3 1/2 Hours for 3 1/2 Minutes

This past Tuesday on the seventh of July, I had to go up and get my biometrics done for my visa. Essentially I had to get my fingerprints taken which they are now going to run through a database to make sure I am who I say I am. And to make sure that I'm not a serial killer or a terrorist or a fugitive on the run from the law. This Visa process is ridiculous.

Anyway, this is going to need some back story. My Uncle Jack, my mom's brother, died on the fifth. He lives in Mississippi so my parents needed to get down there to make the funeral as well as my mom needed to be down near family. There were several options. Either my dad took me up on Tuesday and we all left on Wednesday for Mississippi or they went ahead without me and I went up with my good friend Caleb. We went with the second option. It's not that I didn't want to be there but that I felt it was more important for my mom to get there and to be around family.

Uncle Jack was a good man. Intelligent. He had an IQ of 160 and was a member of Mensa. However he also had led a hard life. My parents told me that he didn't really grow up until about the age of 40. He was an alcoholic and he did dabble in drugs but he also lived a very unique life. I don't know much about him but I do know that he did go to Woodstock, like the original Woodstock. He was a New York cabbie at one point in time and he also transported oil or supplies in the Congo. I'm not quite sure. I wish I could have gotten a chance to know him but what I do know sounds like he was an incredibly interesting man. He had been through AA and was sober for many years before he died. He was 61.

Tuesday morning, my friend Caleb came over and we went up to Des Moines around 9:00. My appointment was at one and we were going to arrive a little after eleven. We wanted there to be no rush. We get there and we went for lunch. We settle on Taco John's. Caleb locks the car on the rationale that Des Moines is a bigger city than Mount Pleasant. Big mistake. Caleb has the only car on record or at least the only one that I know of that has a seperate lock key from an ignition key. He left the lock key at home. You see where this is going. Yeah. We were locked out of the car and all my documentation that was needed for my appointment was stuck in there as well. I needed that paperwork for this appointment. Of course, I didn't realize that we were in quite a pickle.

We decide to wait and just get our lunch. We figured that the police could open the door for us. We thought wrong. Apparently they changed that policy. So, we asked the employees for help and they obliged. One of the windows was down by a few centimeters. They had these rods which we used to try and pop open the lock. That didn't work. Even though it didn't work, I was very thankful to them for trying to help. My appointment was approaching quite quickly. I of course was in a panic.

So I called up my college friend Shawn Gude to come and help. He brought some clothes hangers and we tried to use them to push the unlock button. That didn't work. However, Caleb had been able to get a hold of a lock smith in the time it took for Shawn to find us. The locksmith unlocked the car in about 4 minutes using special tools and what not. Caleb asked if he had to pay for it. The man laughed and said, "Sure."

I grabbed my documentation and Shawn and I took off for the Federal Building. He works there part time. We said our good byes and I arrived at the room I needed to be at just in time. The staff then took me over to a machine which scans for fingerprints. I thought they were going to have to use ink. The whole process of scanning each individual finger literally took 3 1/2 minutes. With the car ride and the time we were trapped outside of the parking lot, that all added up to about 3 1/2 hours. It's sort of anti-climactic in a way.

To make up for the hassle, we drove over to Iowa City and had a nice cigar at Tobacco Bowl. I also stopped by Prairie Lights Books and picked up a copy of Crime and Punishment. I'm starting to get into Dostoevsky. Yes, I am that pretentious.

And Teddy Solberg still owes me that sandwich.

Why I'm Going Abroad and What I Want to Accomplish

I suppose I should start by explaining why it is that I want to go abroad. There are various reasons as to why. There is the practical reason. Which is quite a long one. Back in February when I decided to go on this little adventure several various things fell through. I had tried to become an RA. That fell through. All of my friends had gotten places and apartments lined up so I couldn't really jump on any of their bandwagons. I didn't really want to live in the dorms again and I didn't really want to find a place of my own. This is right around the time the idea for going abroad came into my head. I also figured that junior year was really the last year to do it. Senior year is about mopping things up and is a time to look at graduation rather than going somewhere else. At least from my point of view.

At first it was only going to be for the spring semester. I was planning on living in the dorms one semester and then I was looking at going to Cork, Ireland in the spring. My brother Chris, who had studied abroad in France, told me to see if there were any year long programs I would be interested in. This is when I found out about the UK Exchange program. It sounded too good to be true but when I started doing rough estimates on cost, it looked like it would cost just the same as living in Cork for a semester.

At first I had settled on the University of Hull but that fell through. However, my study abroad adviser recommended that I look into the University of Birmingham. I fell in love with the idea immediately. Mostly because it is closer to what I wanted to study and experience. This being Stratford-upon-Avon and Shakespeare. I had taken a Screening Shakespeare course and have fallen in love with his works. Hamlet especially.

Practical reasons aside, there are other reasons as to why I wanted to study abroad. A lot of my mentors back home have mentioned that I should look into studying abroad during my college years. They told me that it is easiest to travel when one is a student rather than later in life. Junior year is really the perfect time to do so and right now with my life I am looking for something different.

I love college. I love my friends. All of them. But I have grown tired of the same old grind. College isn't that exciting for me anymore. It has lost its sense of wonderment. With each new semester, I know that I'm going to have a paper within three or four weeks and I know that I am going to have about two weeks to write it and usually said paper will be five to six pages long. Even when I have multiple papers to write it never feels like a challenge. I know that sounds like an arrogant thing to say but it's the truth. I have never really stressed too much about writing a paper or at least I don't stress about it anymore. There was a time but that was when I was fresh in the game.

Right now, I am in search of a change. I need something that is totally different than what I am used to. I also have been wanting to go on an adventure and this feels like it will be a grand quest. I am just tired of things being the same. I need something new. And if this whole study abroad experience is a failure, well... least I tried.

People have asked me why I've been doing this or if I'm concerned about going abroad or how much its going to cost and if I've truly planned ahead. I remember one person told me that this whole idea sounded too good to be true. Maybe it is, but I'm not going to worry about those things. I am not going to worry about how expensive this adventure is going to be or if this might just be one massive failure. I'm not going to worry about the "what ifs" because I've come to find that those concerns just get in the way of a situation and cause much unneeded stress.

By the way, Teddy Solberg still owes me a sandwich.