Back in London

Actually, this post comes a month late; by the end of February, I had gotten notice that I'd be let back in and by March 1st I was back in London.

Since then, I've been catching up with the program, sorting through the massive pile of receipts Charlie left me, etc.

Great being back!

Exceptional Case

    I got an email from the UK consulate yesterday, a day and a half after they started processing."Your application has undergone an initial assessment [and] has been identified as an exceptional case."

    Under unexceptional situations, I would have [most likely] received an answer by now, but since they denied me entry due to a miscommunication, I'm now considered special and the processing time "may now be up to 15 working days from today's date." That's well over two weeks from now, putting me back in London a full month after I had planned to be.

    That's assuming it takes the maximum amount of time they've allotted. I'm hoping that I'm not too exceptional of a case. They acknowledged that I've payed for expedited service and that they "will continue to handle [my] case as expeditiously as possible." I'm hopeful, then, that they'll see that there was no reason for me to be denied entry and send me on my way.

    And in case you hadn't noticed, there are a lot of wishy-washy words in here. A lot of hoping. And waiting. For an email that very well could say, "nope, we don't like you, you can't come in." Let's hope it doesn't come to that.

The waiting game

It's in the mail. The paperwork that should get me back into England is on its way to the consulate. Assuming they don't find anything glaringly wrong, they should start processing on Monday, have an answer for me by Wednesday and have my passport and materials back to me by Thursday or Friday. This would let me get on a plane end of next week and be back in London by week end.

I'll have missed the orientation sessions for the program, the students' initial arrival, the "welcome to London" dinner hosted at our flat, the first week of classes, and who knows what else.

Hopefully they accept my visa application...

Sigh

    Still not a whole lot of progress. I'm now in a hotel in NYC (with this view, tons better than the last, no?), right around the corner from the UK Embassy. I went in to said office this morning with the intent of speaking to someone about my situation. Turns out they won't even let you in the door without an appointment and won't tell you how to get one.
    We called up the company that handles UK visas to see if they had any advice for my situation. "Well, you wouldn't have needed a visa before, but since you were denied entry, you now need one." (That neat little piece of advice cost no less than $12.) So then, with a significant amount of help from the folks at Earlham's IPO (specifically Jennifer, the assistant director; wonderful person), I've got a stack of supporting documents and a visa app to hand in. It requires an agency here to take biometric data though and the closest ones won't take an appointment until Friday. The full visa app can't be handed in until after the biometrics are taken.
    All in, I'm here for a while still. Since I'm not getting biometrics done until Friday, that means the app won't be received by the office until Friday afternoon (that is, if I can physically hand it in, otherwise sometime Monday) and then I have to wait a couple of days for it to be processed and then sent back to me.

    So... end of next week maybe I'll be back in London... Meanwhile, hello NYC.

    Oh yeah, did I mention my hotel's internet sucks? Fortunately there are Starbucks and similar...

FML

Short Version
   I'm currently sitting in a hotel next to the Newark International Airport (look, there it is!). 24 hours ago I was in London, Heathrow expecting to relaxingly hang out in my London flat (the one with this view) by afternoon. Now I'm pouring through UK immigration information and forms trying to figure out how to get back there.

Long Version
    Over Christmas, my family flew over to meet me in London so that we could go on vacation to continental Europe. It was a good vacation; we spent a couple more days in London, took the Chunnel train to Paris, spent a day or so there, trained over to Interlaken, Switzerland to ski on the Swiss Alps, and then popped over to Zurich for new year's eve. It was a good time spent with family. My parents had never been to France or Switzerland, so it was fun to be there with them, and it gave my brother and I a chance to hang out.
    7 AM on the first day of the New Year, I flew from Zurich into Heathrow where I had, of course, to go through border control. Having been in a big European city the night before, I was running on extremely little sleep and not thinking very well. The immigration officer wasn't happy with the fact that my visit to the UK was going to be lasting for 4 months and started questioning me on the specifics. This is about the moment that I realized that I forgot to have Earlham's letter, stating why I was going to be in the UK, on my person. They weren't happy about that either.
    Multiple interviews later, where they spun my words into phrases they thought sounded better, they decided that the information I had given and the manner in which it was given "casts doubts on [my] credibility" and ordered my immediate removal from the country. Despite what I was told, and thought, apparently I actually do need to have a visa to be in the UK. At 5:00 PM GMT, eight and a half hours after I landed in London, I was placed on a plane bound for the USA.
   Now I'm sitting in my hotel in Newark alternately trying not to think about where I should be and trying to figure out how I can get there ASAP; the students start arriving on Tuesday, the program orientation starts Thursday, and classes starts Monday. The UK embassy in NY doesn't open until this Tuesday, and it looks like it takes 2 days minimum to get the appropriate Visa, assuming I can get all the right documents together by the time I head to the office.

So yeah. FML. Hopefully it won't be more than a week before I'm back, safely and legally, in London.

If nothing else, I left a significant amount of my possessions in the London flat that would be good to have back. ;)

Temporarily set up another blogger page until my personal website comes back up again; I'm waiting on someone close to it to restart it. So until that happens, updates on my activities will show up here.

I've been in London, England for about 10 days now, getting acclimated to the area before the students show up. I'm the assistant leader for Earlham College's semester abroad program in England. The upside to this: I get to live in one of the best cities in the world, in an amazing part of said city, while someone else pays for almost everything. The downside: I have to play "camp counselor" for the students. As the assistant instructor, I have to make sure none of the students are having any issues with where they're living, the professors or classes they have, the people they're living with, or, heaven forbid, the city itself. I will be functioning as the first-stop buffer between them and the rest of the command chain. All things considered though, this should be a good gig.

From here, I head to Paris and the Switzerland for vacation with family until Saturday when I have 5 days until students start arriving. In order to prep for their arrival I need to play-test the commutes from their housing to our flat and to the academic buildings, organize and plan for the finances of the program (we handle the food stipends, travel stipends, "cultural allowances," and rent for all students), help plan and test assignments for the class the leader is teaching, and various other things. I'm also doing extra work on the side for the company I've been working for over the past year.

While I'm here, I want to figure out how I can stay longer than the "visitor" visa allows. In order to stay longer than 6 months at a time, you need to either be qualified enough and have made enough money in the past 15 months to be a "Tier 1" visa holder, or be hired by a company that can vouch for you, or get enrolled in a local college and get in as a fulltime student. The Tier 1 thing probably won't work for me; I didn't make nearly enough money last year. Hiring in this economic climate is still pretty tough. So that leaves coming here for more school as probably the best option. Having just submitted applications for US grad schools, I'm a little disinclined to work on more of them. I'm still young though. London will still be here in a few years, so perhaps I can get over here later. Fingers crossed.

I've never been good about keeping up a blog. Maybe this one will be different...