Tuesday, September 1, 2009

Let the Madness Begin!

The Road goes ever on and on
    Down from the door where it began.
Now far ahead the Road has gone,
    And I must follow, if I can,
Pursuing it with eager feet,
    Until it joins some larger way
Where many paths and errands meet.
    And whither then? I cannot say.
-JRR Tolkien


Hola, all y'all out in blogger (and facebook, if that application is working right) land!  So, as all of you know, I'm leaving for England very soon (on the 10th!) and yes, I finally got my blog set up.  It was titled with the help of Ashley.  It's part of the lyrics to a song Tolkien wrote, which is ironic if any of you happen to know that I'm not terribly fond of LotR (but sssssh, don't tell the Hobbit Society!).  Well fine, The Hobbit was okay... but I digress.  Aaaaanyway.  I'll hopefully be updating this blog semi regularly, and it should hopefully be posting any updates once a day to Facebook, for those of you reading this from Facebook.

So, a summary so far, from the beginning:  I found out about studying abroad from some presentation they've done every year in my German classes, and I initially said, No way in heck am I going overseas.  I don't remember why I suddenly changed my mind, but judging that to be a good thing for once, I went and talked to one of the SA advisors, and applied and everything before I really fully understood what exactly I was doing.  Of course, by the time I got accepted it was fine.  After doing all that paperwork, just for the application to /our/ program, I sure better have known what I was getting in to!  The day before our applications to our program were due, my brother decided to follow my lead and somehow managed to get the paperwork it'd taken me weeks to pull together in a matter of hours, and also got accepted to go to Hull.  His application to Hull was accepted, and he's going to be going there.  It's about 40 minutes (or miles, or kilometers, I forget) from Sheffield.

So I got accepted into our program, and then got to apply to Sheffield.  That was... I don't remember how that was.  Not too too bad, because I'd already gotten transcripts and letters of recommendation to turn in with the SA application.  And I got accepted to Sheffield too (obviously, or I wouldn't be writing this!).  All of this crazed nonsense with filling things out to apply to both programs was compounded at the time by a trip to Argentina, which was my first experience going outside North America (which, by the way, is just part of America to the Argentineans, as is the entirety of South and Central America.  They are all one continent.) and I loved it.  It convinced me a little further that perhaps traveling to England for a school year was a really good idea.  I kind of enjoyed the traveling, to be honest.  And the 11 hour plane ride wasn't nearly as bad as I thought it'd be.

After I got in to Sheffield and got my housing and all, I got some time to wait for my visa letter to apply for my student visa.  Oh joy, oh rapture.  Let me tell you something about applying for student visas.  First, I filled out an application (the correct one) but sent documentation for another.  Luckily, the documentation for the first was included in the documentation for the second, but the confusion added some days to me getting my visa.  Second of all, if you apply for a visa, you will never be able to speak to a single living person who knows anything.  I am not kidding.  There is a number where you can ask questions, but you pay for it, and they don't really know anything you can't find online, and they can't really tell you anything specific.  All in all, probably the worst thing I've had to do so far is applying for that visa.  It was stressful, confusing, and annoying, and every bit as bad as everyone says it is.  But I survived, and so did my application, and I got my visa.

And that kind of brings us to today!  I actually started a packing list, yay hooray, and I get to keep my job, after a fashion (oh man, are the people at work who figured that out a patient lot) by doing something different than I'd be doing here.  It's exciting, because I'll still have a consistent source of income.  Adam hasn't gotten his visa yet and probably won't before we were supposed to leave, so I'll probably go to England all by myself and he'll come later.  (But cross your fingers and hope for us that his visa gets here in time, because I hate traveling alone).  I'm not sure exactly what classes I'll have in England- 4 or 5 I know for sure, but the other 1 or 2 I don't.

I also probably won't update again til I get there, unless something earthshattering happens, like Adam getting his visa, or if I decide to post the night before I leave, or sometime while I'm traveling.

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