Tag Archives: Exchange Student

Relative Distance

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Two distinct parts developed in my head when I was thinking about how to write all this down. I’m going to start with the part that most folks will be interested in and let you decided if you want to carry on further.

Part I – Europe

That title sounds grandiose, but it gets to the point of what I want to say. Earlier this week Russia attacked / invaded an eastern European country. Declared war and started hitting them with rockets and blowing people up. My daughter is IN Europe right now. She’s been there since August and is planning to be there until this coming summer. I felt it was justifiable to do some research and put a few things together. The kiddo is roughly 3,100km (1,925mi) away from the fighting. For people that struggle with putting a picture to a vague number like that it’s roughly the same as saying I am in the middle of Pennsylvania and the fighting is in Phoenix, Arizona. It’s about the same distance.

My considerations about this.

First, that’s a really long way and generally should be safe enough. Generally. Conventionally.

Second, it is still the same land mass and is therefore drive-able, rather than being across, say an ocean so that doesn’t help my anxiety. It’s about a 34 hour drive according to the almighty Google.

Third – a chunk of that is across NATO territory (where the US would likely get directly involved) AND where she’s living is right next to Switzerland in the Alps. She’s as safe there as she possibly can be.

Overall, I don’t know that it will impact her stay overseas. That’s the part that makes it challenging, the not knowing. I can ‘not know’ here in the US and that’s a lot easier because there would need to be an awful lot of bad before things really change where I am right now. The problem is it’s better to ‘not know’ when the kiddo is here and not there.

As of this writing we haven’t had any updates from the exchange student program. That’s for both the kids overseas (that I know of) and for the kids here in the US (again, that I know of). I suspect they’re keeping a close eye on what’s happening and will go with whatever the department of state recommends. It’s important to highlight that. This exchange program is governed (ultimately) by the department of state and is part of the citizen diplomacy functions of our country. I believe getting to know our neighbors around the world and making them part of our family is an important part of making the world a better (and safer) place.

So, we pay attention and we wait to see what happens.

Part II – Old is New

Red Dawn (1984)

I can generalize things for members of Gen X here. We have always expected this. The mighty bear (Russians or USSR – whatever) was always going to attack. This is the only result from the era of the cold war, it’s just 30 years or so later than we expected. I suspect that my friends from the younger end of the millennials and the Gen Z kids won’t understand. This was an ingrained part of our culture and our media growing up. It was the news. The red threat was always there. This is not new, it’s old and late.

What do I mean? Who was the opponent in Rocky IV? That’s right, Ivan Drago. Who did Rambo fight in the second movie? Yeah, that’s right, it was a Russian helicopter. Hunt for Red October anyone? War Games. Red Dawn. Invasion USA. Those are the splashy action movies, but there were tons of cloak and dagger movie / television adaptations. Falcon and the Snowman. Firefox (Clint Eastwood thinking in Russian). When it wasn’t serious, it was mocked. This could be Spies Like Us or a Wendy’s commercial (very nice). It was pervasive. It was inescapable. This was the world.

Now that it’s here, I’m not sure how to feel about it. I mean, they’ve always been the bad guys. The propaganda worked. I don’t see redeemable qualities. I don’t see roads to peace, I only see roads to the world becoming a nucular wasteland. I don’t believe the generation in charge knows how to do business that isn’t set in that pattern. I don’t know if I would know either – it’s all I’ve ever known. I hope the Ukraine remains whole and independent. This is when we need cooler heads to prevail – because escalation doesn’t end well for anyone. I hope this war does not spread. I do not want World War III.

Big Day

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Big days are weird things.

It’s Tuesday morning as I write this. The 24th of August. To a vast majority of the people I know, that’s all it is. It’s Tuesday morning and there’s work and maybe a list of things that need to get done at the end of the day or a show to watch tonight. I know at least one person who has a birthday today, so that might be a little special moment with a dinner or a gift, but generally nothing very exciting.

For us… exciting might not be quite the right word, but it definitely IS a big deal for us. Today is flight day for my daughter. She is leaving the country to study for the next 10 months in France. I’ve written about parts of our journey here before. We’ve done tons of preparation to get to this point, but today is it. Today is the Big Day. Flight day.

Nobody slept well last night. I set an alarm, but was awake two hours before it was scheduled to go off (despite staying up extra late in an attempt to be more tired when heading off to bed). I got up and have been pacing the house for more than an hour. I’ve played all the vapid games on my phone. I listened to the news, checked the weather radar and reloaded the flight status page twice so far. There is this driving urge to do something, do anything and there’s simply nothing left to do. We finished the laundry yesterday for my daughter’s things. The bags are packed. The phone is charged. The friends have been visited. The family has been hugged. We’ve looked at the airports websites. We’ve done as much of a virtual walk as we could to get a feel for how the journey will go. My daughter has been in touch with her host family and they’ve told her who would be meeting her at the other end of her travels.

I’m still pacing.

This is anxiety.

Today is also an uneven day. As a parent I’m anxious and pacing, but ultimately my part in this will be over by lunch time today. We’ve got to get the kiddo TO the airport and in line for the security check. That’s it. Then we wander out of the terminal, pay for parking and wonder what the rest of the day brings. My daughter will be boarding a plane here, flying to Chicago and gathering with other kids from the program who will be on the same flight with her. Then after a short layover it’s off to Paris. Long flight, landing and meeting a rep from the exchange student program on the other end of the flight. That person will pack her onto the train and head her off to her host family. When all is said and done she will have been traveling for more than 20 continuous hours. She has snacks. She has a water bottle. She’s got money to grab a meal when she gets a chance ~ and we’re going to be sitting here at home unable to be with her, help her or join her in the experience. There is no doubt that I’ll sleep terribly again tonight. I’m going to be a distracted mess at work tomorrow morning until I get a notification from her that she has landed safely. I’ll only be truly relieved when she lets us know that she has arrived at the train station where her host family has met her and she’s safely headed to their home to start her adventure in France.

It’s also a sign that I have written more here out of anxiety than I’ve written in two weeks on any other subject. I’m not sure how other creative types deal with what feels like the opposite of the muse. Distraction. Inability to sit still.

This is it. As so many others know it… it’s Tuesday. It’s a Big Day.

DC Up and Down

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For anyone that isn’t in the know for what’s going on with my family, we’re getting ready to send my daughter to study in another country via an exchange student program. I’ve been volunteering with this organization for a number of years and I’m excited for my daughter to participate and learn more about the world we live in.

Part of getting the kiddo ready to go is applying for a long stay student visa. In order to do this we were required to appear in person to make this application. I thought we would be doing this at a consulate office or some place directly connected to the embassy.

Trio of Trouble!

The place we needed to be for our appointment was in Washington DC, so we decided it would be great to have along one of my daughter’s friends who had never had the chance to see our nations capitol before. My wife and I have both been there a number of times and were very excited to share this experience with the kids. We woke up early, jammed ourselves into the car and headed to the Metro. We really appreciate being able to use public transportation like that. We don’t have a great bus system and no trains at all around here, so that was treat the first. Navigating the transit system. We hopped on the train (also a first for our friend) and headed to the address.

I was wrong. Where we ended up was an office for the company VFS. It’s not actually a consulate or an embassy. People connected with those places might be in the background, but this was just an office on the second floor of a plain building over a kabob place. Far less dramatic than we thought it might be. They DO still require a security check to get in (metal detector) and they ask questions about Covid. Masks are still required. But in the end – a lot like going to the DMV.

We didn’t wait long as we had an appointment set up. We pulled out all the paperwork and thought we were in great shape… right up until she asked for something that didn’t have the same name as the paperwork we brought. We figured it out, but that was a moment of stomach lurch. We can’t have the visa appointment too far away from the departure date as it will only be good for a year. That also meant we’re cutting it very close if something goes awry. Then it did. The required photos we brought were deemed unacceptable. The agent we were working with was quite nice and very helpful. She pointed us at a store just down the block that would get us a new photo on the spot. Once we were done with the rest of the paperwork and the biometric scanning (photos and fingerprints) we popped over to the shop, got the picture we needed and were able to drop it off again in about 20 minutes time. All in all a good thing as we’ve gotten all the paperwork turned in.

This appointment was a source of anxiety, but once we finished that, the rest of the day was ours to sight see.

And that’s where things got frustrating.

One would think in the post pandemic times that we live in the desire would be to give people distance and extra time to work with things. That is not the case. The few museums that were open at all (and that was far less than we expected) had reduced hours. We thought to spend a couple of hours at the Smithsonian museum of natural history. It’s not a lot of time, but we’d hit a couple of exhibits ~ just take our time and chat while we walked… The lines at each entry were out the doors, down the main stairs and halfway down the block. Not exaggerating. We took one look at that and said, “How about we look at the gardens?”

We wandered about for a while, but it eventually became clear that the very few things that were actually open were jam packed with people. We were getting worn down in the summer heat, so we settled for walking the mall and looking at the capitol, the obelisk and the castle from the outside. Once we’d done that we just hopped the train and headed home again.

In the end it was a good day because we accomplished the main goal for the day. Visa paperwork is in. We got to share a trip to the capitol with somebody who had never seen it before. At the very same moment, it was a disappointment of a trip. The food we ended up getting wasn’t great. We missed our chance to have dinner in Chinatown. We couldn’t get into any museums or even the welcome center.

What does it all mean? It means that after our schedules settle down a little more and the world continues to reopen we’ll have to set up another trip to the DC area. We love all the things to see and want to have an excellent trip… So we’ll try again!