Visa Paperwork is off

This past couple of days has been spend getting all of my visa stuff ready to be mailed to this British Consulate in Los Angeles. My diploma happens to be written in Latin, which presents a problem since the UKborder Agency only accepts documents in English or Welsh (what about Gaelic?). Normally you have to pay to have someone do a translation, but that wasn't an option since I just graduated and didn't have the time. So I had to send along a letter from my college, transcripts (the hassle of getting these is another story), and an enlargement of this really little card that came with my diploma. All this was mailed to LA along with bank statements, passport, a picture, and the two applicants packets.

As part of this process, I had to go to this office next to the county jail to be finger printed and photographed. It turns out that it’s hard to take my fingerprints. The pattern makes it difficult take them and to match them. The scanner's software kept trying to reject my prints because they had too low of a "score". The women tried one finger five times before giving up. I wonder if this means I'm well suited to be a burglar?

Introduction

In case someone other than my parents or friends actually find this blog and decide to read it, I figure I should write a brief intro. I've recently graduated from a small liberal arts college and will be moving to central Scotland in July to work there. I first went to Scotland in the fall of 2007 to study at the University of Edinburgh. You can find pictures from that trip in the link on the right hand side. In the winter of 2009, I applied for a job there. After a couple of phone interviews, they paid for me to fly to Glasgow for more interviews and I was offered the position.

I intent to use this blog mainly to record my preparations to move from Pennsylvania to Scotland, and once there, to be more of a travelogue of my misc adventures and daily life. I'm sure it will evolve over time as what I feel like writing about changes and my life becomes more regular. Right now, I'm hoping to maintain some degree of anonymity so I'm going to try to stay vague on personal details, my future employer, etc... For my random internet readers, I hope that you find some value in this blog. One of my goals with this blog is to provide some insight into some of the bureaucracy that Americans moving to the UK go through. I also hope that someone is able to laugh at my exploits.