VISA(s)!

So, we finally got all our information together for each of us: forms, letters from our universities saying we're accepted, notarized letters from our parents saying they'll financially provide for us, medical forms, passport photocopies, license photocopies, blah blah blah.

We drove to the Spanish Houston consulate and gave them all our paperwork. It was pretty easy (aside from the three hour drive down there). We dropped off the paperwork, paid the $100 fee and the lady said that our passports will return back to us with the affixed visas in 4-6 weeks. Easy enough for me!

Sublease!!!

Whew!! Well, I found someone to sublease my apartment for the spring! Jack, one of my roommates last year, needs a place for the spring semester. This works out really well for me because my roomates this year already know Jack, so they're not living with a stranger, and I have someone that I can trust to pay the rent!

Unfortunately, we're still looking for someone to sublease Bana's apartment. But hopes are high and we still have 2 months!

Go Euro! Go Euro! Go!

The Euro's value against the dollar is going down like crazy. When we paid our deposit for the housing, the exchange rate was 1 euro = 1.4 dollars. Now, it's down to 1.25. Earlier this year, it was at 1.6. If this keeps happening, we'll have some real cheap rent come spring.

Go little Euro! Go down for us!

Life after spain...

So I'm glad we have the flights worked out. The only thing that's still worrying us is subleasing our apartments!

Anyway, I hesitantly told everyone at work today that I'm studying abroad in Spain next spring, so I wouldn't be able to work for them during that semester. I was so scared of what they'd say, but they were totally cool with it! Everyone sounded really excited for me. I promised them I'd find them a suitable intern to take my place, and they hinted that they would still be there when I get back. In other words, I can keep working for them when I come back to the states in June (I hope!) So that's great news, especially since when we come back from Spain we'll officially be done with college and onto the REAL WORLD!

Countdown Clock

Check out the new countdown clock at the bottom of the page!

Thanks to www.countdownr.com for the useful addon!

Hook Em' Horns

Well, as we get closer and closer to our trip to Spain. The Texas Longhorns get closer to another National Championship. Since we stomped Missouri this past weekend, and already beat OU, our national championship hopes are looking really good!


But, we do have to play the rest of the Big XII South including 2 more top ten ranked teams (Okie State and Texas Tech) neither of which will be an easy game.

Nevertheless, assuming we win these games and continue on to the Big XII championship and win there, the Longhorns will be headed to another national championship. This poses an interesting, yet exciting, problem for me and Bana.

That game is scheduled for Thrusday January 8th, 2009 in Miami, Florida; only two days before we have to leave for Spain. I start a Spanish language class on the 12th and the flight and travel time up there is a little more than 24 hours. What this means for us is that we will have to leave the States by the 10th in order to get to Spain in time for my class.

Since the game is at night on the 8th, the band will probably fly back to Austin on the night/morning of the 9th/10th. As some of you know, the Band generally takes red eye flights because they're cheaper. Typically, we don't leave the airport until 11PM and don't get back to Austin until the early hours of the morning. Right now, Bana and I plan on flying out of Houston on the 10th. This means we'll have to drive to Dayton (Bana's hometown) as soon as we get back to Austin so that her parents can take us to the airport, and then turn right around and get on a 17hr plan ride to Germany and then another 4 hrs to Spain. WHEW!!

But, again, this is all contingent upon the horns winning out, which I think most people would agree will be an amazing feat. Honestly, I don't think anyone can stop us (Sorry Dad, Sorry Kearci), but anything is possible and you have to play every game.

So, that's the latest new development. Plane tickets are still around $400-500 for students, which is really nice, and we can put off buying tickets for as long as possible to see how everything develops.

We're also keeping a close eye on the Exchange rates (Bana keeps hoping we'll get lucky and the Dollar will be worth more than the Euro). Latest update from today is 1.33 USD/1 EUR. Let's hope it keeps going down!

One day closer!

So I think I'm officially obsessed with this blog, mainly because of the fact that it's a sheer stress reliever! Today Cade and I had our physicals to make sure that we're A-OK to go to Spain. Everything checked in fine, aside from a few immunizations next week.

Also, we wired our deposit for the dorm and they sent us an e-mail saying they received it, so that's checked off the list. And Cade was told from his program that he would be receiving his visa letter sometime next week, so once we get that we're all ready to go to Houston to the Spanish Consulate and apply!

We still haven't told our employers that we're going to Spain for the Spring. Honestly, I really don't know how. I almost feel a little bad about it - I love my job and I love the people here. There's so much going on right now, and once we come home from Spain, we'll officially be college graduates. Cade goes on to law school, and I go on to a full-time job. The timing makes this trip so much more confusing, but I hope everything works out - ideally, he would go to UT Law and I would work in Austin.

Currency Currents

So I think I just found my new favorite website: www.xe.com.

In light of the economic turmoil that's going on here in the states, as well as the rest of the world, I've lately been fascinated (and a little obsessed) with watching how the exchange rates go up and down. Just last week, 1 Euro amounted to $1.50. Now it's down to $1.30.

The website gives you minute-by-minute updates of the world's currencies, so I've found myself absolutely intrigued on how the rate rises and falls within the course of minutes. Craziness!

For instance, this is how the currency rates have changed just this year: http://www.oanda.com/convert/fxhistory

Classes

So, now that we've got the housing situation out of the way (or at least the where we're going to live part). It's time to start thinking about classes! CIDE is providing a lot of class options for Bana, but all I've got to work from is the list of classes that people have taken there before me from the business school (only about 15 courses total), and the Deusto website. I can petition to have virutally any course count for credit at UT, but it has to be similar to a class that we have here. Keeping in mind that I need three classes to graduate (two for my major, and one for my optional minor), it looks like I'll be taking two Finance classes, a Spanish history class (not to be confused with the language), and another class of my choice. One of the finance ones covers deriviatives and options and the other deals with the stock market in Europe. The history class I'm taking is a medieval Spanish history class which should be fairly interesting! As for the fourth and final classs, I'll probably take a business law class if I can, but it's probably going to be something like behavioral marketing, or production efficiency.

Hmm...well, that's it for me on classes right now! I still don't know exactly when registration takes place for those classes, but I do know that it's not until january at the earliest.

Money, money, money!

I guess it never occurred to me how much this trip is really going to cost. We've made the reservation for our dorm/apartment, and now have to come up with an inordinate amount of money for the deposit. And subleasing our Austin homes is still an issue. A freakin' huge one. But I think (at least I'm hoping) that this tide of costs is inevitable, and once the administrative dues are paid we'll finally be able to rest.

I just feel awful that our parents are helping us out so much with money. It's such a huge cost, especially in this economy, and for what? To be able to travel the world? Is that a luxury? Despite the costs, I'm hoping that it'll be worth it. I know it will. And everyone I've known that has gone abroad said to DO IT! This is absolutely a once in a lifetime experience, so hopefully someday we'll be able to pay them back for it.

My visa letter came in yesterday, and I'm meeting with my study abroad adviser to go over it with her today. Also, I'm wiring my half of the pricey deposit to the dorm today, so once that's done, we officially have a place! Now all we need is for Cade's visa letter to come in and we're all set to go to Houson and apply!

So much work!

So, like he said, we got all our acceptance terms in and now have way too much paperwork to fill out! And what's even more perfect is that I realized I put the wrong address in my paperwork. I hope that won't be too hard to fix, but the language barrier definitely won't help.

Also, another thing that worries me (and us!) is subleasing our apartments. My rent is $635 a month and his is $435 a month. If we can't sublease them, that's a huge cost that we'll have to pay out until our contracts are up in May. Jeez!

I know everything will work out. Life is always funny like that.

What she said...

So as usually is the case, while Bana stays up late doing productive things like Spanish homework, or creating Blogs, I go to sleep! Thus it falls to me to keep you updated on what happens in the morning.

First of all, and since this is my first time ever writing on a blog, I want to let you know that I can't type as fast or even write near as well as my journalist girlfriend. So, don't expect long sweeping reports from me. I'll leave that up to her and I have a feeling that most of my future posts will begin life this one...

Somehow we managed to finagle a way into a study abroad program in Spain at the same institution, and now it seems, we've managed to find a place to live together!

Yes, as of 9:25AM this morning, we officially have a home in Spain. La Residencia Universitaria Blas de Otero. Both of us were officially accepted and have only to complete the required forms (Ah! Forms, forms, and more forms).

Well, that's all the news that I have right now. Once we're in Spain, expect this Blog to be updated at least weekly if not daily. We encourage all of you, our friends and family, to post and ask questions, give recommendations, and just lets us know how things are going in the States.

We still have three months until we're there, but we'll keep you updated in everything.

Other than that...what she said!

So, for starters...

I knew I wanted to create a blog about this someday, but what better time than now? We don't leave for another three months, but the process has already begun! Besides, I'm up at 10:30, trying to procrastinate on my Spanish homework due tomorrow. So, I'm blogging about Spain! Oh, the sweet irony.

So let me begin. I'm Bana. The boyfriend is Cade. And we're studying abroad in Bilbao, Spain in Spring 2009.

That sounds like it required a lot of decisionmaking, but it really didn't. Honestly. Not at all. We're seniors in college this year, and having lost multiple opportunities to study abroad in my three years spent in college, I knew this year would be my last chance. So, just four weeks ago, not long after this school year started, I decided I wanted to go to Spain. Yeah, it was rash, and hasty and I'm sure I didn't think everything out as well as I should have, but hey, I wanted to go to Spain. That was step one. Getting the boyfriend to come along was a different story entirely.

Except it wasn't, really. He managed to finagle his way into a business study abroad program at the same university. It's really worked out perfectly. I'm doing a Spanish language and culture program, while he does his business program. And we'll both be able to graduate in May, provided that his professors let him take his exams early and get out of there in time for our graduation.

We've filled out all the paperwork, which was confusing as hell, because it's a different language. I mean, we know enough Spanish to get by, but still! But to sum up, the steps I took to get here:

1) hastily decide one day that I'm going to Spain; apply for passport
2) the next day, wonder what the hell I was thinking and how the hell I'm going to pay for this
3) research, Google, research, e-mail, research, Google some more...
4) talk to my study abroad advisor, where she pointed me in the direction of my study abroad program - it's called CIDE at la Universidad de Deusto in Bilbao, Spain
5) talk to the parents; get their go-ahead
6) applications, application fees, more applications, naps, fees
7) helping my boyfriend with his applications
8) getting accepted into the program, impatiently waiting for our visa letters to get here so we can apply for our visas

And that's where we are right now. The biggest thing on our plate right now is housing, which might be a doosy. Our first master plan was to stay in a hostel a couple nights after we arrived in Bilbao, and look for a cheap one bedroom flat shortly after that. Bloggers made that sound easy, because they said there was some type of central message board in the university where people put housing availabilities. But I e-mailed the Deusto housing person and she reminded me of all the reasons that's not a great idea. So, we're now looking at a cute little student residence apartment that she recommended to us. No decisions yet, but it seems perfect enough.

Second up, is flights. We need to book them, but the prices keep going up, down, up, down that I don't know when to book or when to wait. Obviously, we've chosen the latter for now.

So, I guess that's where we're at now. The trip is still three months away, but there's so much to do! And I'm so excited!