Tuesday, November 26, 2013
In exactly two months I will arriving in Europe. This whole thing is starting to become real for me. Just a little update on how my planning is going; I definitely did not anticipate spending this much time planning everything.
Two weeks ago my mom and I took a trip to Chicago to get my Visa from the French Consulate there. I was told by fellow classmates who studied abroad last year that it wasn’t a big deal at all, but of course I was nervous that they would ask some obscure question that I wouldn’t know how to answer and I would be rejected. The office was on the 37th floor of an office building on Michigan Ave. complete with security guards in suits that required a ticket to even use the elevator. Once in the office, which was basically a waiting room and what looked like two ticket windows, we sat down to wait for my appointment time. There was a TV playing what looked like HGTV in French, the program was called Jardin which means Garden. My mom picked up a magazine on Bordeaux, which of course she couldn’t read but the pictures were beautiful. Once my name was called, I walked up, slid my paperwork under the window, answered two quick questions, had my picture taken and we walked out. All of those nerves for nothing!
Visa: Check
Plane ticket: Check
I am flying into Germany first to spend ten days with my best friend from high school. Amelie was an exchange student my senior year and we became best friends pretty much the very first day of school. She lives right on the border of Germany and the Netherlands so we’ll be spending some time in her hometown in Germany and then where she goes to school in the Netherlands. After that, I’ll take a train into Paris to begin my adventure!