My Visa, Your Visa, His Visa, Her Visa
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The dreaded visa process. The thing that many people stress for months about - not as scary as it seems.
When I was applying for CIEE I didn't see any blogs about the visa process so I thought I would break it down as briefly as possible in a blog for all of the curious souls out there.
Thankfully CIEE provides a handy-dandy checklist that makes everyone's life easier. Personally, I was zoned for the Miami consulate. Each consulate has specific instrustions so be sure to pay attention to CIEE and your consulate's website.
The first two things I had to get for my visa application were an FBI background check and an Apostille for the FBI background check.
The Apostille was the most difficult thing to get because it was probably going to take around a month and a half to get back. "What is an Apostille?" you may ask, well, I surely didn't now before this all started. An Apostille is a document of credibility needed for your FBI background check. After taking all of my finals for Senior year, I took a trip to the nearest USPS Office where they do FBI background checks. My trip was about an hour and a half but I did hear of some people who had to travel around 4 hours to get their's done. Unfortunately, only around 141 USPS Offices do FBI bacground checks. The whole process of fingerprinting to getting the check emailed to me took less than 30 minutes. I filled out the Apostille paperwork and sent everything in - about a month later I had my Apostille in hand - then came the tricky part...
After some doctors visits, paperwork filing, and getting a lot of documents translated into Spanish, everything was ready to send off to the Miami Spanish Consulate.
I made my checklist, checked it twice and sent everything out.
The website said that they would email me when they got my application, well, they didn't... After about a month of unanswered emails and radio silence, I got an email saying that my visa was ready (yay!). From what I understand from the Miami Consulate GroupMe I'm in - if you are from Florida they give you a specific date to come in, otherwise, they say to come between 12pm-1pm (their 'student visa hour') any business day.
Two weeks after I recieved the email, my mom and I roadtripped to Miami to get my visa. I walked into the consulate, handed over my driver's license, and twenty minutes later was holding my visa. (I met some really cool people who are also moving to Madrid within the month so we exchanged instagrams to stay in touch).
48 hours after we left my house (20 of which was spent in the car), my mom and I arrived safely at home.
With my visa in hand, plane ticket purchased, and three more weeks until I take off - I am feeling pretty confident about this trip.
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