The One Where I Go Slowly Out Of My Mind Waiting

At this point in my Brazil adventure I am on a visa adventure and stuck here in Aurora, Colorado.

It is a long process for an American citizen to get a visa to be allowed to study in Brazil for one year. I will be going on a student visa, something which I do not yet have. There are a lot of restrictions on Brazilian citizens attempting to get visas to come to the United States, and the Brazilian government is not happy about this and are therefore retaliating so there are a lot of restrictions on American citizens attempting to get visas to go to Brazil. You have to have a lot of paperwork, first of all. Everything from recent bank statements to notarized copies of your driver’s license, etc. etc. But the big thing that you must have before you must even start to apply for your visa is a criminal background check from the FBI. It took thirteen weeks for my background check to come back and I finally applied for my visa on Monday. I’m hoping I will leave sometime this month.

It might be a long shot. I still have to get a plane ticket, after all.

Meanwhile, over this past week, I have been packing up my room so it can be all ready to go for when I find out when I have to leave. I’m really excited about this because I’m feeling productive, but it’s also like a slap in the face because I still don’t know when I’m leaving yet. I’m getting my hopes up without a guarantee.

But don’t worry! My day will come!

Then there’s this other girl, Niki, who is from my district of 5450 who is going to Sweden. She left this past week and I read her blog today and everything seems to be right in her world. I’m also super jealous of her because everything seems to be right in her world. The students going to Brazil were told that they would be the first people to get out, but that is in no way true at this point.

So right now I am packing up my room and putting my winter clothes in storage and taking down posters from my bedroom walls so my sister Paige can put her own posters up while I’m gone. I’m buying summer clothes since they are all on sale right now because I’m going to the tropics. I’m putting things that I won’t need in college in boxes to put in the basement. It’s kind of a long process and my room looks like a hurricane swept through it, but I really don’t care since at least I’m doing something.

I went out to hang out with some friends last night. That is weird, too, since they are all making the transition to college and I’m doing something that they can’t even imagine. They ask me my plans but all they want to hear is that I’m waiting for my visa and then I will go, but all they want to talk about is how they’re worried that their roommate might be psycho. I understand why they don’t want to hear about Brazil, but it is still a weird and kind of lonely feeling.

Right now, it seems like there is only one person who understands what I am going through, and that is Lydia, one of the other girls from District 5450 who is also going to Brazil. We’ve been sending each other videos and stuff about how we are packing and just waiting.

That’s where I am right now. I’m in limbo.