I’m Kryss. I’m going into my senior year of college and decided I didn’t want to miss out on big and exciting opportunities. So I’m squeezing in a semester of study abroad. (Like really squeezing it in, I actually applied for May graduation just this morning.) I’ll be in Amman, Jordan studying at the University of Jordan. I’ll be studying Arabic language and culture.
Why Jordan, you ask? One of my majors is Political Science with a concentration in International Relations and a special interest in the Middle East. Did ya follow that? So I think I want to work in the Middle East but I figure spending a semester there for school, when I know I can come home afterward is a better test of that than getting a job and moving around the world. It’s a bit more intense than moving to Chicago only to find you hate deep-dish pizza. My other major is Broadcast and Cinematic Arts. It doesn’t really apply to our purposes here, but I like it. My home college is Central Michigan University. It's an awesome place and I wouldn’t have gone anywhere else.
I leave in under three weeks so everything is starting to feel real. Classes started today for all my friends and I just watched them go get syllabi, while I applied for my Visa. That was confusing. You send in an application, your passport, and a money order application fee to the embassy. (Yes, my passport! Makes me nervous just thinking that it isn’t safely locked up where I can reach it!) The form asks for the place that issued your passport. But your passport doesn’t really say…mine says US Dept. of State. Not super helpful, since that’s where all US passports are officially issued. Apparently, the old form of passports had a telltale number in your ID that identified which region it came from. No longer. And Michigan used to all go through Chicago. No longer. So I tried to ask the postal workers at the post office, since they do passports there. I got blank stares and a 1-800 number. Awesome. Turns out, my passport probably came from Denver. So said the lady on the other end of the 1-800 number. I think. Well, I hope since that’s what I wrote down. Anyway, the postal workers were laughing and joking (about Men in Black and aliens in the post office and missing mail...) and didn’t seem to quite know what they were doing…which only made me more nervous as I’m sending out my passport! I think it all ended up working out ok. Oh yeah, and you send a return envelope so you get your passport back. Key part to this whole thing.
So with the visa, Jordan’s are only good for a month, so we had to wait till close to departure to apply. Then, once we’re in the country, the university works it out so that our visa is good for the semester. Sounds tricky. But the visa application also says its good for 3 months and its not. Also tricky. So before I leave, I really just have to wait for my visa to arrive.
I pretty much work a few more days and have time to spend with friends. I have some movies I’d like to watch and a game of disc golf I’ve been promised. I’m hoping to have plenty of time to pack, unpack, and repack…since I’m still not really sure what I’m bringing. I’ll have an update on that later…headaches and all as I weigh my luggage on the bathroom scale and then try to take stuff out that I want but don’t really need. Wish me luck!
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