A trip to London

I don’t think I had quite anticipated how stressful it was going to be to apply for and plan this year abroad. Having first put my name down in November 2017, I didn’t expect that 8 months later I would still be going through applications that were both long and boring. The application process was beginning to ruin the fun and excitement of the year ahead, and with a to-do list that increased daily, it didn’t feel like I was making any progress. It felt like a “two steps forward, one step backward” sort of thing. I had also been advised to not book flights before my visa had got approved, so the main goal was to get all the admin stuff sorted quickly in order to get my visa, buy a plane ticket, and then hopefully feel like I was actually going. 

Amongst (literal and metaphorical) piles of paperwork, I didn’t actually start feeling properly excited about my year abroad until about a month and a half ago when I had the compulsory trip to London for my visa interview. I’d been really nervous about it, with the anticipation of finding out what it was going to be like as well as wondering which really important thing I had inevitably forgotten to take with me. 10 minutes late for the time I’m supposed to be there, I arrive at the US embassy to be greeted by a long queue of people doing the same thing as me, US police with big guns, airport style security and, by sheer chance, someone I used to go to school with. Anyway, we get our bags checked, go through to like an outdoor waiting area to queue up again, show some documents and then go upstairs to this like huge waiting room with the interview booths along the wall. For something so government and official, I still can’t believe how lax it all was. People were talking on the phone, watching stuff on the internet, eating and drinking, basically doing everything that I thought we wouldn’t be able to do. Two interviews, about 8 queues and a couple of hours later, I’m told my visa has been accepted and that I would see my passport again in a week! Hurrah!

A fortnight later I picked up my passport (now containing a visa) from a random mail depot and booked my flight. Since then, I actually feel like I’m going away and it’s made me so excited. I’ve got loads of cool things lined up and I’m really looking forward to the flight (well, not the long journey, but aeroplanes are fun). I’ve still got a few things to sort out before I go but I think I’m on top of it all. So yeah, I feel like I can actually look forward to it all now! The long applications are paying off!