The Visa Application Challenge (pt. 3)

Hello my faithful readers:

The past few weeks have gone so quickly that I barely have time to keep up with everything. Each day is a flurry of new activity, but yesterday I'm happy to say I picked up my VISA! It's official - I can now go to Belgium officially to begin my program! I'm very excited about this and now I just have to finish wrapping up my life here in NYC.

In my previous blogs about the visa application process (part 1 & part 2 ) I shared with you the challenges of getting the proper medical certifications and the drama of getting the financial declaration letter approved. Today I want to share a little bit about the ever changing rules of the Belgian government. When I started this whole process back in May the application cost was $126 + a few additional fees (financial declaration letter processing etc). By the time I physically submitted my application last week the fees for the Visa application had doubled to $252. That's a big difference when you're working within a budget. Once all was said and done this whole visa application process (erm investment) was approximately $514.

I also had the luck of happening to call the Belgian Consulate in NYC on a day when they were requiring all applicants to complete an 8 page interview form about why they were requesting a student visa. Being the overachiever that I (think) am I typed my form, pulled out my transcript from college, printed out other supporting documentation for this form. All for naught it seems; when I handed that in as a part of the application last week, the woman behind the glass window was like - "Oh, we don't need that form, that was only a requirement for a couple of days." Yes - I was a little annoyed, but I was happy that for once in this entire process things were proceeding smoothly. She flipped through all of my papers and said "You'll be able to pick your visa up next Tuesday!

So now I have my visa and the way that it works is they give it to you for 3 months. You have to take it to the city hall of the place where you're planning to live and sign up for a resident card. They provide the card to you (with your picture) and you can use that to travel within Europe. They also warned us that the local police in our city (Leuven) will stop by within the week to make sure we actually live at the address we provide when we register with the city.

So that's the visa application challenge for me in a nutshell. Should you ever decide to get a visa to Belgium - I hope you have a much easier time than I had getting mine. I really think that it all depends on where you make your application. My classmates in other (American) cities seemed to have a lot less issues than I did in obtaining their visa's. I'll try to get another blog in this week maybe about my packing process. I fly to Belgium next Wednesday - for me it's just starting to feel more real.

Mwuah,

Georgia Peach

PS - If you're in the NYC area you should stop by my Going-Away celebration on Thursday August 6th @ Volt de Nuit down in the West Village.