exams are over, and I’ve moved out of my second year house
completely, meaning my room here at home is now physically impossible to
enter. lots of tearful goodbyes have been said, and I’ve had a lovely
week away in greece to get some beach time in the sun. however the
increasing speed with which time seems to be passing means that it is
not very long at all until i go
with just over a month left in england I am beginning to freak out a
little about things i still haven’t done, like sort my
phone/bank/flights/modules and today has been the day to get started
with getting these done. woo.
However South Carolina being 5 hours behind means that I couldn’t
make any question filled phone calls to the university until after lunch
and the combination of this and the weather being absolutely lush has
resulted in me spending most of the day pretending to do stuff but
actually procrastinating online whilst sunbathing out in the garden, the
wonders of wifi hey.
anyway i have worked out that sounding very british, very worried
and very confused on the phone is the best way to get help, and help is
just what i needed when i found out this morning what modules i have
been allocated, and realised that I have classes late every evening
except one, and that two of my modules are almost the same. waiting to
hear back about whether I can change so fingers crossed!
me when I found out my timetable
however one thing I actually have ticked off my to-do list is getting my visa sorted….
So last week I had a rather enjoyable visit to the US embassy in order to get my visa approved.
I had envisaged the day being a leisurely one, involving a not too
early mid-morning appointment and maybe the rest of the day spent in
London, which for country lovin me is still all quite novel and big so I
would have been happy to have an afternoon wandering round.
However this plan was obvs not meant to be and my day was split
between many hours spent trying not to pass out on public transport and
many hours in the truly dismal place that is the us embassy waiting
room.
Having booked my appointment for half 11, when it came to booking
my train down there I realised that to get there in time from the middle
of nowhere aka my house I was going to have to leave at 6.45 which was
not pleasant.
Other than the early start the day started off quite well and it
wasn’t until I reached London that I realised how hot it was and also
that when London is hot the underground is about a hundred times hotter.
Having paid a tenner (!!!) for a locker to put my phone in (no
electronic items in the embassy apaz) I boarded the central line to
marble arch! How jolly fun! Not. It was an actual sauna and full of
businessy people who all looked like they were regretting choosing jobs
in which suits were mandatory workwear. The little man/voice thing on
the tube kept reminding everyone to drink lots of water which was nice
and thoughtful but I didn’t have any so it just made me feel more hot
and bothered and also scared of impending dehydration and what exactly
they would do with you if you did suddenly faint all the way
underground?? Can you tell I’m not from London?
Anyway eventually I got out of hell and emerged on Oxford street. I
had come prepared for once, armed with a map and instructions of how to
find the embassy. I do not know if it was me or the map but anyway I
had to ask three people where it was and was just about to ask the
fourth when I eventually came across it. My navigation skills had
obviously dwindled in the heat.
The embassy is pretty scary looking, it’s massive and quite imposing and also surrounded by policemen with real life guns!
i had forgotten it had this giant eagle on top which i feel definitely added to the overall welcoming and inviting nature of the place
once you’ve showed your papers and been scanned (by a seriously
terrifying cockney security guy) you sort of have to do a little parade
around the building along a path with lots of guards and flags.
I think the walk into the embassy past all these flags and guns was
probably the best bit as after this the day definitely went downhill.
Basically you go in, your documents are checked and you are given a
number and told to wait in the hall until your number’s called out.
This didn’t sound too bad until I realised that they don’t actually
call your number out, it just pings up on this giant screen up one end
of the hall thus squandering any hopes you might have had of trying to
read your book or actually look away from this giant screen for more
than about ten seconds.
I should also mention that although the us embassy is extremely
well supplied in terms of technology ie finger print scanners all over
the place, it is yet to discover aircon and two small fans were not ok
to try and keep about 400 crowded people cool.
Anyway the waiting period was not what I’d call enjoyable but after
about 45 minutes my number got called up, my documents were checked
again, and I was told to return to my seat and wait for my number again.
This second waiting time lasted what seemed like for EVER but was in
actuality only a mere two and a half hours of fun. Eventually I had my
‘interview’ which was just a few questions about what I’m going to be
doing next year and that was that! getting your visa is basically
proving your ability to wait for a really long time, maybe to just show
them how much you really want to go to america.
As I left the aforementioned scary security man was googling ‘five
finger death punch’ which really worried me for quite a while. Who was
this guy? So I googled it too expecting to find some weird video of how
to carry out this deadly move but phew instead I discovered they are
just a strange looking band so the guard was not that murderous after
all.
However the fun was not over as I then had to re enter the furnace
of the central line to get my phone from the locker and then get back
onto the same dreaded central line to exactly where I had just come from
to get my bus home, an extremely dejavu-ey journey which made me feel I
was going a little mad.
Anyway finally with 4 minutes until the bus left I ran around
Victoria coach station like a crazy person until like some miracle I
heard a broad norfolk accent asking ‘how you gettin orn’ and i knew I
had found my bus (this did actually happen and I think if I hadn’t have
heard him I probably would have missed the bus) so on I got.
Nothing of much interest happened after this (I realise that
actually reading back nothing of much interest happened the entire day
apart from it being long and stressful) and I eventually got home in one
piece, with my passport being posted back to me a couple of days later,
all officially stamped with my visa woo!
To finish off this tediously long ramble, if you are a student who needs to apply for a visa then I would say the following…
- Be prepared for a lot of form filling. They are all
straightforward but there are a lot of them to fill in and it can get a
bit confusing as they tend to have weird unhelpful letter/number
combinations as names.
- Be aware that getting your visa is not a
cheap process. You have to pay your SEVIS fee and your MRV fee which for
me i think totalled around $300. There’s also the cost of a locker for
your phone if you’re going on your own and the money you have to pay for
your passport to be sent back to you. I went for the cheapest option
and this was still £14! If you are applying for a travel grant you can
claim any visa costs back on that which is what I’m intending to do so fingers crossed i will be able to get it all back.
- Go through the checklist of what you need to bring to the
interview and go through it thoroughly! I didn’t realise until the
evening before that the embassy hadn’t actually emailed me my interview
confirmation letter which is the most essential bit and I very nearly
went without it which would have been truly dismal. There’s quite a few
different bits you need to have with you so it’s worth double checking.
- Be prepared to wait! Take food water and easy reading because if
you have my luck you’ll be in there a fair ol while and it gets very
boring very quickly
well that was long and kinda made me stressed just writing it but
at least that’s one part done. hopefully the rest of my to-do list will
not be as wearisome although having looked at flight prices earlier I
don’t hold out much hope.
however believe it or not having read this gloomy and depressed
sounding post, I am really looking forward to going and the thought of
this……
…is definitely adding to my excitement!xxxxx
