Tomorrow! Tomorrow! I love ya, tomorrow!

I leave for the airport in 7 hours!!!!!!!!!!!

And it's STILL not sunk in at all, I'm like an emotionless robot. Waiting for the big reality moment but so far it's not happening! 

The last week has been pretty mellow. Pottered about for a week while the family were away and had some much needed lazy down time. Yesterday I had a big Sunday dinner with all the family and took a bunch of photos and then today I went for lunch with my mum, sister and little nephew. Got some dollars and last minute bits and pieces (and good old Cadbury's chocolate) and stuffed it into my serious heavy suitcases.

To say that I'm shitting it about my luggage is an understatement. The other day me and my younger brother weighed them and I was 1kg under my total weight allowance and since then I've stuffed more crap in there. Eeerppp.... they are really friggen heavy! Now they are sitting downstairs waiting for me to pop my make up in there tomorrow after I get ready.

I've got all my paperwork printed, copies given to my mum and in my bag. I've checked in online, printed my boarding pass and set my alarm for 5am (eek). I called up Orange today and suspended my phone contract for 6 months... still quite annoying that I will still need to pay for the rest, and I've arranged for my phone to be unlocked although they say it can take up to 20 days. How utterly ridiculous!! And having to pay £20 for the pleasure! I've made plans to meet up with the rest of my arrival group at the airport in Orlando and printed off the $5 off coupon for the Mears shuttle (its normally $21 per person). Had my shower, done my nails and had my last fake tan session for the year haha! 

The weather is hot, hot, hot in Orlando (with some typical tropical rain) and I can't believe that I'll be there in 24 hours!!!! So this has been my last UK-side blog and from now on it will be less of an advice-type blog and more about my adventures! Everyone says that it's difficult to blog while on the programme but I'm determined to keep it up :)

This time next week...

I'll be landing in Orlando, Florida!!!

Where the hell have the last few weeks gone? 

I finished work on Thursday, was a pretty boring shift to be honest. On Friday I just finally got to chill (and sleep properly without stressing about work) and started the preparations for my leaving party on Saturday :)
Saturday night was fun, lot of people made it, even if it was just briefly and I managed to not get really drunk which was a bonus. Howeverrrr... I totally forgot to take a single photo! Fail!! I was so busy running about talking to everyone that I just forgot. Oops. I got lovely presents from my work though so there's some tangible memories!

Sunday was a lazy day. My friend had stayed the night so we had a pj day and watched crap on tv, well deserved. She left and then I headed off to bed so I was up early the next day. Yesterday I went for a goodbye lunch with my best friend and a few cocktails. Feels so weird saying bye to people... it seems more like a normal "see you later" rather than "see you in a year!". I think it's maybe because this has all taken so long so I still don't believe it in my head. There hasn't been a single tear yet! There's been a few moments of sudden panic but then it goes away again. 

Last night I started packing... it's been hanging over me like a dark cloud so I started the marathon task of ironing and packing clothes. Right now I have one full case and piles of stuff to go in the other one. I want to get all that stuff in, see what allowance (if any) I have left before deciding on what else to pap in there haha, and what I will just need to buy there. I have all my clothes, it's just all my bits and bobs I'm thinking about now.

Tomorrow is a day for sorting insurance and more packing. My family are on holiday until Saturday and we have a family dinner planned for Sunday. Before I know it Tuesday will be here so I'm just trying to do as much as possible. I keep hitting a wall of tiredness in the evenings and then end up ironing till 3am but at least it's getting done! So my last pre-Florida blog post is likely to be next Monday - the day before! 

On a side note, I've recently hit over 5,000 page views. So thank you, random blog readers! :)

It's the final countdown!!!

FEELING ALL OF THE EMOTIONS! 

And yet... I'm a bit numb... it comes and goes in waves! I've had a pretty manic couple of weeks since coming back from my visa trip but tonight I finished my last shift at work after four years there! 

My visa arrived safe and sound, they send you a text to tell you the day before that it will be arriving, and it arrived on the 19th around 8:15am. They do say that you will need to show ID to recieve the parcel but my mum answered the door and they guy didn't ask. Another guy from Glasgow didn't get asked for ID but all the English people did. Maybe our delivery guy was just more trusting/lazy?? Regardless, it's here and I made photocopies as advised of the visa page, passport page and front page of my passport. So much paperwork! 

So the only official thing I have to do now is get my health insurance sorted and I'll be doing that in the next week, I've just been too busy with work to do anything else. I had a new manager starting and have had A LOT of training to do with him and other new staff. My replacement has also been hired.... how weird! I wanted to finish tomorrow (Friday) when it's busy and lots of people to see but couldn't because of conflicting issues with the rota so finished up tonight. Having my leaving party on Saturday at the bar next to my work which a lot of people are looking forward to as it's not often that we all go out en-mass. 

Sooooo.... the next 11 days will be filled with packing, organising insurance (I know what I want, I just need to pay for it so not a huge deal), catching up with friends and seeing my sister and my nephew. Breaks my heart at leaving some of these people but it's not forever. Think the hardest is leaving my nephew as he will almost be 2 when I get home and he's not even 1 yet! 

Just a glimpse of "the bad photo"... 

The visa!! (Part 2)

Starting off from where I left you all last....

I got my train into Glasgow, picked up my train tickets to Euston, grabbed some trashy magazines and settled down for the next few hours. There was a really hot guy sitting facing me and I felt like the world's biggest stalker trying not to stare at him hahaa! I'd found a hotel just near Euston station so headed off to find that and drop my stuff off and then got something to eat. I stayed at the Mabledon Court Hotel and it was really clean, the staff were really friendly but my room was literally the size of a large cupboard! It felt safe and secure though, and its not like I was staying there for long! There is also a huge Premier Inn and a Travelodge just round the corner from Euston, a big youth hostel and loads of smaller independent hotels like the one I stayed at so there's plenty of choice in the area.

I decided to do a test route to find the Embassy that night as well as I didn't want to be lost and rushing about in the morning. It is ridiculously easy to find. From Euston Station I took the Victoria line to Oxford Circus and then the Cental line to Marble Arch. Very quick route. You get out the station and walk up Oxford Street, past Primark and then take a right onto North Audley Street (Zara is on the corner). As you walk down the road towards Grosvenor Square there's a Starbucks and Gould's Pharmacy. This is the magical pharmacy that will hold your phone, Ipod, etc for you while you're at the Embassy (as these things among others aren't allowed!) When you walk into the pharmacy there are guys sitting at little tables and they have pictures of the stuff you can't take into the Embassy and will ask you to check your bag, pockets, etc for any of these things. You are allowed to take a handbag into the Embassy btw. You cannot take phones, Ipod or similar, digital watch, any electricals, car keys, aerosols...  I can't remember the rest but as I said, they will ask you to check the pictures for anything you may have. The Embassy itself is just a teeny bit further down the road. You cannot miss it. Its a HUGE building with high gates round it, two security entrances, lots of flags and during the day will have a queue of people outside as well as gun-carrying police officers!

After my successful little journey I headed back to my hotel and tried to get some sleep and not be so anxious! I also made plans for the next day as Robert had booked the same appointment time as me (he is in the arrival group after mine) and then I planned to meet Harriet from my arrival group for some lunch :)

I checked out at 7:30am, headed to Euston Station and dropped my overnight bag at the luggage storage bit and got some back up photos for the appointment as I hadn't done it yet. Oh bloody hell, even though I have make up on, I have a serious under-eye-bag situation going on, it's definitely an early morning photo!  Did my wee route back to the Embassy, dropped my phone at the pharmacy and went to join the Embassy queue, getting there about 8:10am. There are staff outside that will check that you have your appointment letter, the receipt for paying the MRV fee and your passport. You then wait to go through the little security office and its like airport security in a glass box - you empty your pockets, put your belongings through a scanner and walk through the body scanner. Then you go into the actual Embassy, the receptionist scans the barcode on your forms, gives you a number and tells you to go upstairs and wait for your number to be called. 

Its just a fairly big room filled with chairs and a row of Embassy staff behind a counter, kind of like in a bank. You wait to hear your number and what booth your at, and then go up. The woman there took my forms, scanned the barcode and quickly just went through my application on her screen, never said anything to me other than to ask me for another photo (See! That bad photo will haunt me forever, typical!) then took my finger prints on the little machine. Not as stressful as it gets made out to be! Once that's over (doesn't take long) you get told to sit back down and wait to be called again to a different desk. She will keep your passport and forms and gives you a blue form to fill in for your passport to be delivered back to you. Try and remember a pen but there are pens available in the room so its not a huge deal. You need to pay attention now as the numbers are called in a random order and not in numerical order as before. I arrived before Robert and was about ten places ahead of him in the queue but the second time he got called before me. 

When my number got called again I went to the other desk and had a really friendly, happy American woman. She took my right hand finger prints again, asked me if I'd been to the States before, if it was on a visa, what I was going to do and when I was leaving. Then she told me to take my blue form to the courier desk and have a good time in Florida!!!! YAYYYYY!!!! I took my form to the desk, paid the £14.80 to get  my passport send back and skipped back out the building! £14.80 is the cheapest you can have your passport sent back, it takes 3-5 working days and they say you will need to sign for it and show ID. This gets it delivered before 6pm, its more expensive to have it delivered before midday or by 10am.

I left the Embassy, said bye to Robert as he had to go to work and went to get my phone back. Then I walked up Oxford Street and had a well deserved coffee and spoke to my mum on the phone before going to meet Harriet. I literally couldn't stop smiling, it was such a HUGE relief that it was done! I felt like singing to random strangers haha! Spent a couple hours with Harriet chatting about all things Disney of course and then went back to Euston station, picked up my bag and got the train back to Glasgow. No hot guy this time though!

As happy as I was that it was done, I was EXHAUSTED. I did a fourteen hour busy shift on Sunday, a 9 hour shift on Monday, was in London over Tuesday/Wednesday and back to work for 9 hours on Thursday. Ended up by Friday sobbing on the phone to my boss that I was so tired and wrung out that I felt like I was having a bad anxiety attack. So I took the day off, spent it in my pj's all day and getting some sleep before another 10 hours at work the night day and a really early start and another shift today. Only 9 more shifts to go and I really just want to finish work so I can concentrate on getting everything ready! Just have my health insurance to get, all the big things out the way and have bought pretty much everything that I need to take with me as well. Although I still need suitcases! The next arrival group goes on Tuesday and then my group is next! CANNOT FRICKEN WAIT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! :)

The visa!!! (Part 1)

Ok so last Tuesday I blogged that I was still waiting on my visa petition and the next day it came!!!! My mum came into my room to wake me up and as soon as I saw the envelope I pretty much shot out of bed (unheard of!). As if the contents were not exciting enough, the envelope (from Yummy Jobs) was addressed in "Disney" style writing and had Mickey head shaped confetti inside! 

There was also an email from Yummy Jobs to say that the visa petition was coming that day. They give you a big help sheet with what to do/who to phone for an apppointment/helpful answers for things on the forms that you otherwise wouldn't know the answer to.

At this point you haven't actually received your visa - its basically a big list of names of everyone leaving between certain dates called the I-797 (in my case from the 7th April to 25th May) from all over the world that Disney have stated they are supporting the application for a visa. The next step was to phone the embassy for an appointment. This is an expensive call (I called from work!) expect to pay £1.23 per minute from a BT landline and around £1.75 per minute from a mobile for a good ten minutes on the phone. You need to have everything ready beside you to give them the information they will need which was..... name, DOB, passport number and issue date, your I-797 for the receipt number and the date it's valid from, email address... and a debit or credit card. They don't take visa electron or switch. The fee is $190 and you type your c/c number into the phone when asked and then your security code. Once that has all been processed they will ask you which date you want (they had availability every day when I called) and if you would rather have an 8am or 8:30am appointment, which are they only appointment times for that type of visa. I chose to go a week later as I wanted it all over with ASAP! This phonecall isn't scary at all, the girl I spoke to on the phone was really nice. They also ask you a couple of typical security questions, like if you have been convicted of a crime, etc but its not too demanding!

After this I booked my transport to London and accomodation for the Tuesday night (today) as there's no way I could travel down and make it to the embassy for 8am! (my appointment is at 8:30am but it is highly recommended that you get there half an hour early as there will be a queue). I could have saved money and got the megabus down to London and back for like £24 but I am already EXHAUSTED from working a 14 hour shift on Sunday and a 9 hour shift last night so I booked the train which gets me there in 4 and a half hours instead of around 11hours! The embassy is in Grosvenor Square so all the hotels in that immediate area are pretty damn pricey! Even pulling back from the area the hotels are still expensive and the cheaper ones didn't seem that great (heating is not a facility that should be listed as your only facility! It should be expected!) So I got a hotel near to Euston Station which is where my train gets into and found a variety of reasonably priced independent hotels that were far nicer than others I had seen. For all of this I used Booking.com as I could search hotels by map and by typing in the area and it worked out best for me.

Then I had to get to filling out the visa application stuff.... eeek! Again have everything to hand! Have the help sheet either printed out beside you or open on your computer. Besides normal stuff like your name, DOB, address you will need a wholllleeee bunch of other information. Every persons application is different but you will need your passport, parents names and DOB (if known), your job history, the dates or at least approximate dates of your previous 5 visits to the USA and or/any previous visa for the US that you have had. When you start the form it will give you a code - WRITE IT DOWN! This code will let you save your form and then come back to it later. The system has a history of crashing and times out after 20 minutes so click the "save" button after every page! Once you have done all the filling in, you will then answer another lot of security questions with yes/no answers and then you need to upload a suitable photo. There is lots of help sheets about filling this in but you HAVE to at least try to upload a photo, it will tell you if its not suitable and tell you to bring suitable photos to the embassy appointment. 

To do my photo I took a picture of a spare passport sized photo that I have, emailed it to myself and then saved to my desktop. I then cropped it and resized it and luckily it worked! I will still be taking photos with me though as they can still reject your photo at the embassy and will send you off to get new ones there and then! So for the sake of £5, take an extra set!

Follow Yummy Jobs advice on what you need to take with you to the appointment... I have all my forms printed off and in a folder with my passport to take with me today :) Now I need to run so I can quickly pack and then head off to get the train! Only 28 days to go!!!!!!!!

Only 5 weeks to go!!!

AND STILL NO VISA!!!

Extremely frustrating as I can't plan for anything as if it comes this week, I'll be in London next week depending on what days are available and what I can get off of work. They send the visa petitions in batches so the next couple of arrival groups after mine will get theirs at the same time, so hopefully I'll get to see some faces when I'm down in London :) I've paid the PAF (Program Assessment Fee) and I'm just waiting to get the visa stuff out the way and then I'll get my health insurance paid off. 

As time is ticking by really quickly now, I've started to get more organised. I've bought some new clothes (I genuinely needed them, I've lost A LOT of weight over the last year and none of my summer stuff fits!) , extra batteries, an external charger and a much better case for my camera and lots of plugs lol!! I got extremely excited when on Amazon.co.uk I found a 4 plug extension cable that is UK to US. I'm not the only one to get excited about this lol, we all went a bit nuts on Facebook when I found them haha! I also got some other adapters... seriously, I am the queen of plugs at this point lol! I have a few more bits and pieces to buy and I'm trying to not go too crazy with clothes. I also need to get suitcases but leaving that as long as possible as I don't have space for them. 

There's a Disney meet up next Monday which is REALLLLLY tempting to go to as its only £16.50 to get down there and back by bus but I should really just behave myself and concentrate on going to London instead. I just like random trips to random places... I get itchy feet to go somewhere different!

There is an arrival group heading off to Florida today! Think all of them are in the air already now... cannot wait to stalk their photos! The next group after this goes in two weeks... and then my arrival group is next!!!! CRAZY!!! Literally feels like no time at all now and I am so excited for seeing everyone out there :)

This also marks Day One of a fourteen day detox/diet. I've been overly stressed out, not sleeping well and having horrible nightmares - including being attacked by a HUGE dog, a guy trying to slash my throat and waking myself up by shouting "I NEED A NEW VISA FORM" after a weird embassy nightmare. So I'm doing a two weekend plan to get me in tip top shape for Florida. I really want to shift some more weight and this plan is full of green veg (which I love), healthy proteins and no wheat/gluten (which I can't eat) so I'm looking forward to some good results!

Hopefully the next blog post will be about getting my visa!!

The Cost of The CRP

I thought I would do a blog post on the cost involved with the Cultural Representative Program as money is all I can think about right now haha! Seriously though, it can be a really expensive process so it's good to know up front what this all can set you back. Some people are offered really quick start dates and so have to pay a lot upfront, most people though have months before they go to save! My advice to anyone that wants to take part in the CRP is to start saving now.... just putting a little bit of money aside every time you get paid into a savings account will be a real help later on!

Ok... so you've sent off your application and you've received an email inviting you to the pre screening interviews.... they are almost always in London in the Southbank area so you need to consider how to get there and if you need to stay overnight. I spent a fortune coming down from Glasgow for the interviews but I was by myself, not really knowing anyone yet so I wanted to do everything the quickest and easiest way for me. When I go back to London for my visa (still not received my petition btw) I will be doing things much differently! I had to fit in going to the interview around my full time college timetable and full time hours at work so I chose to leave in the evening after college, fly from Glasgow to London, get the Gatwick Express into Victoria and then I could have got the tube but it was pretty late by now so just got a taxi for the short journey to my hotel.

So far... £72 on flights (not a bad deal for British Airways), £26.25 on Gatwick Express, £254 for two nights at my hotel (eeekkkk... seriously - make some friends and share a room!) and however much I spent on a taxi, food, etc

If you are invited back for a second interview then that means heading back to London and this time the interviews will be held at the Disney offices in Hammersmith. My flights cost the same, same for Gatwick Express and my hotel was £250 for two nights (my second interview was on Valentines Day, no cheap hotels to be found easily!)

So by now I'd spent £700 on just getting to and staying in London... feel free to guess at what I could have spent while there as well lol.

If you are successful on your second interview and recieve a position then this is a bit of a rundown on things that need to be paid:

• £60 for your criminal background check to Yummy Jobs
• Flights - mines worked out at £496 after I added on extra luggage and chose my seat. If you are under 26 then it is much cheaper to book through STA as they offer discounts but if you are over 26 then one way flights start to get really expensive. Do some thorough research and don't just go with Yummy Travel/STA right away as you can often get the flights cheaper from the airline direct.
• Health insurance. You CANNOT get in the USA for this program without the correct level of health insurance. The easiest way to book it is through STA /Yummy Travel and you can choose which level of coverage is best for you and if you want to buy it for 4 months or 12 months. Most people choose the Standard level (middle level) for 4 months (currently sitting at £168.20) and then swap to Disney Insurance but if you would rather pay it all upfront then at the moment 12 months is £386.10.
• Visa  - currently $190 that you have to pay while booking your appointment and then there's the cost of going back to London for the appointment at the Embassy. You will also need to pay at least £15 to have your passport couriered back to you. 
• Program Assessment Fee - $104.50. This secures you a place in Disney accommodation and pays for the welcome events, etc that are put on for you.
• Transport from the Airport to the check in point... There are several options for this. A taxi is rather expensive and so they recommend that you use Mears Shuttle services and you can download and print off a $5 off coupon.

When you arrive in Florida then you will need money to see you through the first 3 weeks. On the first week you are only paid for one day, the first few days are just some housing meetings. You arrive on the Tuesday and you start Traditions on the Saturday (which is the only day you will be paid for). The second week you will be paid for a full weeks work but they will take two weeks rent off, as you won't have been paid enough in the first week to cover rent. The third week is when you will start to be paid normally so it can be 21-22 days from arriving until you have enough money to live off. They advise taking at least $300 with you but most people will try to bring at least $1000 so they can enjoy their time out there when they arrive!

All of this information is from my personal experience, please do not take it as gospel as things can and probably will change regularly! This is just to give people a realistic expectation of how much money this experience can cost :)