I've long been interested in how many students spend their summer in the USA, and it was so fascinating, you know—all alone, heading off to who knows where... for the whole summer... on one hand, it seems scary, but on the other, it's so cool! Later, I found out the program is called Work and Travel USA and started reading about it online, and the more I read, the more I wanted to go myself. One evening, while I was on ICQ/Agent as usual, I started asking friends if they knew anything about Work and Travel USA and what they thought of it. Some hadn't heard anything, some had heard of it but for some reason believed that "there's no such thing as a free lunch," although I personally don't see any trap in the program... others had heard from friends, and some had friends who had gone and spoke very positively about the trip. Finally, one of the people I asked was my classmate, and he replied something like: "Yes, of course I've heard of it, I've wanted to go for a long time!" We talked for a long time about it and started dreaming about how we would go. On the IEC website, we found info about our city, where the office was located, the address, phone number, and the coordinator's name. Literally the next day, we went to the office, and our coordinator told us what was needed to participate. In principle, everything was quite simple, and we finally decided that yes, we were participating! We agreed to meet the coordinator again in a few days, filled out and signed the contracts. Then came the payment, filling out the application on this site, waiting for the DS-2019 confirmation, and diligently searching for a Job Offer. When the DS-2019 form arrived, we went back to the office to fill out the DS-157 and DS-158. At first glance, it's just 3 sheets of paper, but in the end, it took about 5 tries to fill them out correctly—one tiny mistake and that's it... start all over again =) Then we paid the MRV Fee, and after filling everything out, our documents went to Astana, while we started preparing for the interview and waiting for the date to be set! Very soon, a date appeared on the site—February 26th. It was the evening of the 23rd, and it takes almost 2 days to get there, meaning we had to leave tomorrow!!! And tomorrow at lunch! We were in shock from the surprise, but also happy, of course, that we were going for the visa. The next morning we went to the station, bought tickets, and by lunch, our train was heading toward Astana. By that time, I still didn't have a Job Offer, but it wasn't too scary at that moment. However, while approaching Astana, I decided to check my email from my phone and was very pleasantly surprised that finally, out of some 400 resumes and cover letters sent, I received a positive response—a filled-out Job Offer form. The next day, I printed it out and went to the interview with it in hand.