Krijn Schetters
Study: MSc Biosystems Engineering
Destination: Argentina and Brasil
Internship
Buenos dias,
My name is Krijn Schetters, 24 years old and the next 5 months I am celebrating life in Argentina. As part of my study, I am doing an internship at an Argentinian company that focuses on weed control on agricultural fields. If you want to follow all my adventures, you can view my Instagram-account (@krijnschetters). To see all adventures of the WURldexplorers, just search for #WURldexplorers!
Nos vemos chamigo!
Soybeans
Soybeans are very important for the Argentinian agriculture. During my internship here in Argentina, I will do research on the WEEDit, a system to spray weeds. The first step was to learn the way of growing soybeans. In the picture a Argentinian farmer tells me something about the leaves of the crop. We are right in the middle of a big field of soybeans.
Spanish
Unlike the Netherlands, only few people in Argentina speak English. Everything is in Spanish, it is the main language in the university and companies. By now I am pretty good at finding the one person that can speak English anywhere, but communicating still is difficult. So, I have to learn Spanish! Just like English is different in the US than in England, Spanish is also different here than in Spain. Fortunately, they also understand you if you speak Spanish from Spain, so for me that's good enough.
Weather
It is summer at the moment: It is about 40 degrees Celsius with a blue sky during the day. During the nights the temperatures drop below 30 degrees, if you are lucky… Nevertheless the nature is very green. The reason: Rain. Ones every week, the raindrops give the nature exactly what they need: Water! The combination of the high temperatures, much sunlight and a bit of rain, ensures that the nature grows rapidly. Not only the beautiful nature grows rapidly, also crops and weeds grow very fast! Because my internship is about a system for controlling weeds, the weather creates the perfect conditions for this research!
Judo
As judo plays a big role in my life, I decided to bring my judogi to Argentina. I discovered a judo club and tried to explain in my best Spanish that I wanted to join them. The sentence ‘Yo champion de Holanda’ was enough to convince them. So they arranged a special training for me the other day. I joined the training and gave some lessons to the children. Luckily, the most important words in judo are Japanese! It was very nice, and everybody enjoined it! The plan is to practice judo two times a week. Because of my internship, i have to travel to different places. However, the trainer knows a lot of trainers in Argentina and he will arrange that I can practice judo everywhere. Once again I noticed that sports bring people together, buenísimo!
Spanish class
It is useful to speak the language of the country where you are living in. For this reason I started studying Spanish, because that is the main language in Argentina. Unfortunately, the Spanish here is a bit different from the Spanish in Spain. Because of the differences, communication isn’t that easy. The best way to learn Castellano, the name of the language they speak here, is to practice with local people.