Welcome to the scary part, at least it was for me before, but at the end it was all kind of ok.
For everyone who doesn’t know me, I’m a stressed person and taking a 10+ hours plane to the US is not the most relaxing stuff so I wanted everything to go smoothly, I so decided to not by the plane tickets on my own but instead to buy them with a travel agency in case anything would happen, I would be able to rely on someone and also so I knew everything was set up smoothly.
Kind of the only way to reach Spokane from Europe is by arriving in the late afternoon or at night so I decided to come one day earlier than required to be sure I’d be there on time and could start International pre-orientation which is explained here, not dead tired and completely jet lagged. This was a really good decision especially because lots of people arrive on campus early, so I never felt alone (once in Whitworth).
Being born and raised as an European, the concept of border doesn’t mean a lot to me but US border means great trouble, for sure. I already had a passport from the New-York trip 3 years ago, so I didn’t have to worry about that. However, I needed a visa and as the greatest lazy procrastinator girl I know, I started the paperwork 2 month after I received the F1 (the paper to allow you to start applying for Visa) and then I got stressed out because I was late.
Applying for visa is not really difficult but it requires to follow multiple different steps and paying fees for every one of them and printing all those papers. The biggest part of the application is going to the US embassy (in Brussels for me) and waiting in line until the consul tells you you’ve got your visa and then you go back home.
The plane journey didn’t exactly go as planned: The plan was to sleep all the way above the Atlantic Ocean, so I didn’t sleep before taking those planes. Unfortunately, once in the plane, some part of my brain decided that sleeping was not an option. So, I basically stayed half-awake for some 40 hours in a row which is definitively not recommended.
The second huge part of this journey was my arrival at San Francisco and my wonderful experience at custom. Everything was going smoothly until I had to go through the secondary room as I had a student visa, until there everything normal.
The only problem was that there was only 1 guy working as we were on a Sunday and someone was then entering the room every 5 minutes for one exiting every 10 to 15 minutes which means that by the time I arrived in the room at 1.30 pm there was already some 30 or 40 waiting in silence with no phone. My plane was at 3.30 so I thought no problem, then an hour later, I asked the guy if he could put me first as I had another plane to catch and he kindly answered me that and I quote: “ This was none of his business and that most people in that room also had planes to catch but that people would find me another one when I was out”. The “out” part happened at 4.30, so way after my plane left, fortunately, I found a really nice lady from United Airline which was able to find me a spot on a flight 3 hours later.
And this is how I arrived safe and sound but dead tired with some lateness in Spokane. Now, my journey continues in the international pre-orientation, here.