The Road to UCT

Greetings to everyone! I feel like 90% of all blog posts begin with an apology to the readers for having such infrequent blog posts. So I'm not sure if it'll be worse for me to apologize and contribute negatively to the statistic, or not apologize and sound unappreciative of my readership. I suppose I'll compromise by just talking about apologizing without actually doing so. There you go.

I think you all deserve the whole story. The whole truth. It's been a journey, my friends, and I will try to capture the essence of each important moment on the Road to UCT. Stay with me, here.

I send in my application online on April 11th, 2011. I was young, I was innocent, I had already gotten into three respectable Canadian universities, but not too deep down I wanted to go somewhere exciting, somewhere different. So the University of Cape Town it was. I've been asked a few times why I decided to go for UCT and not somewhere else. Yes, it was the urge for adventure that motivated me primarily, but there was some reason that went into the decision as well. It's a school taught in English, first of all; it has a really, really good reputation, both from people who have gone here and from studies done on the world's educational institutions; it had programs that were interesting to me; the price was not exorbitant; and the campus is unbelievably beautiful. And look, they've already taught me how to use a semi-colon! Okay, so in April, my hopeful self applied.

Many of you were with me for phase two of the application process. By phase two, I mean the phase where I didn't know what was happening and I was floating around like an aimless plastic bag on a highway. I had deferred my acceptance to Carleton University, and shipped myself off to Calgary after camp in the summer to get a job and save up for this elusive education I was planning for.

Now, phase two lasted a while, let's not lie. The number of vague answers I gave in those months would probably knock you off your chair. Thanks to much support from all of you, I managed to make those months beneficial, more than just financially. I had a good job, good home, good church, made a bunch of friends, did a bunch of paperwork for school and everything else... It was good.

Then, the "conditional offer" was made on my online account. We'll call this phase three. This conditional offer was supposed to be followed by a letter. The letter never came, the email was supposed to have been sent, it never was. And then I flew to Tanzania for Christmas.

Two weeks went by, beach and safari and sleeeeeeep, and still no letter. So, another few phone calls later, and I actually had my acceptance. Which signalled the panic of getting a visa in two weeks or less, in order for me to make it here on time. Miracle of miracles, the South African High Commission can get a Canadian kid's visa done in a week! Amazing! Hey, why not call this phase four? It lasted about four days, so it's an appropriate name.

Now, I welcome you to Friday night, Friday the 27th of January. Saturday was the day we would fly to Cape Town as a family, to do all the fun starting-university-in-a-new-city things. Oh, Friday.
We got home from dinner on Friday, I checked my email. Waiting for me was an email from UCT. It was a short email, and to make it shorter, it said that my final examination results had not been received, and my acceptance had been withdrawn. Have a good day.

Phase five wasn't a particularly pleasant phase. It was horrible. I mean, I had sent in my final examination results. I knew that. I knew that it wasn't my fault, and that the university should technically let me in, because it was their mistake. But that wasn't very reassuring. I had already packed and everything, and we were ready to go, and that night was basically a night of wondering bad things.
I won't really go into details, but I kind of feel like I wrestled with God that night. He won. His winning, though, involved me giving up things I was clinging to, and resting in the assurance that He's got it under control. It was beautiful. Oh my goodness, it wasn't a fun night, but it was a good night.

Then suddenly we were in Cape Town. Doing tourist things, negotiating with Humanities administrators, trying to find me a place to live, going to the International Students' orientation despite not being a student yet... One of the weirdest weeks of my life. I was just swimming in uncertainty.

And then BAM. Phase six. As I'm listening to somebody or other's address at the International Students' reception, my Dad's fiddling with his Blackberry, and gets onto the website to check my application status. Bu-yah, I'm in. Suddenly, it all comes together. Suddenly, we spring into action and get me a place and a phone and I can actually make friends and go to orientation and unpack and let all the past five phases go. Some of you will say, "Finally!", but I take none of it for granted.

So, here I am. I've started classes now. I survived O-Week. I'm learning about religion, history, philosophy, and writing in the media. I'm loving it. It's been a little hard making my brain start learning again, but I'll get back into the groove. I'll let you all know about other stuff I've been up to here, but I think this is plenty long for now.

Thanks for reading, thanks for praying and worrying and asking. I'm taking sign-ups for anyone who wants to come visit me. I have a really convenient spot on the floor that would be perfect for an air mattress, if you catch my drift.

And I will have internet soon, and I can Skype with all of you a hundred times a day. I promise.

We're Approaching the Climax - Get Ready

It's been a while! I'm still around! On the earth, anyways. If you thought 'around' meant around you, you're probably mistaken.

I'm in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania at the moment. In case you're out of date. I got here on the 23rd of December, after about 24 hours of travelling. I slept for almost eight hours total on the trip, which is better than I was expecting. And I got over the jet lag within a couple of days.
The Christmas season involved a couple rounds of present opening, lots of food, several family games (I don't think I won any of them until New Year's Eve), and some other events thrown in. Events like a two day trip to the beach and a four day safari excursion. Lots of adventures were had, including hiking up an unexpectedly tall hill to swim in a waterfall with an Indian tour group and getting our vehicle stuck in a muddy patch of road for three hours in a wild game park. Good times.

I suppose now would be the time to do the traditional Start of the New Year Reflection Post.
I'll start off by outlining my New Year's Eve. Well, you've already heard about me winning a family game. After coming off that intense win, Ross and I tried to stay awake until midnight by watching football on TV and reading. When the clock changed over to 12, we wished each other a Happy New Year and fell asleep. Exciting, I know.

But when I think about the year of 2011, I do have some thoughts. 2011 was the year of my high school graduation. That will probably be how it's most often remembered from now on. It was also the year I got my first job, visited Italy for the first time, learned how to play the ukulele, and moved to Calgary for a few months. All important events.  If I look back at the me of one year ago, I can't even imagine what she would be thinking. Probably something about surviving the last months of school.
I think January 2011 would have been about the time that I was coming up with the tentative plan of going to school in Cape Town. If I had known it would be this much work for me to get there... I probably would have done it anyways. It was all worth it, for the ripple of surprise that travelled across the crowd at graduation when the speaker said that I was planning to go to the University of Cape Town to study the Humanities. That was a good moment in my life.

All that being said, I could continue to reflect for a while. Trust me, the IB program breeds children that are excellent at doing personal reflections on things they never cared about in the first place. But there are things happening right now in my life that I think are more interesting.

We called UCT a little while after Christmas, and asked three different people if they would send me that elusive conditional acceptance letter via email. Highlight of the phone call: "You really need to get that letter so you can get started on your student visa." My thoughts- No kidding.
They actually sent me the email! It had supposedly been mailed on November 17th. And the mysteries never end.

I quickly printed off the letter, signed the part saying that I "accepted their conditional offer", and scanned it and sent it back to them. The next day, my online status said, "We have received your acceptance of our conditional offer". Hoorah!
With this conditional offer letter, I could now start applying for a study visa. There are about 20 pieces to a study visa, so I had to gather those from near and far, and request favours from people I've never met before all around the world (sounds elaborate, right?), and finally we got everything together. I handed in the form two days ago, so on January 16th. Usually a visa takes longer to process, but the nice visa lady told me that she would request to get it done in two weeks. The start of UCT orientation weeks is January 31st. So, according to my calculations, the visa will be done on January 30th, leaving us a spacious 24 hours of wiggle room.

Sorry to leave you on the edge of your seat, there.

But wait! There's more!

Because of the lateness of everything, I was not able to get a spot in residence. So I've been house/apartment/room hunting feverishly. I found a building called The Baobab, which is sort of like an off-campus residence building. Awesome location, self-catering, a legitimate website with minimal spelling errors (you'd be surprised both by how rare this is and by how much it matters to me)... The shared rooms are obviously cheaper, but I don't know anyone in Cape Town, so I was worried about finding a roommate, only to learn that they happily assign people roommates, and all would be well.

Many prayers have been answered recently. Many, many prayers. So, despite the fact that I spend most of my days doing nothing at all, and I still probably should be worried about financial things and the visa getting done on time... Well, I'm not. I feel very cared for. I know I won't be left hanging, and I have no fears about trusting in a God this good. So the next weeks should pass by quickly enough. There will be a whole load of things I'll have to deal with as soon as I arrive in Cape Town, but that's okay. Today has enough worries of its own.

There will be another update soon. My adventures are just getting started.