First real post

Hello lovely loves. 

I believe it is time to start this thing for realsies.  The first thing i want to get out of the way are my experiences so far, in just getting things lined up and not even going anywhere yet.

So as an outline:

First attempt (or: WHY YOU SHOULD NEVER GO ABROAD IN FALL  Or: Bye Bye Tonsils.)

Second Attempt: 

-What you should know
-Overwhelming lists
-That pesky Visa
-The whirlwind end of term
-dastards at financial aid

Have you buckled in?  I'll try to keep it primarily brief.  I mean, no promises, but I'll try.

Disclaimers:  Typos will abound.  I mean, they bug me, so it's not like i''m just going to ignore them and NOT EVEN try, but I rarely press shift when talking about myself of a place, so i feel like you should just know that going into it.  I'll be updating from a laptop, a tablet, and a phone, and so i can't ever make promises when it comes to the consistency of of spelling errors or capitalizations of proper nouns.  It would be nifty to make this a semi-professional thing, but as it's primarily for my friends and family and myself, i think instead i'd like to just have fun with it.


First attempt:  
I thought to myself as i raced to the IPE (international programs of education) office in WWU (Western Washington University) that it would be fun to travel and that my favorite seassons are falll and winter and there HAS to be a way to travel abroad on financial aid, right?  RIGHT?

Because let's just get this out of the way off the bat:  THERE IS NO WAY IN HELL THAT I COULD EVEN BE IN COLLEGE IF NOT FOR FINANCIAL AID.
 
I got my AA 85% done because of the kind kind gift of a kind-of well-off Grandmother who set money aside for me to go to college from when I was a baby and about 20% under my own steam.  (I know that leaves an extra 5% but i have that in there because I graduated with extra credits.)  Getting an AA in this country is hardly better than having a diploma (at least, when it comes to trying to get a job).  So that meant going to University someplace that the Financial Aid is exceptional.  WWU has that reputation, and a fantastic sociology/psychology focus, AND IT'S IN MY STATE, so that is where i went.

HOWEVER:

I am nothing, if not ambitious, and so I set my sights of studying abroad.  

I don't know if i can recommend this to someone else.  Or if so, prooooooooobably not Poland.  Poland (I'm sure) will be the most amazing experience of my life so far, but it would just be about a thousand percent simpler is you start out not needing financial aid. 

So here's how things look stacked against me at the end of the year during summer going into fall:

-To study and get financial aid during summer, it's this whole other application for separate funding
-I was going to be couchsurfing with friends because only having a couple of months would be ridiculous to try to find an apartment for three months
-I work a part-time job so i make less than $800 a month
-I thought to myself "Hey, I'll be getting financial aid and I'm frontloading my loan.  This will be fine."

NO.


See, here's the thing:

I've go ZERO access to Financial Aid during the summer, WHEN I NEED TO PREPARE.  

I can't pay fees, I can't schedule appointments, I can't buy plane tickets.  And right around this time i develop a case of strep that's so vicious it positively giggles in the face of three rounds of antibiotics.  

So I skate by a cancellation/deferment policy because I was sick enough that I needed to get my tonsils out.
Bye bye, Tonsils.

So okay, I have a second attempt facing me, because a cancellation outright would actually be $1000 more expensive that postponing and going during a different term.  But i still have obSTACKles looking me in the retinas.

Firstly, Poland passed a law as late as March 2014 which said "Everyone who wants a visa to travel in our country has to apply in person."  Now, this caused a panic in me.  The closest consulate to me in Bellingham is up in Vancouver.  But when i called the Polish Consulate in Vancouver to ask if it'd be acceptable to go THERE for my Visa appointment, the answer was "No."  (If i had been able to attend Fall term, it is from September to December, so that's only about 90 days.  I wouldn't actually need a REAL Visa, because it's right at the 90-day limit.)
which means that essentially, I have to travel from Washington to LOS FREAKING ANGELES to run an errand.  But at least I have months of staring me in the face.

INFURIATINGLY ENOUGH, it STILL came down to the wire, because the way appplying for a visa works is that you go in through the consulate website and you apply for a visa and an appointment in person at the exact same time.  (AND FOR THE LUVVA GOD, YOU SAVE THAT APPLICATION WHEN YOU COMPLETE IT.)  And because it's a government website, there is:  A time limit, the phrasing is different, the questions are kind of unclear, calling the consulate is unhelpful because 80% of the time YOU WILL NOT GET ANY ANSWER AND THEY HAVE "No inbox set up at this time.  Goodbye.", as well as this important info:  If you don't see a confirmation screen and get a confirmation email within 24 hours, you better bite the bullet and do it again.  

I applied 4 or 5 times, and I got an appointment a week out and a pplane ticket to L.A. (round trip) for around $380 courtesy of my parents (who have bailed me out for this and will be FORCED TO if i'm to get a plane ticket to Poland at all) until I can pay them back.

That brings me nicely to my second point.

FINANCIAL AID  HAS BEEN DELAYED UNTIL THE FIRST DAY OF THE ACTUAL TERM.

Studying abroad of financial aid STILL MEANS that you DO NOT actually get Financial Aid until the first day of your term abroad.   Which means that everyone else getting their money on Jan 6, you won't.  It means you won't get your moneys until Feb 19.

Which means you cannot purchase tickets on financial aid.

Which means you also aren't going to be able to use Financial Aid to fly to L.A. to go the the consulate in person.  (Hence my Parents having to purchase the ticket for me until i can pay them back.)

Which means you're gonna need $1500ish up front, aside from all the other fees which also come out of pocket.  Which include A $650 fee, a $250 fee, a $150 fee, and that's just from API.  (Acedemic Programs International.  This is the company that coordinates between WWU and the Universities abroad.)

In retrospect, I wish I had applied to go somewhere else, but I committed to Poland before Germany decided to make tuition free for Americans.  (Which kinda sucks, because I actually sprechen sehr kleine Deutsche.) But c'est la vie.  If i can get a decent handle on Polish, I think i'll be alright.

That's also a thing:  They require you to take a language course when you get to Poland.  Which I FULLY SUPPORT.  I think it's really important to at least TRY TO SPEAK the language of the country you travel to.  The idea that "everyone just speaks english anyway" is both arrogant and infuriating to me.  

THE PROBLEM IS that the A1 Beginner Polish language course is taught.
drumroll please.
IN POLISH. 
BASICALLY, you darling dovies, I have to learn Polish in order to travel to Poland, to learn Polish. 

Laughingly enough, all my other courses are taught in English.  

Go figure.

ANYWAY
I'm off to L.A. in a few days, I'll tell you how it goes then.