Colorado, Phoenix, & a Visa.
Greetings from Phoenix! The past couple weeks have been quite a rollercoaster. I’ll try my best to keep it short, but a LOT has happened in such a short amount of time.
Two days after writing my last post, I flew from Fayetteville to Denver where, after all our flights were delayed a couple hours, I met my dad & sister at the airport. From there, we drove up to my parents’ (meaning my dad & stepmom) cozy second home in Frisco, Colorado – a mountain town surrounded by well-known ski resorts like Keystone, Breckenridge, Vail, and (our personal favorite) Copper Mountain. We almost had to stay the night in Denver due to heavy traffic on the way into the mountains and slick roads past the Eisenhower tunnel, but we took the risk and made it to the house after four hours. The drive normally takes around two! Crazy.
Anyway, that night, I finally received my updated Offer Letter from the University of Newcastle. Turns out, they had screwed up the deposit amount on my original offer letter anyway, so the updated one contained my corrected birthday and amount due. I accepted the offer around 10pm and attempted to pay the deposit with a credit card. Being that the transaction was from Australia, the payment was declined. It was too late to call the bank and approve the transaction, and I was so impatient to get the deposit paid that I failed to consult Anna about the situation, who would have advised me against what I did next. Instead, I chose to pay through a service called Flywire. Flywire is essentially a “middleman” when making payments to a foreign country. I paid them in USD, and they in turn paid the U of N in AUD. What I failed to realize was that this process would take a week to finalize. 2-3 business days for my payment to make it to Flywire, then another 2-3 business days for the payment to make it from Flywire to the U of N. But I’ll come back to that.
The following day, I woke up just before sunrise to a whopping 9 inches of fresh snow waiting for us at Copper Mountain. Our difficult drive the day before was rewarded with the best powder day I have experienced since I worked as a liftie at Copper (the previous record was on Christmas Day in 2017 – a foot of snow fell & my shift on a surface lift was cancelled a few hours in due to low visibility, allowing me to ski and enjoy the crazy amount of snow for the rest of the day).
Anyway, right after we arrived home from the slopes, the study abroad office at the U of N contacted me asking me to forward my receipt from Flywire as evidence that I had paid my deposit. I complied and was assured that I would receive my CoE shortly.
Dad & I skied for the next three days – one day at Vail, one at Copper, and the last day at Keystone. My day at Copper was supposed to be my solo ski day but was cut short due to extremely long MLK weekend lift lines. I ended up cutting it short and joining Dad and Emma for a hike at Mayflower Gulch. Below are some photos I took from throughout the trip. My favorite view was the first photo, taken from the top of Vail – the photo doesn’t even do it justice but amount of peaks visible was insane!
Another excellent view below – from the bowl at the end of our Mayflower Gulch hike.
On Sunday the 15th, our last day, we skied almost until lifts closed. The conditions at Keystone started off pretty rough – hard packed snow, scraped off to ice in some places – but it started snowing as we ate our lunch and the conditions actually approved as the day went on, so we stayed much later than we planned. I got home totally exhausted from four days of out-of-shape skiing and checked my email, as I had been doing every day since I last heard from the U of N.
My CoE had finally arrived! I felt very excited with the arrival of this news, but also immediately stressed because now, with only three weeks until my departure, the pressure was on to complete the application as soon as possible. I started it that night and honestly got totally overwhelmed when I realized how long it was. I don’t know what I expected exactly, but I didn’t know it was quite so intensive and it took me by surprise. I filled in all the information I could, helped my dad pack the car and prep the house for our departure, and headed to bed after our nightly hot tub decompression in the backyard.
The next day, I drove back to Fayetteville with my dad & the dogs. Anna & I were happy to keep the dogs for the night so that Dad didn’t have to worry about the hotel pet fee, and after he picked them up the following morning (and another few hours of sleep!) I got to work on my visa application.
I worked on it all day long. I’m not kidding – some of our friends came over while Anna packed and I didn’t get off my computer until after midnight. I finished most of it, and attached most of the required documents over the next couple days, but I realized about halfway through the application that I was missing one vital piece of information – my overseas healthcare policy number. I began emailing with the insurance provider and the U of N – the provider told me that my policy was not yet in the system and to check to see if my application had been filed yet. This is where the Flywire payment mistake comes in. The payment, although submitted on the 11th, was not deposited to the U of N until a full week later. So, the U of N wasn't able to file my application until the 18th. Once again, I had to wait.
In the midst of dealing with all of this, Anna was getting ready to move to Phoenix. I helped her pack as much as I could between figuring everything out for my visa application. We had to push our departure back a day, but by Thursday night she had managed to sell everything out of her storage unit. We packed her car to the absolute brim and left the apartment at 6:30am on Friday. We drove 12 hours to Albuquerque where we stayed with a friend of my parents’ (thanks Lansing!), and finally made it to Phoenix the following day after about 20 collective hours in the car. After getting the keys to the adorable apartment she is subleasing, we spent the rest of the day unpacking before passing out for a full 12 hours.
And that brings us to today – an emotional rollercoaster of a day for me, riding on the tail of a pretty intense couple weeks. Anna & I woke up and ordered First Watch to be delivered for breakfast since we hadn’t gotten groceries yet. We ate, picked up groceries, admired the palm trees and cute buildings around Phoenix, and finally figured out how to use the package retrieval lockers and mail room in her new apartment complex. Around 3 o’clock, I got a text from the guy who is supposed to be subleasing my apartment, telling me that due to family emergencies, he has to back out of the sublease. Yeah, read that again, this time with the knowledge that I am leaving the country two weeks from tomorrow. TWO WEEKS! This leaves me barely any time to find someone else. I panicked a little, but kept my cool as best as I could and called my dad to talk about the situation. I am very lucky to have my school and housing paid for from the 529 college savings plan that my parents and grandparents have been contributing to all my life, and my dad assured me that my rent will be taken care of if I am not able to find someone in time. Even so, I immediately posted a listing on the U of A Housing & Sublease Facebook Page as well as the Off Campus Housing website. Fingers crossed that I am able to find someone to sublease for some amount of the time that I will be in Australia! So, as shitty as it was for my original tenant to fall through, I’m extremely grateful that my parents and grandmother will be able to support me through this little hiccup. I would hate to lose my apartment in Fayetteville (not to mention to have to move all my stuff to a storage unit in addition to having to pack for a 5 month stay in another country), it really is the perfect little place for me and it will be so nice to come home to it after living in a shared house abroad.
Then, about 30 minutes after figuring out a new plan for my apartment, I got an email with my healthcare policy! Woooo! I hopped onto the portal and immediately uploaded the certificate, went over everything one last time, and submitted my payment for the application.
Much to my surprise – MY VISA WAS GRANTED IMMEDIATELY! Yay! I certainly did not expect it to be granted so quickly (I mean really, it was granted two minutes after my payment went through), and neither did Anna. She said they must have streamlined the process since she studied there in 2017 because hers took about 10 days before it was granted. It was so unexpected that I spent 10 minutes double checking everything in the portal and my email to make sure that it had really been granted.
So, it’s official. I have my student visa! It’s been a long road here but I am super happy to report that I am now properly allowed to live in Australia for the spring semester. Oh, and the one class that I really needed to transfer correctly was approved last week which means I will graduate on schedule! May 2024! All I have left to do is finalize how all my courses will transfer, but that will be a breeze in comparison to everything that I have already completed.
Despite all the challenges and the relentless waiting, everything is working out and I couldn’t be happier.
After all, they do say that the best things in life never come easy.
