21 year old son leaving next week for a semester at U of Belgrano. Please suggest "Things you wish you'd known" before you went, especially regarding obtaining cash and communications with the states. He'll have a laptop and debit/cash card. Thanks!

Check out this thread on this same forum, regarding the use of credit/debit cards:
http://www.fodors.com/forums/threads...p;tid=34440411

Regarding communications with the US, the cheapest way is to get a calling card. You may want to do a search for "Argentina calling card" in this or the tripAdvisor forum.

I extracted information about payments and put it in the following page http://www.cambalache.info/faq/cheque.html
Regarding international calls the cheapest way is to buy prepaid cards here. Then they can be used in any telephone without the call being charged to the line

Misc. notes

The University of Belgrano is in a nice part of the city.

Mail things back and forth via FedEx. Do not rely on the local mail.

Buy a Guia T do Bolsillo at a news stand (they are very inexpensive). This is a series of maps of the entire city with bus routes all laid out.

Peanut Butter is available at the Jumbo store in Palermo.

My 21 year old daughter returned last month from BA. One thing we found pretty useful as far as communicating (and cheap or free) was to install skype on the computers (yours and his). It wont always be feasible for you both to be at your computers, but when you are it is totally free and works pretty good.

Actually, for communication, your best bet since he'll have his laptop is install Skype on it (free download), get him a headset if he doesn't have one, and do the same on your computer at home - it's free communication back and forth. Cash is easy - debit or credit cards, or virtually any ATM card from anywhere will work here to extract cash, just like back home (assuming he has an account to draw from). You can also send money in an emergency via Western Union - there are a ton of retrieval spots around the city for it.

Thanks for the quick responses! Skype looks good for
us, and the peanut butter hint is key.

I just wanted to thank gauchoretobado for his link, I found it very helpful! Everbank.com has a VISA check card and they charge a 1% transaction fee, and it could be standard for VISA.