10,000 hoops to Argentina

Busy weekend, mostly spent working on my studio project. We had a pin up review today in studio. I took it easy, and made myself go home at midnight. Got at least 8 hours of sleep before getting up today and going to our small group meeting for the Argentina Exchange Program at 11. Got the dates of the program- the professor wants us down there for a immersive language program and is officially starting the program August 4th. This spanish program is $120 and lasts 4 hours a day for three weeks. However, our actually semester will not start until August 21st. At this point, I'm not sure what to do. While it would be nice to start the program with about half of the other students, and get my bearings in Argentina while brushing up on Spanish, it would effectively kill any time to spend with my family this summer. That's also assuming I don't get the travel scholarship to Japan, which I'll find out this wednesday.

Anyway, in the small group we spent some time going over student visa requirements. One can travel in Argentina for 90 days without a visa, but for longer than that, a student visa is required. Apparently, the US has such heinously complicated and difficult student visa requirements that Argentina felt compelled to make thiers equally difficult. Items I'll need to compile:

• Passport
• visa application form
• original enrollment letter from the Argentine school (our program is procuring those for us)
• Proof of medical insurance and sufficiant funds
• police certificate of non-criminal-record (which I can get from the Tempe Police) with the signature of the issuing officer notarized and then legalized by the county clerk's office.
• Health and psycho-health evaluation certificiate signed by a doctor and a verification of the doctor's licence by the corresponding medical board
• Two passport photos, one of which 3/4 right profile.
• Consular Fees of $280

And it gets better: All documents in English must be translated into Spanish and signed by an authorized translator or notary public. The translators signature must be notarized. In all cases, the the Notary Public's signature must be legalized by the County Clerk's Office.

Then you take your heavily notarized, translated, re-notarized and legalized documents and you have to physically take them to the consulate for processing and interview in "personal interview". As there are no Argentine consulates in Arizona, this means I actually have to drive to Los Angeles and get to the consulate at 6 AM in order to make sure that I can actually see a consular officer during thier working hours of 9-noon.

This kind of load of beauocracy makes the Russians look Swiss in comparison.