA kids, even though I've become really great friends with a lot of them.
    Even the Argentinians notice our cliquishness. Kathy, a local who organizes the intercambio meetings, commented on how she sees us in photos on Facebook all the time surrounded by 10 other IFSA students, and she loved asking about the drama within the group, and who had boyfriends, and if there are any weird kids in the group that nobody wants to spend time with. I admit I've spent a lot of time with other Americans here, but I have also met lots of French exchange students and people in my classes, and there was a good variety of people at the restaurant last night. I talked to some girls from Jersey who were doing a three month trip through the US, Chile, Argentina, and other places in South America. And it seems that the Argentinians love getting to know us foreigners. A lot of girls from the program have started dating Argentine men already; one friend's host mom said that every girl gets a boyfriend here. Now, they are called "amigovios" because its a combination of amigo (friend) and novio (boyfriend) to describe that awkward stage in between talking and dating and a relationship. I've sensed the vibe that a select few Mendocinian guys are trying to date the entire IFSA group of girls before we leave in December.