T-16 Days; On Being Serious for half a second

I just read back through a few of my previous blog posts, mostly because I have given the URL of this blog to the first person who isn't related to me.  I'm terrified, because I've never had a blog before, and I don't know what people will think of it, but hey, write stuff.  Scribble a little every day, that's what Anne Lamott taught me, and I am, for once, following that advice.

These posts, I've begun to realize, have also helped me to document some of my life, which I am so good at NOT doing.  For being a writer, that's pretty much like a dog saying they don't much care for fetch.  There are those of us who struggle with daily journaling, just as there are dogs who struggle with fetch, and some dogs who just don't fancy it at all.  That's not entirely the case with me, I do like journaling, but without perspective I always have the trouble of coming back and finding what I've written to be trite and uninteresting.  Who cares about the simple everyday goings on of a twenty-something with no social life?

Sure, there are those twenty somethings who have entirely interesting social lives, who go out and do things and can tell you all about sex and the big city, style, intrigue, drama, gardening, painting, and whatever manner of hobbies that they happen to possess.  Even my revered Anne Lamott writes about writing.  She gets away with it, because she's a published writer and when she writes about writing its interesting and informative.  When I write about writing it sounds like a squirrel on crack with a pencil telling you to write a term paper on the merits of squirrel barking.  Or that weird double tap thing they do when they see you looking at them.

Please consider the last portion of that paragraph as an example of why I do not write about writing.

The thing is, I never know what to write about.  And here suddenly is a reason for me to write, every day, without end:  I am following my dream.

In reading through those past few blogs, I've remembered little moments I would otherwise have forgotten, remembered feelings I would have never thought about again.  Almost sixty days ago I was terrified that I had written such a low number in  my countdown, and now just look, sixteen days to go.  I have a visa, I have plans, I have money, I got through a whole month of working a boring day job, I am ready to plunge forward into the great beyond that is a Study Abroad Year.

So here I am, writing to you about the weirdness that I am and the wilds that are to come.  Hopefully I'll be able to tell you about all the good friends I am making, the slightly pompous locals who turn their noses up at foreigners, the kind locals who are willing to explain the me what a TV license is and how I can get one, the weird food and good beer, the sheep, the downs, the highlands, the moors, about everything English, and then everything German, French, Italian, Spanish, Czech, Swiss, and Dutch.  Hopefully I'll be able to take you along on this crazy, slightly by-the-seat-of-our-pants ride across the country to New York, from New York across the Atlantic Ocean, through London across the English Countryside, to a little city called Swansea.

The next year for me is fraught with exciting potential, terrifying possibilities, and maybe, occasionally, a good blog post.

T-49 Days

Holy crap… did I just write that?  Forty nine days?  Really.  Excuse me, I’m going to go have a panic attack while screaming with excitement.

Nothing much to report, I’m basically in the inbetweens right now.  And by inbetweens I mean that I have submitted my visa application and my application for accommodations, but haven’t heard back from either.  But it had been awhile since I wrote anything, and for my fearless followers, I thought a bit of a progress report was in order.  

So that’s it, that’s my progress report… I’m waiting.  The progress bar is loading.  Give it two weeks, then we should be golden.  Provided I get a visa.  And accommodations… 

In other news, I got a job, so I hopefully won’t be nearly as broke upon arrival and might not have to feel horrifically guilty about the fact that I’ll be spending as much as I will be in London.  Yay!  I might even be able to pay towards my credit card bill a bit so I won’t be traveling abroad with massive credit card debt!  DOUBLE YAY!  

Just got a postcard from my friend who has been traveling in Scotland, so that was fun.  She gave me a few ideas about where I should visit while I’m there for Christmas.  And… yeah.  That’s about it.  Working, trying to get money, will hopefully have shoes to wear while I’m in London, which is currently the biggest thing I need.  Part of me wants to wait to buy them there so I won’t have to transport tennis shoes, the other part of me wants to buy them here so I know what I’m getting and how much I’m paying.  Also I want converse… Gotta rock the one good thing the USA is good at doing… even if we send out to china to get them……… oh America.  

I’ll check in again once I’ve heard from the Consulate about my visa app, or from Swansea about my accommodations.  

Until then, farewell my fearless followers, which I shall henceforth call you. Also I’ve been watching Jane Eyre.  Because Jane Eyre is amazing, and Michael Fassbender (Sp?) is beautiful and amazing.

T-79 Days; Seriously impatient now

I can't believe I wrote that it would be seventy nine days.  We are now in the seventies.  That is dangerously close to being the sixties, which is officially two months... I'm really not sure how that math adds up... though I realize that in my last post I thought it was three months until London, when in reality, it was three months until Swansea, and I was wrong about the hours.  But oh well, it was still an exciting day.

The countdown itself is until the day I leave for New York, so it's another few days until London and a week until Swansea.  So it's really more like T-79, 84, 87.

I've been having a lot of fun the last few days planning my trip to London.  I guess its one trip I had been planning on spending a lot of money on.  Maybe that's obvious, since I've already spent $230 on the hotel.  I know it would be cheaper to stay in a hostel, but I'm worried about being reachable in case my luggage is lost at the airport, and the risk of my luggage being stolen is exponentially higher at a hostel.  Because what I'll have with me on that trip is literally everything I'll have to my name, I thought it would be better to stay in a hotel on my first trip.  It's also because its a new city, new country, new continent.  I have never been out of the US before, save for a brief trip to Victoria in Canada once, and let's face it, that doesn't really count.  Since I don't know really what I'm doing, I think a hotel is definitely a better idea than a hostel.  Once I've gotten into the swing of things, I'll hostel until the cows come home, but until then, I'm living in luxury.

Aside from the hotel, I've been looking at attractions.  I had considered getting a London City Pass, or whatever its called.  Its basically a discount card that you can purchase for about £60 for one day.  The pass gets you access to the faster lines, and £90 worth of attractions, so if I was going to be going hog wild, it might actually save me money.  But I'm not really going to have time to get to £60 worth of stuff, let alone £90 in a single day.  So I scrapped that idea and have decided on one paid attraction for each of the three days I'll be in London.  In all, that brings my total to about £30 for attractions for the trip with about the same for food.

As far as where I'd like to go, I've almost definitely settled on Kensington, Natural History Museum, and the Globe theatre.  Natural History Museum is free, so I'm set there, Kensington is about £11 for students, and the Globe is £11 for the tour and £7 for standing room at a show.  I'll probably mostly just wander around near westminster and view it from afar, maybe stop by trafalgar square.  I had hoped to go to Camden Market, but it's just too out of the way for this trip, so I'll have to save it.  Of course, there are a million other things I'd LOVE to do but can't afford like St. Pauls Cathedral, The Tower of London, Buckingham Palace, Westminster, and the London Dungeons, but I figure I shouldn't burn a hole in my pocket too quickly.

Welp, that's about all I've got to share today.  I should probably proof read this, but I just can't bring myself to.  Is anyone even reading this?

T-83 Days; A tidbit

It is now officially three months exactly until I will be in Wales.  At this time of day, I've been there for almost seven hours.  In three months.


That is all.

T-88 Days, On Being Impatient

I have to very seriously ask myself what it says about me that the most exciting things to happen to me recently are these: 1) I now know that my tier-4 sponsor school is in fact Swansea and NOT Chico, and 2)I am now in possession of a money belt.

Of course, neither of these things mean ANYTHING to me for another month at the earliest.  I can't apply for my Visa until I have my CAS (conformation of acceptance to study), which supposedly won't be until July, and I'm banking on mid to late July.  My money belt doesn't really mean anything until I am hosteling it, since I don't even really expect I'll use it while I'm in London.  Maybe I'll use it just to prove that I need it.

I recently also acquired a copy of the Rough Guide to Wales, a jewelry roll, a foldable travel day pack, Rick Steve's Europe Through the Back Door, and a Streetwise London tube map which is about a third of the size I expected it to be.  In all, I'm doing pretty well for the things I need to buy, though I am beginning to think maybe I should have bought a rain shell instead of a jewelry roll and tube map, but in the end I'll need them all, the only difference any of it makes is when it arrives.

Mostly, I'm just sitting on my hands wishing I could be doing more to prepare.  I can't set up housing or apply for a visa or do any packing.  I'm horrifically impatient, but forced to wait.  It's unbearably frustrating.

In the meantime, I am making lists up the wahoo and making phone calls about selling my starbucks stock for a few extra dollars to last me until I get my finaid, or maybe for a bit of extra spending money in London (okay, let's face it, its almost certainly to keep me going until finaid gets here, but hey, a girl can dream, right?).  I'm also dealing with some, shall we say, less than brilliant people with the office, who has continually sent me angry emails claiming I have failed to submit a form that was most definitely submitted, forcing me to send several duplicates of the form until at last they sent me an email explaining that it was missing a certain signature stamp, which apparently they couldn't tell me the FIRST time it was submitted incomplete.

So I guess what I'll really do for the next month is troll an Amazon and keep a running track of all the things I can't afford.

T-102 Days; On Blogging

So apparently, I hate blogging.  I sort of already knew that.  It's a bit like forced journaling, except that when I write in a journal, I don't expect anyone to read it.  Blogging is exactly like journaling, only the oposite.  And instead of being whatever I want to write, or whatever is on my mind, or whatever, it is a focused, concise piece in which I get to ramble about anything I want provided it follows the basic structure of the blog.  In this case, as long as it has to do with studying abroad.

As a writer, I don't actually have a lot of work out there yet.  Most of my close friends and family members have read bits of Honorable Marks, and several of them have read my short story, "The Curator of Forgetting," but other than that, well, I'm not exactly well known.  So I decided to start this blog and have it be all about studying abroad.  So technically, the blog itself falls under the category of the subject, as I wouldn't have it if I weren't going abroad.  Therefore, the following rant definitely falls under the category of "study abroad" and is not therefore to be taken as a silly rant, but a focused and well thought out rant.

That being said, I'm going to put this simply.  I hate this blog.

Now, why would someone hate something they're doing, you ask?  That's a fairly simple question, actually.  Once upon a time, in order to blog you made a blogger account, or a tumblr account, or whatever, and you posted blogs on it.  Easy.  Now, however, its more complicated.  Way more complicated.  If you don't want to pay for a domain, you can still use blogger, but it's connected to Google+, which I have successfully avoided up until now.  You can still use tumblr, which I do, avidly, but mostly to reblog photos of Robert Downing Jr. biting the ridiculous shoulder pads on Gweneth Paltrows dress, or Harry Potter comics.  It's not exactly where I anticipated sharing my travels with the world.  So I made a separate tumblr account for study abroad and all was good.  I did this because, while Blogger is still definitely used, it doesn't reach nearly the audience, and I figure I'll be sharing the link with everyone reading it anyway, so tumblr seemed the best bet, where I could post photos from my phone, check from the road, and reach a young audience.

Problem #1: You need a tumblr account to read a tumblr blog.  Wouldn't be a problem if I weren't planning on sharing this with my family.  Now it's a problem.  So I decided I should make a blogger, write my blogs for tumblr and then copy paste them and put them onto my blogger site.  It's not plagerism, because I'm the writer and I give myself permission.  Seemed foolproof.

Problem #2:  Apparently if you copy and paste into a blogger form, it puts a stupid white text box around each paragraph, so although the background is a lovely, hand selected grey, it is covered in a hideous white text box, especially terrible if you skip a line in between paragraphs like I do.

Problem #3: I have had my three blogs up for most of the morning, and only just now figured out why they look so stupid.

Solution to problems #1 and #2: Write for blogger, copy paste into tumblr.

Solution to problem #3: Apparently the most convaluted process ever.  I had to copy and paste each blog into a word document, reformat it, delete the blog on blogger, and repost it.  I should be happy I didn't need to rewrite the whole damn thing, which I thought I might have needed to do, but mostly I'm just annoyed.  Even better, since I had to back date them, they ended up out of order, and I had to do it all over again.  So basically, I had to tear my hair out and bash my skull against the wall while getting ridiculously angry over why there is no simple solution such as, oh, you know, NOT having it reformat pasted information?

Also my headphones are missing, and I'm broke, so I have no way to replace them.

Okay, lets face it, its a rant.

T-107 Days; Money Matters

I’m a little concerned about some of the people I saw at the orientation as representing our country while they are abroad.  I realize that the US doesn’t have the greatest reputation in certain places, yet these people were showing up unprepared after a night of hard partying, talking about how they were dehydrated.  It seemed almost as if they were just sort of there on a whim, as if one morning they woke up and thought, “I wonder how they party in Marseille,” and they signed up to go.

My study abroad peer advisor is a bit like one of those.  Not NEARLY as bad, obviously, but a little.  A few weeks ago I got an email from the Visa Agency requesting that I make sure I have the adequate funds in my bank account for at least one month before applying.  Basically, when applying for a Tier-4 visa in the UK, you need to have enough money to pay your fees, which, with exchange, is about $7000.  I don’t have that much money, I have never had that much money, and, as I’m hoping to be a writer, I will probably never have that much money.  Hell, I don’t even know what that much money feels like, I’ve never even seen that much money.  And I doubt that any other student has, so I can’t possibly be the only student traveling overseas for year who doesn’t happen to have that much money just hanging out in their bank account.

So a week or so ago, I wrote an email to my peer advisor saying essentially that.  I figured there was some form I’d need to sign, or to bring in an official financial aid award, or some other little formality like that.  The poor girl, apparently she did have that much in her account, or more likely her parents did, and she had no idea what to do.  But rather than saying what I would have in that situation, “I’m sure there’s something, I don’t know what, but I can find out,” she said, “I have no idea what you should do about that… I’m going to have to ask Jenn and Steve (the people essentially in charge), they might be able to help with the specifics of your case.” My case… as if I was something special, something hitherto unknown.  And thus the panicking began.

How am I supposed to prove I have this much money? I don’t have this much money.  Best case scenario, I’ll have to lie.

And then BOOM my head exploded and I was sure I was going to be massively in debt and I have no way to pay for any of this and I’m in so much trouble how am I going to pay for anything and I just bought a backpack and I don’t have tennis shoes, but I need to buy a pair because mine are dying, but I can’t afford them.

And then I got an email from Steve saying that all I need is an official printout of my financial aid award and I’m fine.  Of course.  As expected.  I’m still going to be massively in debt, but at least I can pay for school next year.  Now I just have to figure out how to pay for the visa…