October 9th, 2009
Right, so things got off to a bit of a shaky start. Getting my visa was a complete nightmare. Take this as a lesson, get all of your things for your visa in order as SOON AS POSSIBLE. Financial aid confirmation, letters of support from both home and host institutions, biometric info (fingerprints and jazz), proof of funding in YOUR NAME, and making sure to check every inch of the website for any more information you might need to provide. These people pull no punches, and once it’s in their hands, they become anything but transparent. Know that the day they receive your application is NOT the day they begin processing it. They held mine for almost 2 weeks before they began to process it.
So as a result, I missed “freshers” week festivities, not to mention the first week of classes. Luckily, study abroad faculty on both sides of the Atlantic were more than helpful throughout the entire fiasco. Thanks everyone! You know who you are! :-)Student Universe is a godsend, tickets would have been hundreds of dollars more elsewhere. I highly recommend.
I am heading to the airport now, hopefully the in-flight meals won’t suck too hard. It’s kind of a hit and miss with American based airlines in my past experiences, while always being reliably awesome on carriers like British Airways and Virgin Atlantic. Check off another thing that is a good thing if you are to apply for your visa as early as possible, around the time you would be shopping for flights, fares on those great airlines are as low as they get... Just a thought.
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