I am getting ever closer to crossing the Atlantic Ocean and setting foot in Europe for the first time in my life! If you'll notice, I now have a countdown at the top of my page for the day I leave for my study abroad experience in Alba, Italy. Currently it says "It is 1 month, 2 weeks, & 2 days until I venture out for adventures across the ocean!" So exciting! :)
I've known for a while already when my departure date would be due to the schedule that the school's International Education has more or less in place for us, but I didn't want to put up a countdown until there was more.. official-ness. :P So what makes it more official today? Well, my plane ticket was secured about a week and a half ago, and today I now have my visa!
The visa was considerably easier to get than I expected. My boyfriend and I left this past Friday afternoon to go find the Italian embassy in DC, which was a mini-adventure (not exactly the fun kind) in and of itself. As a side note, I would never want to live in Washington DC - or any city, really, not my scene.. too busy and bustling and generally more polluted and crowded, with a higher risk of getting mugged - but anyway, DC is just so confusing. Whoever decided the layout of the streets and how to name them had extremely poor organizational skills. Most cities I think have pretty square layouts, right? If you look at a map, I imagine for other cities you'd see sensible blocks and straight streets with straightforward names like 1st St., 2nd St., etc, that follow a sensible order. DC had numbered streets, sure, that followed a somewhat logical order, and then it had roads like the one we needed to follow called Massachusetts Avenue, which we saw started as New York Avenue, changed back to Massachusetts, cut a corner through Mt. Vernon, then back to Massachusetts. Who does that?!? Just because Massachusetts takes a slight turn does not mean you need to rename it New York Ave. Mapquest should not be telling me that "Mt. Vernon Pl NW becomes Massachusetts Ave NW." Roads should not have multiple identities! I declare that streets should not be permitted to have schizophrenia. And how does making a right turn off of Massachusetts, then an immediate left, and a turn around a roundabout take you back to the "same" road? Ridiculous. DC is completely ridiculous. If Fields hadn't taken me to get my visa, I might never have gotten to the embassy. I'd prolly have just gotten hopelessly and completely, frustratingly lost.
Anyway. After trickily navigating through the labyrinthine DC streets, we made it to the embassy. We got a pass from the guys at the gate and pushed buttons to open the doors (weird) to the consulate/visa office. It wasn't at all what I pictured it might look like. I imagined a nice classy open room with fancy desks where I could talk to a friendly person and get what I needed done. This looked more like a clinic waiting room. Very bare room, 3 counters with glass windows and little trays to slide documents from one side to the other. It kind of made me feel like I was in prison, not allowed to have any contact with the person on the other side of the glass (not that I wanted to anyway, but still, it wasn't very friendly feeling).
So I stepped up to the first free counter, and the guy behind the glass is still shuffling some stuff around his counter space, so I waited. Then he looked up at me and said nothing, so after a pause I asked what he needed, unsure of whether I should give him all the documents at once or if he wanted some certain thing first. I asked very politely, and it's not like I was taking a long time, but he responded, "Just give me everything!" quite impatiently. I was taken aback a bit, so I start rifling through my folders to get out what I knew was needed. As I'm doing so, he repeats "Everything, just give me everything," and I'm like okayy, I'm getting to it, just hold your horses buddy, you don't need my entire folder filled with everything the school's given us for the study abroad program. It was just like, my goodness. He's only working 2.5 hours every. other. day, what the heck is his problem? (That's another thing, the Visa office is only open MWF from 10am-1230pm, and they only take calls from 2pm-4pm. What?) So it was just like okay, here you go. Then he tells me I don't have bank statements that I need, and I'm like Crap. I forgot. , which just served to add to the feeling of incompetency his tone of voice and bored stare was giving me. Thankfully though, I didn't have to go back to the embassy to get it to them, I could fax them. So I faxed those in yesterday morning (Might I add that I think the fax number he gave me was wrong, because I tried like 3 times with it and it kept saying there was no response, so I had to use the one on the Italian Embassy website that was different).
And then today, upon arriving home from my dental appointment, I see on my bed the familiar pre-paid express mail envelope that I had to get ($18.30 just for an over-sized envelope! Agh. But that's what they required -_-) so they could mail my passport and such back to me. So this leads me to think Maybe the visa office isn't so bad after all. Regardless of their ridiculous hours and less than hospitable clerks, I have my visa! So I theoretically shouldn't have to deal with those or DC's insanity-inspired roads anymore. Hooray!
This means that I am pretty set to go to Italy aside from, you know, packing. :P There are also some other things I want to check up on, like the banking situation, voltage differences for the electronics I want to use, and possibly getting an International SIM card or whatever it's called for my phone. But still, the time-sensitive required stuff is good to go!
It still feels pretty surreal that I've got less than 2 months til I'll be in Italy. I'm starting to feel the excitement and anticipation build, along with some anxiousness. I don't know anybody in the group that's going, but hopefully that changes fast, cuz I need travel buddies! That's another thing: Where should I plan to go while I'm abroad? Hopefully I will have lots of travel opportunities while I'm there! And there's also the matter of getting a feel for the Italian language (we'll have a class there, but I've heard it's not the most efficient at getting realistically acclimated).. So much to do and think about in the next six and a half weeks! :)
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