Last days in Austria & packing my bags!

The last few days at home are a mixture of all different kinds of feelings:
Being exited, because you will finally be able to live your dream.
Being  thankful, because you get to really see what you are going to miss.
Being sorry, for leaving all these people even though you have the best life at home.
Being sad, because you realize how incredible much you will miss your perfect life there.
Being scared, because you leave everything and everyone you know behind.
Being proud, because you are really going to do this.
Being happy, because you can't wait to finally do your thing.
Being angry, because you just can't close this huge Suitcase.
Being curious, because you don't know what your year will bring you.
Being hopeful, because you fought so hard to be able to do this and you just hope it was worth it.
Being confident, because you feel like everything is possible.
But being so incredible in love with everything.
If it's your Room or your village, or the city or your friends, you love all of it even more now that you have to say goodbye to them.
You try to memorize everything so that you really don't forget it.
You meet everyone for the last time, and even though you feel like crying every time another person has to say their final goodbye to you, you just can't seem to let the tears flow, because otherwise you absolutely couldn't stop them, which wouldn't be the prettiest memory.
So you just smile and pretend to think that the time you are away is not as long as it appears to be.
My leading sentence was "I'm going to be back faster than you can blink". That is very untrue because an average Human will blink 4.250.000 times while I'm away. That's not a blink and it won't feel like one. ( In case you have the pleasure to meet the weeping angles, you should minimize that number for your own health :)

I tried to explain my feelings in the days before my flight a bit (and I pray someone actually understands my Dr.Who reference)
So the last days are such a huge mess of feelings and people, but there's also one big Problem everyone has:

 Packing a suitcase for such a long time! In my particular case it was even harder because I had to pack all my medication for 1 year! So I had one suitcase with medication and one with all things like clothes and shoes and make-up etc.
I also promised to let you know if the suitcase with medication
is free or if I had to pay for a second suitcase: if you send an
email 48 hours before the flight departures it is free, but I wrote
  30 hours before (so more than one day) and I had to pay 80$
 for a spare suitcase...
The suitcase weight about 19kg and was pretty big.

 These are just some of the things I took with me. In the end I had 2 huge sacks (originally bags for shoes) and 2 smaller ones, with medication.  Obviously I also had to bring the devices for my medication. And at this point I have a big tip for you: check the watt your machines need, and also batterychargers.
I didn't think of that & I had to buy all of the things new with  lower watts needed. So just check before you bring them and trow them away after wards..
Another tip is to write note with everything you put aside the suitcase, because I had to unpack everything again because of the email I had to write to the airline. So write everything down and send the email with enough time before the flight!

With clothes I actually did great as far as I know. In the pictures you see "Vacuum Bags" which are plastic bags. You close them but open the shutter on the top and then connect the vacuum to it.
When you turn it on, the vacuum draws the air from it. As you can see the bag is really full, with 3 sweaters and jogging pants, and after the air is gone its really flat! So that's a really good idea for packing without taking up too much space.
I will do an update on what I packed was unnecessary and what was good.


So this is my last blog from Austria, the next Blog will be about my horror-flight and my first week in Miami!!
Thank you so much for spending your time with me! Please share this so as many people as possible can read how it is to fly away and pack the suitcases for such a long time with an illness.
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Have a great time and see you next week!

Visa

Applying for and finally getting the visa is the last big step before the final start of the exchange year.
This step isn't always easy, and it definitely wasn't easy for me.
My Visa application package arrived just 30 days before my departure date. I was on holidays at that time so i had to wait for 2 days until i arrived home and could open my documents.
I read them two times, until i was 100% sure i understood everything, and then i drove to my hometown in Germany (Random fact: I'm half German and half Austrian).
When you start applying for your visa, you have to create an account on the website, and as i was in Germany at the time  I created that account, the system thought i wanted to make a German account, which was obviously not what i wanted. At first i didn't notice, but when i had to select a consulate, only 3 German consulates were available. The consulate in Vienna is 20 minutes away from my hometown and reaching the consulates in Germany would  take min. 7 hours to reach + one overnight stay. We tried changing everything: logging out, changing the country, changing the language and so on, but nothing worked. So I had to wait until i got back home to try it again. I tried it right after i arrived home, but it still didn't work. I tried calling the hotline over 100 times, but no one ever answered. After trying several times I was able to create a new account with the help of my parents.   I filled everything in, which is a lot of work, and got a meeting at the consulate in Vienna just one day after.
 I arrived very early and waited  a long time before going inside. Then I got called to a window, and I handed in my I-20 formula and my passport.
After that I had to wait for a long time again. When they called my name I got up and went to the window again, but this time, the guy behind the window asked me questions. I was really nervous because I wasn't sure if I would be able to understand everything. But luckily I understood everything  except a joke he made, I still have no idea what he said. I talked to him for about 5 min and he asked me questions like "What does your mother work as" or "Whats the name of your school in America". And after the questions (and the award joke that I didn't catch) he told me that I am visa approved and that they would send me my passport within 3 days.
So i was actually nervous for nothing, it was all easy and no problem at all. Even though I didn't understand the joke, I don't think he noticed, because I just laughed politely and I feel like that was alright. Now I just need to pack my suitcase, which is also what the next blogpost will be about.

Please share this blog and enter your email address in the bar on the right side so you never miss a post! My social media is linked on my blog so please follow me there as well, so you can stay updated! Thank you for spending your time with me!

Leonie Pohl