I officially started my visa application today. I had been waiting until I got an academic enrollment confirmation from Oxford, which arrived a week or so into July, and then needed to do some further research about the UK visa process before filling out the first part of the application online. (As well as paying the steep application fee, which was almost $500. Major ouch.) Now I need to do a little more waiting until I send the entire thing in, because...
I'm going to Oxford this week! (And I need to send my passport in to the British consulate with the rest of my visa application materials, which can wait until after I return.) The Rhodes Trust is being kind enough to bring me out to undergo the Oxford Disability Advisory Service's needs assessment process - in other words, to start setting up sign language interpreters and other accommodations for this fall. Far better to get these accommodations details worked out in advance of my arrival with the other students in October, especially when the DAS has a mandatory in-person assessment that can't well wait until orientation and the start of term. I'll be sitting down for that meeting and a few others later this week, and will also be taking advantage of the opportunity to meet some other Rhodes scholars currently at Oxford, tour around Rhodes House (which I've only seen from the outside at this point), see St. John's and other future haunts around Oxford, and probably stop by Stanford House to boot. The last time I walked the streets of Oxford, in the chilly December of 2010, I remember having a feeling that I would be back to the City of Dreaming Spires. I just can't believe it's come already. I'm beyond eager to see some of the people and places that will compose the texture of my life over the next two years.
This week's travels will be a real whirlwind, and I'll be back in the U.S. by the beginning of August, but here we go! Determined to catch some British tea and Ben's cookies while I'm at it, too.
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