On Friday, I attended IU's pre-departure study abroad orientation. The goal of this program was to provide information about what we should expect on the trip and how to best prepare ourselves. The first hour was for everyone going abroad in the fall and covered more basic policies, like how long it will take for credits to show up and how to communicate with academic advisors from out of the country.
The second hour is where it got really interesting. Everyone broke out into different program groups, but all students going to Argentina, the Dominican Republic, and Chile were put together. (It appeared that the Peru and Ecuador students were in a separate room, but I'm not sure why.) There were probably 12 students in the room, as well as two students who studied abroad in Chile and Argentina before.
My new friend Tyler, the CIEE representative for Indiana, led our session. I met Tyler a few weeks earlier when I was the only participant in a session about study abroad programs in Brazil and Portugal, and he remembered me when I arrived. He went over basic items, and he told us that we will learn final flight information and other details soon. He also told us that we need to pull out everything we plan to pack and then put half of it back, essentially implying that we will bring too much clothing. This is a warning I may or may not heed.
The most difficult part of the whole orientation process was the questions people chose to ask. There's a saying that there are no stupid questions/a stupid question is a question you don't ask, but anyone who says this has never attended a study abroad orientation. As was the case on my Israel trip, people seem to forget that the places to which we are traveling are real places with most of the essential items you will need. Likewise, people also forget that some of their questions might be related to personal issues that the group does not, nor should not, hear about. One girl asked who would pay for her return flight if she were deported from Argentina. Tyler, poor guy, looked dumbfounded and said that he doesn't know anyone who has been deported, so he couldn't answer her question. Another girl, perhaps confused about how to book her flight, asked, "How do I get a flight?" Tyler spent a great deal of time trying to figure out what her question actually was.
After we finished, I talked with the student who had studied in Buenos Aires the year before. She gave me some great tips about housing and life in a big city, and I was very grateful to have gotten her perspective.