It's Official!

Dear Ms Joni,

I am pleased to advise that your application for higher degree candidature at La Trobe University has been successful.


HOORAY!

So there it is, I am officially moving to Australia to do my Ph.D. As it stands right now, my commencement date is Feb. 25 2008, but that is not the most realistic date. More likely I will be starting in early March. What will determine this is whether or not I get scholarships, and if I do get scholarships, what kind and for how much. The other factor is how quickly, once the financial stuff has been sorted out, I will be able to get my visa and all that other practical stuff sorted out. That I don't find out until mid-January.

In the mean time, there's at least a couple of things that I can do to start preparing so that come mid-January I'm not scrabbling around like a crazy person. Okay, well that part will be unavoidable I'm hoping to lessen the severaty of it. One thing I can start doing are going through all my stuff and deciding what I'm putting in storage, what I'm going to try to pack, what I will ship out, and what can stay right where it is. This, it turns out, is an incredibly unpleasant thing to do for someone who's a bit of a pack rat. It's a lot like chopping an onion. I'm peeling back, starting with the stuff I know I have no use for and making my way towards the stuff I have more sentimental attachments to.

The second thing is getting a new passport issued. This has also turned out to be no walk in the park. On my first trip to the passport office I was informed that my passport is damaged and that I will now have to jump through several more hoops before I can have a new one issued. Time, fortunately, is on my side. Because on my second trip to the passport office I was told that what I thought was a valid birth certificate, since it says right on it that it's a valid legal document, was not, in fact, a valid birth certificate. I have no idea what I've done with my birth certificate so now I'm going to have to have a new one issued. (Unless it should miraculously reappear within the next week.) I'll also have to redo my passport form. Fortunately the very secure government website has saved my previous form, so that part won't be too difficult.

Right now things are moving along slowly, but once Christmas is over it's going to be crunch time! It's incredibly exciting and terrifying at the same time. I'll be gone for 4 years, and that's a pretty darn big commitment to make!