Officially Hate Microsoft and PCs

So, I had a very rough day today. As if the visa process wasn't difficult enough. I woke up this morning and powered on my laptop. It took quite a while for it to load and all of a sudden I received a blue screen error. I worked on it for a couple of hours acting like I knew what I was doing. I finally gave up and took the laptop down to the PC repair shop. After several hours of diagnosing the problem and £245 (about $423). My hard drive failed and needed to be replaced. So 3 hours of labor and a new hard drive later, I finally have a computer again. Ever since I have owned PCs I have always had hardware/software problems. I am extremely tired of dealing with these problems along with viruses, worms and trojans. Once the university loan money comes through in a couple of weeks, I am purchasing a Mac laptop. If you think about it, Windows is already releasing a new operating system. It seems like they do this every year. When will they perfect their operating systems and stop failing? Windows XP is one of their best by far and has little problems, they should just stick with one OS and fix the bugs and security loop holes. Why continue to start from scratch and build upon existing operating system versions? Mac has consistently had success with their Leopard OS, and I think more and more people should steer towards a Mac. Well, I will stop ranting and raving here. Hopefully nothing else happens to me, I am sick of these little problems, they are really adding up cost wise.

Americanization All Over The World

Was out exploring the city yesterday and just wanted to point out some things that I saw on my walk. Just when I thought that I was so far from home, that all changed. I was walking down North Bridge road and on the way down it, I came across a Blockbuster, Subway, Quiznos, Pizza Hut, Dominoes Pizza, Papa Johns Pizza and an Apple store. Even at the grocery store there are Pringles, Lays (Walkers over here), Axe deodorant (Lynk deodorant over here, same thing), Coke, Sprite, etc. It is absolutely ridiculous how much Americanization has occurred throughout the rest of the world. I can say though, that there is a huge variety of food to choose from over here and of course, they drive on the opposite side of the road as us.

Enjoying the Lovely Scottish Weather

Hey everyone, just wanted to let you all know I made it here safely yesterday at around 10am Scotland time about 2am AZ time. The flight over was actually pretty quick and I ended up having an empty seat next to me on the flight, so I was able to sprawl out and sleep a little. You gotta love sleep, we had about 7 hours until the plane landed in London and when I woke up, there was about an hour remaining. I walked about 9 miles yesterday and was absolutely exhausted near the end. The weather is great here, was about 59 degrees when the plane landed and by the time I arrived at the bed and breakfast, is was nice and sunny outside. However, just when I thought it was going to be nice and sunny all day, it began to rain. Then, 10 min later, the sun came out again, and then 10 min after that it began to rain again. You get the idea. I am in my closet right now (really, the room I am in is so tiny, there is a bed and a sink and about a 6ft x 4ft space to walk around in. Whatever though, it gets the job done. In the end, all I care about is if I have a bed to sleep in, not the size of the room. I had dinner with the family I will be staying with in August. The lady's name is Daphne and she had her two sons and two women from California for dinner. We had a homemade Haggis dinner and is was so good. I walked past the University of Edinburgh building yesterday, not sure if it is the one I will need to go to, I don't think it is because there were a bunch of signs for the school of law. The building is pretty neat though, so old and medieval looking. I stopped at the phone store yesterday and I have to have a bank account here in order to get a cell phone. So I am heading to the bank today to set up an account for here and then hopefully I will have a cell phone in a few weeks. I took a few photos with my camera phone yesterday, I didn't feel like carrying around the Nikon, so here they are. Hope everyone is doing good and I will talk to you all later!

Last Minute Student Visa

So I was having problems with getting my student visa through the British Consulate in Los Angeles. I was in Washington and found out my visa application had been rejected. Unfortunately, because I forgot to include the loan information with the application, it was rejected. The worst part about having your visa application rejected is that they make you start all over again. So, you need to fill a brand new application out, have fingerprints scanned a second time, pay the $244 application fee again. I was so stressed out that I did a search on Google and came across this expediting visa service that would get it to me within 24 hours if needed. So I called this place and was told I needed an original letter from my lender for the amount of money I was granted.

This letter had to be an original and stamped or signed by someone at Sallie Mae. I contacted Sallie Mae and they said they would have the letter to me within 3-5 days. However, after 8 days had passed, I began to stress just a tad bit. So I called the visa place back and the lady told me that the documents that I received in the mail the first time from Sallie Mae would work (I scanned them and sent them in to the visa place for this lady to look at). She told me to ship it for 8am delivery so that it would get to her the next day so that it would be processed on that day. Well, $136 to ship the package and $186 to expedite the package back to me within 24 hours was ridiculous!

Well, at 10:12am this morning, I received a package from FedEx. I opened it up and low and behold, my passport book contained a giant sticker in the middle of the book that said "UK Entry Visa". Woohoo! Now if that wasn't a task trying to get this visa! So hopefully everyone now knows that EVERYTHING MUST be included with the application, if one little thing is missing, it will be rejected in a blink of an eye.

A New Child Amongst Us

On a side note, I am currently in WA with my sister. She went into labor on Friday June 19th. At 10:37am on June 20th Michelle Lynn Young was born into our world via C-section. Weighing at 8lb 9oz and 22.5in long. We are now at the hospital with Kristin recovering from the surgery and will most likely go home from the hospital tomorrow.

Obtaining Visa is a Tedious Process

So I mailed out the application for a UK visa on Friday in hopes that it would get there ASAP. The scary thing with the application is that the British Consulate in Los Angeles wants original copies of everything. So all of my official letters from the University of Edinburgh, my real passport, my real Bachelors Degree certificate have all been sent to Los Angeles through the mail. Scary! I sure hope it does not get lost! There are 6 weeks to go and they say the visa takes 6-8 weeks to process. I hope it is done before those 6 weeks are up, otherwise I will have no passport to get into Edinburgh. I spoke with a friend and she says that her visa did not take 6 weeks, and to not worry. So I am a little less stressed now. Anyway, just wanted to give an update on the status of getting to Edinburgh.

It's Official...

So I have finally signed and sent all paperwork for enrolling into The University of Edinburgh. It was a long tedious process, but it is now finished. All I have to do now is find a place to stay for July. I already have a place to stay August-October until I move into a house. The semester begins on August 10th and I am getting excited to move. Here is a short video of the university, listen carefully to the professor who is lecturing in the beginning, this is what I will have to get used to: