Everything you need to know about US passports (not really)!
I'm going to detail the US passport application process, and I'll see if I can include instructions for making foil covers to keep the RFID from setting off bombs in my vicinity.
So, you want to go to a foreign country? First, you need a passport.
This can be obtained by jumping through a series of hoops that are perpetually increasing in difficulty. Because my last passport was issued when I was fourteen and a minor, I had to reapply in person. I got to fill out my application online, but I had to print it off and take it to the courthouse in downtown Pasco. I also had to get my picture taken, which a friend was gracious enough to do for me in the Warren 3rd South hallway.
The pictures turned out a little blue, but I hoped that they would be satisfactory because my face was clearly shown in the middle of the photo without shadow and the background was free of shadows. I printed off two sets, one on matte cardstock and one on shiny photo paper.
Over Jan Term break, I went to the courthouse and hoped that they would accept my debit card. My dad came, too, with $25 cash and a checkbook, just in case.
I had my driver's license, photocopies of the license, my old passport, and my completed application with two sets of photos.
They told me I was supposed to have my birth certificate, too. The website and the application just said that I needed two or more of the following: driver's license, social security card, most recent passport, birth certificate.
I had to have my birth certificate for my first passport, which I took; why they needed my birth certificate again when the documented proof of my existence was sitting there in the form of a little blue book was beyond me. The lady told me I would probably get a packet in the mail demanding my birth certificate and possibly new pictures, but that was preferable to having to go back home to get the bloody thing and end up driving an extra hour when I'd probably have to get new pictures anyway.
The lady took both sets of photos, just in case; my dad paid the $135 dollars ($25 in cash, $110 as a check, because apparently that's how things are done), and then we left.
When I got back to school, I waited for the packet to come in the mail for my birth certificate and new photos. However, the first packet I got from the federal government actually contained my old passport, the extraneous set of photos (the matte cardstock ones), and a slip announcing that I had been approved for a US passport!
I was pleased, although not by the fact that my new passport was God only knew where.
It was in the mail, actually, and came a week later as a package.
I promised you foil passport cover instructions, and here they are. Rather, they're at Contactless, a paranoid blog concerning identity theft in its various forms. I am making one out of yarn. Maybe I'll post how I did it later.
Enjoy the paranoia you will feel after reading Contactless.
Friday 25 March 2011
Thursday 17 March 2011
The Adventures Begin
Hello, readers!
Some of you may already know me, but for those of you who don't, I'm a biochemistry student at Whitworth University who is studying abroad fall of her junior year (2011). I want to kind of catalog my progress, so I'm starting well before I actually leave.
I applied to study abroad in the UK (three schools in England, one in Scotland) in January. Whitworth is a member of ISEP, the International Student Exchange Program, which basically allows students to study at other member schools while simply paying for their home school's tuition, scholarships and all. The application process can be completed in a week if your International Coordinator is awesome enough, your recommending professors are good about filling out recommendations, and you yourself are motivated enough, but I wouldn't try that again. I had to pick out the classes that I wanted from each school, preferably with course numbers, come up with various personal statements, and find lots of random facts about myself as well as go to class for about six hours a day, do homework and work for about two hours a day... in a little more than a week. Fortunately, my professors were very understanding of the fact that I needed them to do this in less than a week, some of which was weekend, and got their stuff turned in quite punctually. Whitworth also has an extremely awesome International Coordinator in Sue Jackson. She has a very soothing British accent, which has a very calming effect on me (she's Scottish, I think, but her accent is still very cool and calming) I once called her in a panic after university hours, intending to leave a frantic voicemail, but I ended up listening to her voicemail greeting and hanging up in a much calmer mood.
So, I got the monster application turned in. Then I had to wait... and wait... and wait...
I found out about a month and a half later that ISEP had placed me at my number one choice, the University of Sunderland. Sue told me that I would know in about a month, depending on England and American postal services, whether or not I had been accepted.
The city of Sunderland is in northeast England by the sea, and has a football team (soccer for Americans, which most of you are. I just don't want to embarrass myself over there about something that obvious.) that seems to be pretty professional. I know nothing except what little I learned in first and second grade, in secondary PE, and from watching one game this year with my roommate because her then-not-quite-boyfriend (it was complicated) was playing and she wanted someone to sit with. That's all I know about Sunderland at this point.
I spent my "thinking about next fall" time making lists of stuff that I'd need if Sunderland accepts me (because I didn't want to have both crushed dreams and lists that would remind me of my failure every time I opened up my document folder) and shuffling things into "need to pack", "need to buy here" and "need to buy there". You know, things like an umbrella (because those are for wimps when you're from an area of the pacific northwest where it never rains and the wind blows hard enough to flip the toughest umbrella inside out) and rainboots because the last time I bought those, I was in third grade and my parents bought them anyway (I live in desert, although I do not go to school in one, so I don't know why I never considered buying them before -- I've had dreams about them ever since I applied to ISEP that always have an aqua-green pair of $6.39 ankle-high fur-lined rubber boots and a selection of star wars-themed boots that I never get to try on). Other things I would need to buy because I don't know if I'm actually going include luggage and a calling and texting plan and possibly a phone.
Today, about a month after ISEP placed me, I learned that Sunderland accepted me.
Joy! Squealing happily! Excitement! Clapping! Texting! Facebooking! Making an offhanded remark to a friend because we were IMing and my joy was too great to actually express!
It was a good day. I still have to do paperwork tomorrow, but that's something I can live with.
That's right. I'm goin' to England in the fall.
And I need luggage, an umbrella, and a pair of rainboots. Anyone?
(Edited on 23 May 2011)
Some of you may already know me, but for those of you who don't, I'm a biochemistry student at Whitworth University who is studying abroad fall of her junior year (2011). I want to kind of catalog my progress, so I'm starting well before I actually leave.
I applied to study abroad in the UK (three schools in England, one in Scotland) in January. Whitworth is a member of ISEP, the International Student Exchange Program, which basically allows students to study at other member schools while simply paying for their home school's tuition, scholarships and all. The application process can be completed in a week if your International Coordinator is awesome enough, your recommending professors are good about filling out recommendations, and you yourself are motivated enough, but I wouldn't try that again. I had to pick out the classes that I wanted from each school, preferably with course numbers, come up with various personal statements, and find lots of random facts about myself as well as go to class for about six hours a day, do homework and work for about two hours a day... in a little more than a week. Fortunately, my professors were very understanding of the fact that I needed them to do this in less than a week, some of which was weekend, and got their stuff turned in quite punctually. Whitworth also has an extremely awesome International Coordinator in Sue Jackson. She has a very soothing British accent, which has a very calming effect on me (she's Scottish, I think, but her accent is still very cool and calming) I once called her in a panic after university hours, intending to leave a frantic voicemail, but I ended up listening to her voicemail greeting and hanging up in a much calmer mood.
So, I got the monster application turned in. Then I had to wait... and wait... and wait...
I found out about a month and a half later that ISEP had placed me at my number one choice, the University of Sunderland. Sue told me that I would know in about a month, depending on England and American postal services, whether or not I had been accepted.
The city of Sunderland is in northeast England by the sea, and has a football team (soccer for Americans, which most of you are. I just don't want to embarrass myself over there about something that obvious.) that seems to be pretty professional. I know nothing except what little I learned in first and second grade, in secondary PE, and from watching one game this year with my roommate because her then-not-quite-boyfriend (it was complicated) was playing and she wanted someone to sit with. That's all I know about Sunderland at this point.
I spent my "thinking about next fall" time making lists of stuff that I'd need if Sunderland accepts me (because I didn't want to have both crushed dreams and lists that would remind me of my failure every time I opened up my document folder) and shuffling things into "need to pack", "need to buy here" and "need to buy there". You know, things like an umbrella (because those are for wimps when you're from an area of the pacific northwest where it never rains and the wind blows hard enough to flip the toughest umbrella inside out) and rainboots because the last time I bought those, I was in third grade and my parents bought them anyway (I live in desert, although I do not go to school in one, so I don't know why I never considered buying them before -- I've had dreams about them ever since I applied to ISEP that always have an aqua-green pair of $6.39 ankle-high fur-lined rubber boots and a selection of star wars-themed boots that I never get to try on). Other things I would need to buy because I don't know if I'm actually going include luggage and a calling and texting plan and possibly a phone.
Today, about a month after ISEP placed me, I learned that Sunderland accepted me.
Joy! Squealing happily! Excitement! Clapping! Texting! Facebooking! Making an offhanded remark to a friend because we were IMing and my joy was too great to actually express!
It was a good day. I still have to do paperwork tomorrow, but that's something I can live with.
That's right. I'm goin' to England in the fall.
And I need luggage, an umbrella, and a pair of rainboots. Anyone?
(Edited on 23 May 2011)
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