Got what you wanted, lost what you had

- The Princess and the Frog

So, true story, I couldn't spell my name until I went to University.

Before you think I'm completely stupid, it was only the first of my middle names. You see, when I was born, being the eldest, I inherited all the female family names. Christine is my mum's mum's middle name (because they thought 'Brenda', her first name, wasn't all that nice). Mary, my second middle name is my dad's mum's name.

But the one I always had trouble with is my first middle name which is 'Nyhra'. The 'H' is silent so I never was entirely certain if it was before or after the 'R'. To be fair, the only time I ever had to use it was when I was going overseas and usually my dad took care of that.

And then I went to University. There were literally forms upon forms upon forms to fill out, all requiring my full name. So after entering it about sixty times I finally got it ingrained in my head.

I think the process to fill out the forms for my visa is actually worse.

Tomorrow I have an exam. Naturally I am avoiding thinking about it so I decided to do all my visa applications and fee paying.

First up I paid my Disney assessment fee, US$104.50 (I really don't know why the processing fee is separate. That's just sad). That means that I am now *officially* reserved in at an apartment which is cause for celebration although I did it all so quickly that I kind of missed the fact until I was writing it just this second. So... YAY.

Then I decided to sign up for Disney courses. A lot of people aren't doing them and to be honest I'm not completely decided on whether or not I WILL do them, but they're fully refundable up to Febuary 10^th so I signed up for two for now: Marketing You and Organizational Leadership. The other one I am thinking of doing is Finance or Corporate Analysis and a Disney heritage one but that can wait until fall. That or I will swap and do Disney heritage the first term, which could be good for my roles J They each cost US$30 each for course materials, plus the course books I'll need to get later.

The reason I will probably do them is because I think it will look great on my CV plus I actually think it will be really interesting! I want to get the most I can out of my time at Disney. I really am not going over there to holiday (although I will doing holiday-type stuff without a doubt at certain points). I accept that if I didn't do the courses I'd probably be sitting in my apartment on my computer, and that's just silly.

Anyway, after that spending I decided I might as well bite the bullet and get my Visa stuff under way. Oh what a fool I was.

Paying the SEVIS fee was straight forward enough (US$35). Just had to follow the instructions. The one thing I will mention is to be careful with dates. I'm used to the DD-MM-YYYY format, some of the forms are MM-DD-YYYY and that can catch you out and confuse you.

No, it's the DS-160 that is, in a word, terrifying.

Picture. Gazillion contact requests. Questions asking whether or not I intend to be a prostitute or child slaver. Not to mention the absolute fail that was the employment question. It IS possible to have more than one job at a time, US Immigration. Thanks for being unhelpful. I have never filled out anything so picky, and I have survived studylink four times now. At the point now where I've given up on it for the night. I'm hungry and my eyes hurt from looking at the SHOUTY TEXT. (Seriously, EVERYTHING IN CAPITALS)

I've spent more than an hour on it. Now its 97% done, I'm just waiting to hear back if my friend is cool with me using her as a contact and her email address and then my dad to tell me when our last five trips to America. (Honestly, I have no bloody idea!)

Did I mention I have an exam in 12 hours? Trying to do this tonight was a mistake; lol.

In other news, I have somewhere to live for four weeks once my lease here runs out. Transfered the $800 for that over this morning. All in all it has been a VERY expensive day. Probably speant NZ$1,100. D= Oh well, that is what the money is for. I still have $3,000 in my savings... although that is at risk too since I am probably going to store my stuff up here for a year... 

Hence my quote for today: getting the visa stuff and whatever sorted but losing my hard earned moolah!

That's about it for now. Thinking about money depresses me and there's that exam thing to do ...

Have a Magical Day my lovelies!