Overnighted Visa Papers!

Oh man! Getting my visa forms together has been a real nightmare. I have to appear in person on Tuesday in San Francisco in order to apply and you have to have a ton of forms done and ready in order to be accepted. The only problem is... When your program won't give them to you!!!

I sent an email a month ago asking for them and got a stupid email back saying that my program coordinator was going to be out of the office for 3 weeks... WHAT. So I said can I get them before you leave since my visa is coming up and I got another email back saying how I am applying too early because you have to be within 3 months of when you leave. Which I was at the time!!! And I don't want to be waiting around hoping it will get back in the mail in time for me to leave so I am applying on Tuesday with it supposedly being done in 21 business days, which makes me consider now to then be the perfect time to do this. But then I get an email back saying how they will send them out mid June… Uh what. So then I wait until last week before I start demanding them again. And then my program coordinator sends us a link to CampusFrance which is a program that you have to get registered in the school system of France to be able to go, which is something that has to be done before you can apply for your visa. That FYI takes 3 weeks to get processed and confirmed. So naturally I did that in March and have been done for ages. But that was all they sent me. So then I called WOU to try and get a form and they were like we can’t give you that and also we don’t understand what you need it for. It was a certificate of Enrollment. That is it… GAH. So finally frustrated I called the main boss lady of the WOU study abroad office and she was like send me the criteria for what you need and I will call them and get this all straightened out. So she did that and not 5 minutes later I get an email from someone at CISabroad and it is a new person saying she just got moved to the France programs and that she is on it like a bonnet and will get that to me ASAP and will even overnight all my forms. So as of 6:15 a.m. today my forms are in the mail and set to arrive here at my parent’s house tomorrow.

Long story short: Get the forms started and done as early as possible, because I would have been really screwed if I hadn’t and had relied on my program.