Yay! I'm legal!!!

Well, I got exciting news today.

My OPT (Optional Practical Training) Visa came in today. This is my work authorization for the next year. I can legally work in the United States from Jan. 4, 2010 until Jan. 3, 2011.

This is extremely exciting for me because a) I start at Walt Disney World Jan. 6 and I needed to be legal and b) this was my second time around applying for the visa, which is...a story on it's own.

And here's the story.

I originally applied for my visa in August. I got all the forms and pictures and letters of recommendation I needed together and handed it in to the International Students office at BYU-Idaho for them to send it in.

Content knowing I had taken care of that, I continued on to Vegas for my student teaching.

A couple of weeks later, I received an email letting me know that my paperwork had been received and my visa should follow shortly.

And so I waited.

And waited...

And waited...

But I didn't worry about it because I was just waiting for the visa and they might be backed up a bit.

Well, Nov. 1st I received an urgent email asking me to call the Int'l Office immediately about my OPT.

As it turns out, I was too efficient for the U.S. Government to handle.

My application had been denied because it had been submitted before the 90 days prior to graduation limit...19 days before.

The International office suggests you put in your application 3-5 months early because the visa people are usually behind quite a bit....

Well, apparently they caught up.

So, I was denied a visa and I had already accepted a job for January and those two don't go well together.

Fortunately, Bro. Oswald in the International office is awesome and he helped me get things together to re-apply. He even worked it out with the Financial Aid office so I wouldn't have to pay the $340 fee again. And when I messed up the redo of my application, he made a new for me.

So, needless to say I have been a little anxious these last couple of weeks waiting for my visa to come in...I have a flight to Orlando booked for Dec. 31 and I wasn't sure if I would have a work visa to cross the border with.

But, now I can relax and enjoy this wonderful Christmas season and pick up my visa from Fed-Ex in a couple of days.

I am so grateful for the wonderful faculty and employees in the International Office at BYU-Idaho for helping me as much as they do. They did whatever they could to make this process as simple as possible and helped me understand the process better too.

Yay!! Merry Christmas to all! I got the best present ever today!