Story: "How I got my visa, or making it to the Mitino radio market before the wholesale warehouse closed, while grabbing a visa on the way!"

I used to think endlessly: "Will my dream of the best summer in the USA come true?" And only IEC really helped me with that. The 'evil' Uncle Sam, in the person of the consul, suddenly said clearly at the window: "I want you, baby, well done, your dream has come true!" I could have gone to the village, but I got lucky this year, I'll say thanks to IEC!

So, one fine day I log into IEC.Exchange and see that there is an interview date in my profile. I was very surprised, because I had submitted my visa application about two weeks ago. I immediately wrote on vkontakte, it turned out that I wasn't the only one who had an interview that day, but at first there were very few people. I was terrified, thinking there would be at most 10 of us, which meant a detailed interrogation for me since the consul had time to fuss with everyone! After all, I was in the first batch of 'J-1s' of 2010!

From the very first day, I started stubbornly cramming everything I could and brushing up on my poor English, which I had once learned myself from a book. I was very scared that my session wasn't closed, but as it turned out later, it didn't matter.

About a week passed and I received a notification via email that there would be an interview on such-and-such a date and a 'not childish' list of participants. It was like a balm to my soul, otherwise I was already preparing for the worst with my crappy English and zero conversational practice!

These 2 weeks of waiting flew by very quickly while I talked to ambassadors at night :)

On the evening before the embassy visit, I prepared a folder of documents and went to bed earlier than usual. I got up at 5 a.m., not calculating the time spent in traffic jams (heh heh, what traffic jams at 5 a.m., I didn't think), and by 7:00 I was already near the agreed meeting place for participants. We were scheduled for 8 o'clock, so we had to freeze while waiting for everyone. IEC staff arrived, and for about an hour they were putting tags on us; there were about 200 people and everyone was freezing terribly, some were even dancing!!! Our dark-skinned friends from Africa had no headgear at all and were freezing the most!

I felt almost no fear or excitement; I was thinking more about how not to be late for the Mitino radio market.

After saying goodbye to my bags, I was supposed to go with my group to the embassy, but I decided to wait for a friend and ended up going not with my group (as it turned out later, this played into my hands). When I approached the embassy and didn't understand where my group was, I started looking for them, but it turned out that everyone had already gone inside. Luckily, the guard let me through out of turn to join them.

After passing through some kind of shed-annex and a bunch of metal detectors, I found myself in a small hall where everyone was given DS forms to sign, but I had already signed mine when I submitted the visa application to IEC. Moreover, I had even scribbled on the consul's spot (what a mess). Then I went to the windows where they took fingerprints, and after passing this simple procedure and bypassing a huge queue (out of turn) that stretched from who knows where (like a total impudent person), I headed into the interview hall (I don't remember, but I think I wanted to ask the coordinator something who was there, and I passed the consul at the same time).

I saw that the queue was 'live', meaning no one was being called, it was just based on the principle of 'whoever is bolder goes forward'.

Small change from pockets is taken at the entrance as a 'donation' to the embassy :)

Yes, by the way, you can only bring documents into the embassy, nothing else! You leave all your belongings in the IEC wonder-mobile. How about that!

It was a bit inconvenient that there is no cloakroom in the embassy, so I had to carry my jacket everywhere.

There were an extremely large number of people and it was very stuffy.

After hanging out in the hall for a bit and checking my documents, I started pushing towards the windows; it was fun, interesting, and there was no fear at all.

When one of the windows (number 12) became free, I went straight there. At that moment, I kind of lost all my senses and, in zombie style, followed to the consul and shouted HELLO to him loudly, almost for the whole hall to hear! The consul was busy with something, but after 2-3 seconds he answered me with a smile and a short conversation began.

I won't give an example of my interview, as it was no different from other examples that I posted on the last page of my blog.

When he saw that I had signed the DS in his place, he laughed very loudly and juicily covered my 'art' with his signatures and stamps.

My 'evil uncle' didn't look at anything except the DS and my passport, so my grade book and student ID were not needed at all!

When he asked, 'Do you have an employer in the USA?', I offered to look at the offer, but the consul said it wasn't necessary.

For a couple more seconds he checked something on the computer and finally said, 'Everything is OK, have a nice summer in the USA'.

And just 5 years ago, when I was dreaming about the USA, I couldn't even imagine that my dream would come true so quickly!

Happy, I walked out of the hall to the guys, they started asking questions, I answered everything I knew, then I went downstairs, met the coordinators and asked the questions I was interested in, and then finally headed home :)

Advice - don't worry about your major you are studying and don't be shy, my friend is studying at some tractor faculty in an agricultural college and also received a visa that day without any problems :)

I want to note that the embassy is quite interesting, beautiful, with many different American symbols at almost every step, but unfortunately, they didn't let us look at this beauty.

Already at about 12 o'clock, being inspired by success, I was at the Mitino radio market.

An interesting moment, when I was taking the subway home, I kept looking at the passers-by and rejoicing, saying to myself 'I am going to America, and you are not', I think this feeling is familiar to everyone. :)