One of the most unorganized orientations ever...

Sunday, July 17, 2005 the orientation of COPA program officially started. I had my Spanish exam—written in the morning and oral in the evening. I wasn’t sure about the written exam because I didn’t quite understand the readings L I was quite panicked, especially when I saw everyone else was writing their essays pretty fast… OH NO!!! The oral exam also was quite weird since Diego, the professor, seemed not to pay much attention to what I say… OMG, I think I’m going to be placed in some crappy Spanish class during the orientation later…

The next day, we left for the orientation in Tafi de Valle, Tucumán. We go there around noon and took micros to the hotels. One the way, our micro broke down!!! Something went wrong with the engine that we had to stop for a couple of times L the trip seemed to be forever… The view to Tafi was nice, just like the view on the way to Yogyakarta.
We finally got to the hotel, and obviously we’re very late. I got myself settled in a room of 4 with Leila, Ana and Alison.

ORIENTATION BEGUN…
Mario had a small speech on the rules of the orientation and the concept of no speaking in English. It’s funny how everyone started speaking in Spanish after the gathering. BUT it only lasted for 30 minutes the most L I made friends with a couple of people, like Elise from Wisconsin and Fumiko, a jap girl from west coast.

Everyday we pretty much have a fixed schedule:
8.00-9.00: breakfast
9.00-11.00: Spanish class
11.00-12.00: Realidad Argentina, which later turned out to be a 101 history of Argentina class!
12.00-18.00: do-whatever-you-want activities… Mainly there were some hiking excursions, which were quite challenging.
18.00-19.00: Meet your tutor to discuss about your study plan
19.00-20.00: Chit-chat with Mario
20.00-22.00: dinner
22.00-8.00 the next day: Zzzzzzzzzzzzzz…

The schedule doesn’t seem to bad, right? BUT, people at COPA doesn’t know how to organize things sometimes.
For the activities before and after hiking excursions, we were put in a school located 5 min away from the hotel. It’s like a school in village, so there were only minimum facilities… but I didn’t expect that we’d be studying in a school without heating system!!! OMG, it was freezing COLD!!! The kids in that school didn’t go to school during winter because it’s to cold for them to study… but look what we’re doing---using their school to study in winter!!! Ghee, how on earth can you study in the middle of cold weather with only a small electric heater just enough to warm 3 people who’re sitting right next to it, while there were 10 other students freezing to death???!!!

The food in the hotel was ok… We got the same breakfast everyday—medialunas, dulce de leche, cheese, ham, tea or coffee, fruit salad. It was quite an elaborate breakfast, but after 3 days, I got tired of it. For dinner, I tasted one of the weird meals called locro. I don’t know how many people actually finished their locro, but it was quite horrible. My host mum told me that it was supposed to be good, so I guess I was in a wrong place L

During the orientation, we had to start thinking of the classes we wanted to take while we’re here. One of the reasons I chose COPA was because of the elaborate choice of courses they offer. We’re able to take classes from 4 different universities: UBA, UCA, USAL, and di Tella. Since the first day of group meeting with the tutors, we were told to start preparing the list containing min of 10 courses that we’d like to try… (min 10 classes???!!!).

At the hotel, there were some handbooks of courses from the universities. OMG, they were so insufficient… Since the beginning, I wasn’t that interested in di Tella due to the courses that are mainly economics and international politics, so that narrowed down my choices. I looked at USAL first, since it has a soc dept. MMmm.. the courses seem to be quite uninteresting. UCA doesn’t have a soc dept, and I’m not interested in taking political science (I think the bad experience I had in my government class at Wesleyan discouraged me from taking a class related to government and politics…). But UCA’s psychology dept seems to be quite interesting. So, I ended up with UBA… I was quite satisfied with the list of courses. UBA Ciencias Sociales offers variety of courses that seemed interesting and I was quite sure that I could get credits for my major.

BUT… There were not enough descriptions of the courses for us to create a good list, especially in relation to UBA classes. I bet COPA has done this kind of course selection process for million times, so why can’t they be more prepared???!!! There were no course schedule yet available during the Tafi’s orientation and the course description looks so old and unconvincing. It was quite frustrating having to deal with the process. I’m imagining that the class shopping period will be HECTIC and STRESSFUL!!!

After about 5 days in Tafi, we left for Cafayate and Salta. We took buses and stopped a couple of times on the way. OMG, lunches during the bus trip was AWFUL! On the way to Cafayate, we stopped to have lunch at a mountain-looking area. One of the COPA people handed out boiled egg and a roll of bread… I didn’t know what to do with them—Was I supposed to make an egg sandwich on my own??? Then, some people showed up with lettuce and cheese. Some walked away with milanesa (flat-breaded meat). I then realized that you’re supposed to assemble your own sandwich… BUT first you have to locate the people who’re handing out the “pieces of the sandwich puzzle” L So people were walking with their bread from one place to another trying to find lettuce, mayonnaise, etc! Aaaaaaaa…. It was horrible!
The next day lunch in Salta was also the same… Instead of boiled egg, we were given a piece of chicken leg (along with the bone!) and a roll of bread! Aaaaaaaaaaaa…. Why couldn’t COPA make sandwiches??? Or how hard does it get to book a restaurant that we’d pass on the way? L

Cafayate was kind of a weird destination. I wasn’t quite sure why we even went there, since we got there in the evening and had dinner in a small town that only has a couple of tiny hotels and restaurants. Anyway, the hotel we stayed in was pretty bad coz the AC doesn’t have the cover on it and the shower was tiny L not to mention the breakfast that was worst than Tafi’s hotel. There I realized how good the Tafi’s breakfast was. Oh ya, the dinner was weird… It said it was a parilla which is a steak house. But instead of serving steak to every guess in the restaurant, only 50% of the people in each table got steak, the rest got pasta!!! Ghee, that was so sad… I don’t know if it was because they ran out of steak or COPA didn’t pay enough for them to serve everyone a chunk of steak L this orientation is not that great… I can’t wait to go back to Buenos Aires, although I don’t know if my life would be much…much… better than this. At least, I don’t know to live of my suitcase that’s now full of dirt clothes.

The morning we went to Salta something quite ridiculous happened. One of the boys in our group was missing and nowhere to be found after an hour or so searched. Cafayate isn’t a big city, but I believe no one was familiar enough with the city to know where to look for this guy, named AW. Mario, the program director, asked everyone to gather around and told us that in Salta later no one is allowed to go out from their hotel after 10pm. Some people who saw AW said that the last time they saw him was in a bar near the hotel. As we were about to depart to Salta, Mario found him in the jail…! Apparently he was so drunk that when he was asked to go out of the club, he was yelling and banging the door of the club that the club owner had to call the police! OMG, why can’t some people wait till they get to Buenos Aires to get drunk and go crazy???!!! Salta was quite nice, but I think because I was quite exhausted and I was beginning to miss Mas Yogi a lot, I didn’t enjoy myself as much as I should’ve. We flew back to Buenos Aires on Monday, July 25, 2005.

The hectic orientation is not yet done… To be continued…