So the posting every day thing...yeeeeah. Clearly, that isn't happening so much. But, I am thinking it's okay, because though I did not actually post, I did think of posting, and therefore I am not worried about forgetting. If I had had something to say, I'm sure I would have posted. Or at least written stuff down to post later. With finals coming up, I may not post every day, but so long as I at least think about it, I should be okay, right? Right?

Well, we'll just have to hope so.

Doop doo doo

Alright, so. I already suspect this "every day" thing is gonna be difficult for me. I just can't really think of what I should say. Hopefully it will get better once I'm actually, you know, doing stuff.

Anyway, in updates for today, I need to pay my fees to UA. $6,000, wooooo. Now that all the money is disappearing, it seems a lot more real, I suppose. Of course, I'll probably never feel like I'm prepared enough, but I'm trying my best. I know once I get there, things will calm down and I will have a blast. In the meantime, I'm just trying not to let myself get buried under all the paperwork. It isn't an easy task, but I'm doing my best.

The Paperwork Black Hole at the University of South Alabama

So I decided last night that if I can get into the habit of blogging once per day, maybe it won't be so hard to keep it up once I'm there. So then I had to decide what I would write about today.

Today, I'm going to fill you in on a figure who will no doubt be making my life a living hell for the foreseeable future, and therefore will likely feature prominently here. I would like to introduce you to Ana Burgamy. Ms. Burgamy is the head of the so-called Office of International Education. It is her job to make sure that all paperwork is filled out in a timely manner and sent to the correct places. Unfortunately, Ms. Burgamy is terrible at her job.

Ask anyone who has ever had to deal with her, and they will likely regale you with tales of how their trip or even their graduation was put in jeopardy by an oversight on Ms. Burgamy's part. Whether it is misplacing paperwork, forgetting to send it in, or simply forgetting to alert you to the fact that it needed to be filled out in the first place, Ms. Burgamy seems to be an expert at making you sweat bullets right up until the moment the credit comes through on your transcript.

I thought I was doing pretty well with her. Maybe the people I'd talked to were wrong! Although, I had a hard time believing that when the Chair of the Foreign Language department encouraged me to make several copies of my paperwork, "because Ana will lose them." Still, I thought maybe I was just lucky. Not so. I received an email the other day from Ms. Burgamy, asking me for copies of, among other things, my passport and my application to the program at the University of Arizona. Had she told me I needed these things from the get-go, there would have been no problem. However, as of the email, guess where those things were. That's right. In Arizona. So the only way I could get her these things before about a week prior to our departure would be to ask the lovely people at Arizona (who actually know what they're doing) to fax back copies of the requested paperwork. Frustrating.

I honestly do not know how Ana Burgamy still has a job. Everyone that I have ever spoken with about her tells me how terrible she is. Just mentioning her name is sure to elicit groans, or at least a displeased expression. Even the Chair of the Department knows how awful she is. So how is she still employed?! It makes no sense!

Where am I? Where am I going? Awww...

So I've decided to start a blog. For a person as incredibly bad about updating things as I am, this could prove to be a futile endeavor. However, I feel obligated to try. I'm really intending this to be a travel journal of sorts, so hopefully I can force myself.

I will be travelling to St. Petersburg and Moscow, Russia this summer. My flight leaves on May 21st and returns on August 1st. Since I have less than a month before my departure as of this posting, I will be blogging rather sporadically about the inanities of paperwork, etc., and likely my feelings and emotions involved with the trip.

Consider it more of a diary than a blog.

I went to Japan in the summer of 2004. One of the things we were required to do was keep a daily journal of our experiences, which would be checked every few weeks. At the time, it felt disturbingly like homework on what was supposed to be a fun trip, and so I was pretty terrible about it. I started out with great excitement, as I usually do, writing at length about how excited I was or how many hours were left in the plane flight. But, as is also customary for me, I began to grow more and more uninterested in the whole process as the weeks went on. I wrote down nonsense just to say that I had written something, and after our final check, I didn't write anything at all. I figured I would remember. After all, these were the most exciting days of my life thus far; how could I forget? But I did forget, and I would give anything to go back in time and kick myself in the butt and make myself write down every last bit of that wonderful trip.

Although the circumstances are certainly different this time, I don't want this experience to turn out like that one. I want to remember everything. And so, I will hopefully have learned from my 14-year-old self's mistake and post at least once per day once I am there.

We'll see how it goes.

-Erica