Pre-Ireland: Part 4 - What the Heck Am I Doing?

From the time I first submitted my visa application in November, I've been living a roller coaster of 3pm me, "Oh yes this is a great idea, moving to Ireland - I've always wanted to travel and I can't wait to meet all sorts of new people and see new places!" and 3am me, "What the fuck, Kathryn, you've never even left the US before you're probably going to get there and run out of money and take to the streets and literally be living out of your suitcase with no shelter."

I know it sounds silly, but the latter is definitely a fear of mine.

I have a lot of social anxiety, and it functions in a funny way for me: it's either not there at all, or it's life-cripplingly present. For example, I've slowly moved further and further south since I've moved from my first apartment in Clintonville several years ago. I now live downtown, and I still will go entirely out of my way to go to my favorite Giant Eagle or my favorite Get Go or my favorite Chase Bank branch or my favorite Good Will, all of which are near my first apartment. That's not to say I haven't forced myself to go to other locations of these businesses, but I get anxiety when I do so I just go to these original places since I know them so well. There have been times that I've been out of medication I've needed and I have a hard time getting myself to go to the pharmacy to pick it up for fear that there may not be parking available there. I've declined invites to parties I've really wanted to go to because I would only have known the host, and the thought of being in a room full of people who are friends while I'm in the corner alone terrifies me. I've grown afraid to go to new coffee shops by myself, because what if I get there and there's nowhere to sit and their WiFi is hard to connect to and what if there's a private event going on that I didn't know about and I end up in an awkward situation. That doesn't sound like a good trait to have when you're about to travel the world, right? Well - this quality about me - like so many others - exists only in polar opposite forms. An oxymoron, of sorts. When I'm in a place where I know nothing, and I have no comfort zone to revert back to, this anxiety completely dissipates. When I'm in Ireland, if I need food and my only option of getting it involves me going to a restaurant I've never been to, I will just go by myself and be fine. I know this because I've had similar experiences - like when I moved to Ann Arbor several summers ago and knew absolutely no one. I had no problem going to new places on my own - in fact, I found it incredibly exciting. I even met all sorts of awesome people because I started crashing parties with some guy I met, and some of those people I'm still friends with. Social Anxiety Kathryn DOES NOT CRASH PARTIES. But traveling Kathryn? For some reason, she eats that up. It's funny, now that I think of it, I'm pretty sure I'm one of the only people in the research program I participated in who was interested in meeting the locals. Everyone else preferred to hang out with one another, which was fine and I now wish I had done more of that, but it simply was not even in my periphery at the time.

So anyway, why am I so afraid this anxiety will overcome me in Ireland? I think it's important to keep the possibility in mind, but I think I am worrying myself over nothing. Even when I was down in New Orleans, I met several people at my hostel and a few locals even who I had no anxiety around - simply a sheer curiosity. I will forever be grateful that I just happened to work at a restaurant as my first job; first of all because I've turned it into a mini-career, and second of all because it forces me to interact with strangers. Even when I don't connect with someone at all, I know how to navigate around our differences because my income literally relies on my ability to do just that.

Which brings me to my next point - what if I get there and I run out of money? I literally am terrified that I will be living on the streets because I can't support myself, or that I'll spend all of my savings in the first few months by traveling to other places in Europe. But when I think about it even more - who cares if I blow my savings? This is what I've saved up for - travel. If I run out, I can just come back home early or even find a job there in Ireland. Plus, I'm resourceful when it comes to finding weird ways to make money. Several years ago, I was donating plasma twice a week (I still have the scar on my arm) and participating in random paid studies at OSU when I was low on cash and I had a brief affair with proofreading erotic literature (never again). And even still, if I run out of every penny in my savings, I've accumulated several thousand dollars in available credit that I haven't used - so there's no way I won't be able to buy a ticket back to the US if I find myself in this scenario. And even still further, ever since I was a child I've been frugal as all hell. I would save up every penny I got from babysitting and doing chores and birthday money - and I am still that way. I live a near-hermit lifestyle as is. I don't even order food to be delivered because I scoff at $2 delivery fees. So why am I so terrified? I don't know. I have all of these reasons to not be afraid.

But the final thing I am terrified of, and the one thing in which I can offer no solace to myself, is the prospect that I might just not enjoy traveling. I have literally never done anything like this in my entire life. I was born and raised in Ohio, and I lived in another state (a neighboring state, to boot) for 2 months, one time, in a program for which everything was already set up for me. I've always enjoyed short-term travel, and not being able to be in my home has never bothered me. But again - short-term travel. What if after 4 months I find myself desperately wishing I were in my 1 bedroom apartment in Columbus, OH, snuggled up with my cat and watching X-Files episodes one after another? What if I find myself wishing I were waiting to go into work at my relatively mediocre job that makes me miserable? I am a miserable person who enjoys being miserable - that thing I know for sure. I even have a hard time enjoying my favorite things for some reason - like foods and movies and wines and adventures - if I lack another person to share these things with. I can take no comfort in convincing myself that this won't happen to me, because I have no evidence that it won't.

But what I do know is my current life is not making me happy, and I think I'm ready to start being happy. And if I don't do this for myself, I will absolutely regret it.

I kind of can't wait to be sitting on the plane to Ireland, ready to shit my pants because my stomach is in a soup of butterflies and knots and piss-poor airport coffee, freaking the everloving fuck out. I can't wait to get off of the plane and look around and have absolutely no idea where I'm going.

I'll never forget the first time I had that feeling. I was 15 years old and visiting my sister in New York City. I had only been there twice before - once on a middle school field trip (doesn't count) and once to a conference at Colombia for the newspaper I wrote for in high school (half counts). Both times, the trips had been planned out for me from start to finish. But at the age of 15, I had saved up a few hundred dollars in babysitting money and bought my first ticket for myself ever - a train ticket from Pittsburgh to New York. My dad dropped me off at the station, and at that age I had very little knowledge of how these things worked. I navigated myself around what felt like the labyrinth of a station, to my little seat on the train. It was a long train ride - and I swear to this day that it took 15 hours (although realistically, 15 hours to a 15 year old is like 8 hours in adult time). When I finally got to NYC, I pulled out some directions my sister gave me - this was a time before every teenager had a smart phone - and found my way from Penn Station to Grand Central terminal, bought a metro pass, and navigated my way to my sister's place of work. I was so terrified - I was a young woman from Ohio farm country who had literally never even gone to a store by herself, in the middle of the busiest subway terminal in NYC, trying to figure out why there was two of every train (Uptown vs Downtown).

Little me in NYC eating at
an Ethiopian restaurant

By day 2, I was riding that subway on my own while my sister and brother and law were working, going to stores by myself and restaurants by myself and asking for directions and learning how to use a map. I was in awe, and that trip was one of the most empowering experiences I've ever had in my life. I went to Manhattan, I fell in love with Union Square, I sipped coffee and did a crossword in Central Park, went to some thrift shops in Brooklyn, and I think I even got on the wrong train once and ended up in the Bronx (it took me till day 3 or 4/this experience to figure out the two-of-every-train thing).

Seeing the Chelsea Hotel
was a must to 2008 Kathryn

And I loved every minute of this chaos.

So here's to several more, "WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING, ME?!" experiences that I'll have over these next 9 weeks, and here's to going anyway.

Pre-Ireland: Part 3 - General Tips

So my first post was full of prose, and my second a rambling of the ins and outs of applying for the visa. Here are some of my own personal tips that you can take or dismiss as you please.

1. Don't pay for your flight
   I got my flight TO Ireland for free. Once I got back from NOLA and decided I wanted to travel, the very first thing I did (before even deciding what I wanted to do) was apply for a travel credit card. I already had a checking account and a credit card with Chase, so I naturally applied for their Chase Sapphire travel credit card. As it turns out, it's one of the best travel credit cards.
   
   They offer a signup bonus of 50,000 points (which was only 40,000 when I signed up - bummer!) that you receive upon spending $4000 on the card within the first 3 months. Now, if you're not the kind of person who is good with having available credit (i.e. you spend up to your limit frivolously), then this might not be a great idea for you. But my method with credit cards is to treat them like debit cards - I only spend as much as I have in my checking account, and I only use them for purchases I was going to make anyway. Also: I pay off my balance at the end of every billing cycle, so I never pay interest. I literally just accumulate points and earn free money from using my credit card when I otherwise would have used a debit card.
   
   And spending $4000 may seem like a lot within 3 months, but luckily for me my apartment complex lets you pay rent online with a card. They charge a $17 fee for that (as opposed to paying directly from a checking/savings account) but I did the math and paying that $17 fee 3 times was worth the hundreds I saved on my flight. I also paid for EVERYTHING - even my parking meter fees - on my card. Meeting that minimum was actually pretty easy with that setup. So by the time I was ready to buy my ticket into Ireland, I had almost 60,000 points (which translates to roughly a $575 plane ticket) to use toward travel. So I got my ticket literally for free, and I still have leftover points to use on future flights. Also, there are no fees for using your card with foreign currency - so you can even continue to use your card in Europe and accumulate these points and then use them toward return flights. The only stipulation with the Chase Sapphire card is that after the first year, the card costs $95 anually. But again - if you add up the 3 $17 rent fees I had, and add them to several years of paying $95 for this card that I intend to use for a while, the card pays for itself if you use it correctly. So get a free flight! Even if you only use it for 11 months and then cancel before the $95 annual fee kicks in - do that! You seriously make out here.
   
   
   
2. Workaway.info
   This is a site I've had my eye on for years, but I never had any reason to use it until I knew I would be traveling. This website is similar in concept to WWOOF - except it offers a much broader variety of work and the site is international. With WWOOF, each site is country-specific and requires different memberships. Workaway is worldwide. THIS ISN'T TO SAY WWOOFING ISN'T AWESOME, THOUGH. It's just less versatile. But anyway - this site puts you in contact with people all over the world who are looking to host travelers and give them free room and board in exchange for ~25-30 hours of work per week. The work varies from simple house cleaning, to child care, to farm work, to hotel work. And so much more. So unless you lead an extravagant life, and spend lots of money every week, these setups should cover your basic expenses entirely. They are not ways to simply get free room and board - you MUST work and treat these hosts as you would any employer (unless they're shitty people and they mistreat you - then get the hell out of there and find a better host). But within hours of getting my visa approved in theory, I signed up for the website and contacted a couple who owns a B&B - and I'm set up to stay with them for 6 months starting in July. I have a few months between getting into Ireland and staying with them to figure out what I want to do - but because of this site, I've secured housing and food for half of my stay in Ireland. It would depend on the host - but some of them may even be okay with you taking on additional paid employment during your stay if it didn't interfere with the work they expect from you. So this is a way to travel Ireland (or the world), get to know the locals, experience daily life, and still get by with secure housing.
3.  Shampoo bars
   Alright - I still have to figure out how exactly I'm supposed to pack a year in a foreign country into one suitcase, but one thing I realized is that my massive mane of hair (yes I have that much) cannot lug around massive bottles of shampoo. I learned of LUSH shampoo bars - which are essentially like bars of soap that you use on your hair - that last for up to 80 washes and are super travel-friendly. I bought some and tried them out at my apartment and they work pretty well (the conditioner bars, however, did not - but like I said I have a lot of hair so maybe that's why). Packing lightly is going to be very important if you intend to move around within the country, as I do. Thankfully, Ireland is pretty temperate and I won't need 2 different wardrobes for the seasons like I do here in Ohio - but so far I've only really narrowed it down to: 10 PAIRS OF UNDERWEAR - YES. 10 PAIRS OF SHOES - NO. But toiletries are a way to start - you don't need a huge bottle of shampoo when these bars are available (and you intend to move around a lot, like I do).

So that's all I have for tonight, guys. I'll post more if I think of more, but I had to split one night's worth of thoughts into 3 posts for all of our sanities' sakes, so I hope you all got something out of these. Happy travels!

Pre-Ireland: Part 2 - Tips for Applying

So this brings me to what I came here to talk about: my experience applying for this visa. If anyone is interested, here is all that I know:

In order to qualify for this visa as a US citizen, you must:

-be between the ages of 18 and 30
-be either a current student enrolled in a 4-year degree program, taking a gap year or a recent (within 1 year) graduate of such a program (note: you must ENTER Ireland within one year of graduating; i.e. [hehe] I graduated on May 10th, 2015, and will be entering the country on May 4th, 2016)
-have ~$4000 to your name, in a bank account
-have a passport valid for 6 months AFTER you leave Ireland

Then there's a whole lot of stuff you have to gather FOR the application itself. For example, depending on which consulate you apply to, you need a ~$350 money order for the application, and you need proof of your university status, and you need visa photos to submit. To all you wondering, this worked for me:

I requested official transcripts from my university as proof of my graduation date. I took the visa pictures myself using photo booth on my MacBook, and then edited the size of them to fit the visa photo guidelines for Ireland using GIMP (you can look up what those restrictions are - I can't remember). BUT DO NOT go to a passport photo center - those pictures are different sizes and they often don't take into account the weird restrictions. This link will get you off to a good start: this link
Also, those pictures cost money and it just makes no sense to go to those if you can do it at home. The only thing is that if you print them at home (as opposed to taking them somewhere to get printed) you need to make sure you print them on glossy photo paper. Do not be that person who prints them on normal printer paper and submits warped, flimsy copies to the consulate (they will return them and that could potentially set you back a few weeks). As for my proof of funds, I printed out a bank statement and that seemed to do the trick. Then, you have to print out the application form and fill it out, and you can find that here: here
It's a pretty simple application, you don't need to worry about that part (it's literally the easiest part). And then if you don't already have a CV or resume ready, make that. And there are plenty of resources to help you do that; I'm not going to cover that here.

So get all of that together and just mail it to the consulate nearest you. You do NOT have to apply in person. But just a tip: I did contact them prior to submitting my application and documents just to confirm that I didn't have to apply in person, and they told me to mail my application via FedEx or UPS so as to secure a tracking number - which is a good idea considering you're mailing your passport in with all of that.

AND THEN.....

...you wait.

I submitted my application on 11/25/2015 and when I hadn't heard from them by the beginning of February, I called to ask what was up (it had been 10 weeks at that point). They told me that they had sent me an email at the beginning of January to tell me I had been approved in theory, but as it turns out they got my email address wrong. At that point, it would have been 6 weeks since I submitted my application - so it really shouldn't ever take more than that for them to get back to you. Especially when you consider that I had submitted my application right before the holidays - it really should not take more than 6 weeks, ever.

So when this happens, they simply approve your visa in THEORY. You have a few more steps till it's made official: buying a return airline ticket FROM Ireland, and buying health insurance valid for the entire stay. THIS IS WHERE IT GETS TRICKY.

YOU CANNOT PURCHASE PLANE TICKETS MORE THAN A YEAR IN ADVANCE. So my natural conundrum was, "Uhhh how am I supposed to purchase an airline ticket for something over a year away?" As it turns out, they don't care when your return airline ticket is for - you just need to have one to get you out of the country (this is apparently a common policy in many countries, if you're visiting for a finite period of time). There may be other solutions to this problem, but this was mine: I went to the Aer Lingus website and discovered that they offer something called Flex Fare tickets, which are 100% refundable (save for a ~$40 admin fee or something) and are fully adjustable. They are also more expensive; mine was $950. This is the added price you pay for refundable tickets - a several hundred dollar price increase. So, I purchased a ticket from Dublin to the US for as far out as I could find (and as cheap - I don't care if it's refundable, having my money not in my bank account makes me nervous) and used that as my "return ticket proof." I'm going to wait till I'm in Ireland to refund this, as I am unsure still of whether or not they need proof of this ticket in order to let you into the country. But either way - that's what I did, and I sure as hell wish I had found a blog telling me that was a solution before freaking out over how to deal with this.

The second tricky part: health insurance. I've had enough nightmares with asterisks in health insurance to know that I need to know exactly what I'm signing up for before I just put my faith in the good hearts of insurance brokers. So, after all of my research, I found that IMG International Health Insurance was probably best for me. It will only cost me ~$750 for a full year of coverage, and it also fits what I know tend to be my health pitfalls (like, I have bad teeth and I need dental coverage, which they offer). And they're cheaper than other plans because there are certain things they don't include that I don't feel are necessary for me (like, I have travel insurance through my travel credit card and I don't need an insurance package that includes that). However, this plan covers pre-existing health conditions, so you cannot apply for it more than 30 days before its effective date (as you may get sick between those two times and they want the smallest window possible - THIS IS A GOOD THING THAT THEY ARE CAUTIOUS LIKE THAT). So I faced another problem: how do I get proof of health insurance when the policy I want gets alarmingly close to the date my travels start? My solution was to purchase a plan with World Nomads. It's super easy to sign up for, and you can get a full refund if you cancel the policy within 10 days (so long as the effective date is not within that time frame). And let me say this: I would recommend against World Nomads. You see it advertised on many travel blogger sites, but I think those people might be getting breaks from the company to endorse it. From the reviews I've read from travelers who needed to use the insurance, it is not a good insurance. Plus it costs over $1000, and doesn't cover serious issues that may need immediate attention (like cavities - do you really want to let a cavity rot in your mouth for 7 months because your health insurance doesn't cover that?) but covers other things that you can find other ways of insuring - like flights.

So I essentially purchased a fake flight and a fake insurance plan, submitted those to the consulate via email, and received my official visa in the mail today.

Pre-Ireland: Part 1

I've always fancied myself a traveler. I remember being about 12 years old and envisioning myself visiting my family after returning from a long trip to some European country, hugging my nieces and nephews and telling them stories about my travels. In these visions, I had long, curly blond hair and I was always greeted by my family in the kitchen of the house I grew up in, a relatively isolated country house that sat on a 15 acre plot. The kitchen sink had a bay window that looked onto our back deck, which sat atop the hill in the back yard that we would sled down as children. At the bottom of the hill, a creek separated a small grassy field from a dense woods, where I first began exploring unfamiliar territory in my youth. I'll never lose the feeling I'd get when I would travel out into that woods alone - "I have no idea where I am or what is over that hill but I can't wait to go see" - my feet bare and sinking into the cold mud, my arms scratched from walking through uncleared clusters of trees, my skin moist from the nighttime dew of the Ohio summer. Even after I knew that woods so well, I always felt that I was embarking on a new, unique adventure when I'd enter it on my own (which was how I preferred to explore it). The apple trees left rotten fruit on the ground that smelled sickly sweet and squished between our toes as we stepped over them, and bees always surrounded these areas just to make the adventure that much more intimidating. The water in the ponds was always brown and murky and flies always swarmed about them, and there was always a locust chirping somewhere in the distance. Ah - locusts and cicadas. My dad taught me to pick their shells off of the trees after they shed their skins to make a collection that I'd store somewhere in the garage near his work bench. My dad also taught me how to find trees just skinny enough to bend with my weight, but just thick enough to support it until I reached the top, so they would warp and bring me safely back to the solid ground. Those summers could have lasted 5 years each or 5 minutes; they will always live on eternally in my memory.

But somewhere along the line, I grew up a little and I started wearing makeup and I started liking boys and I started carrying purses and I started hating my parents and all of the stuff younger me valued just came to a halt. Those solo adventures into unknown territories took a hiatus, and I eventually found myself living in Columbus, OH, with a BA in Linguistics and Russian, bartending to support the rent on my 1 bedroom apartment downtown. And after all of the nights of cigarettes and 2am coffee and 6th beers and repeat Netflix episodes, I decided I wasn't happy. I found myself anxious just going to new grocery stores and I found that the desire to explore, that I had maybe had again when I first moved to Columbus, had simply burned out. I decided that I needed a change. So my friend Mark and I, after months of hypothetically discussing it, sat down at a strange new coffee shop one fine Autumn day and just booked a hostel for New Orleans, LA. Why NOLA? Neither of us particularly knew; the real question was, "Why not NOLA?"

A month later, we found ourselves embarking on a 13 hour drive to the Big Easy (I hate that expression, btw). As we drove over Lake Pontchartrain and into the city, I found myself experiencing that feeling I thought I'd lost - that "I have no idea where I am or what is over that hill but I can't wait to go see" feeling. We checked into our hostel, unloaded our things, and then hit the road by foot to find a decent quiet bar. We sat down and sipped our beers out on the sidewalk and just took in our surroundings. The bugs chirped and the thick fug of the air felt dewey and muddy and I remember thinking, "Most of these people around me live here, and they have no idea what kind of amazing high being in their comfort zone of a hometown is giving me." It made me think back to Ohio, and all of the wonderful things I find unamusing and commonplace, that may leave a stranger in awe. I think it's important to remember that.

During our trip, I met several young people who were just trekking it across the US, most from the UK commonwealths. And if you were to ask them why - they would simply have no response other than what could be summed up as, "Why not?" I was so envious of them, knowing that in a few days I would be back in my lonely downtown Columbus apartment, waiting to go work the same shift I've worked a hundred and some odd times.

That trip changed our lives, mine and Mark's. After I flew back to Ohio, he proceeded to travel around the SW US, and is still doing so as I write this (4 months later). After I flew back to Ohio, I proceeded to seek ways to fly back out.

Within 5 days, I decided I wanted to do this Working Holiday Scheme in Ireland. Within 4 weeks, I mailed in my complete application to the Irish Consulate in Chicago and held my breath.