Once again, promising myself to sit down and write a report, I put everything off until later. But that 'later' arrives, and with it, the time when I have to get down to business.

Memories seem like a wonderful dream with each passing day, but if I focus my consciousness on rewinding those memories and imagine that it is June 17, 2010, outside the window and I am standing at the airport, I can feel a slight flutter in my chest...

But in reality, this story, or rather my story of my crazy summer adventure, began much earlier...

Let's go back a couple of months. October 2010, and this thought that just popped into my head one fine day: 'It would be great to go to the USA.'

And this thought really hooked me, and seriously too...

And things got moving. Very rapidly. That time, for some reason, I didn't put everything off until later as I usually do. I asked a friend if she would like to go to the States, to which she replied, 'Well, yeah, that would be great.'

Then I accidentally found out that another girl from our dormitory (I live in a dorm with other students, so the problem of spending some time away from parents didn't affect me) was also planning to go to America that summer. I went to see her and just asked which agency she was going through, to which she replied: 'CMO'.

And it was as if everything was decided. The next day, I just went to the CMO office and, without expecting it from myself, walked out of the office already signed up for the program.

Afterward, I told my mom over the phone that I had signed up for a program called 'Work & Travel' today (of course, I had told her about the possibility of participating in this program before, but it was still considered more like 'theoretically, I would like to go...').

And here I told her that I had just walked out of the office, that I had already signed up for the program, and that I needed to pay the first installment within a short time.

My mom, fortunately, always supports me in my endeavors; she knows that I am a quite independent adult and is always 'for it,' but only as long as everything is under my control and I know exactly who, where, and how everything is happening.

I, of course, gave my word that I would take this seriously, and at the end of the conversation, a conclusion was reached and it was unanimously decided 'YES'.

However, the feelings I experienced a little later (after leaving the office and talking to my mom) are hard to describe.

Suddenly, I experienced emotions that I never thought I would feel. I suddenly realized that I was scared. Yes, I became suddenly, instantly, insanely scared.

A feeling of fear because I realized that I knew nothing about this program. I only knew it in general terms. Without various nuances.

And the scariest thing was that I still didn't know for sure if my friend was coming with me or not.

And then, of course, the panic calls to my friend began, regarding the confirmation of her trip.

A couple of days later, it turned out that she wasn't going—it just wasn't working out.

And I clearly remember lying on my bed and just staring at the ceiling. Staring and thinking, 'Okay, so in the summer I'm going to an unfamiliar country, crossing the Atlantic Ocean, to a country whose language I know, let's say, poorly, I have no idea where I'll live, who I'll work for, what I'll do at all, HOW IS THIS EVEN HAPPENING and I AM ALONE!'

Somewhere at this moment, I started, to put it mildly, panicking.

At the same time, I continued to exemplarily pay the installments and arrange everything that was needed.

I don't know why I did it myself. And in parallel with this, I thought that this was the stupidest and most reckless venture I had ever undertaken.

I was as if waiting. Waiting for something. Something was supposed to happen.

The embassy interview was approaching. Which I was very afraid of. In winter. Having gone home for the holidays, I even went to English courses.

And of course, with whom, if not me, should such a thing happen that they called me two days before the embassy interview and informed me about this upcoming event.

And I was gripped by even greater panic than before. What to do? I am 5,361 km away from Moscow, in two days there will be a decisive interview where they will decide whether to give me a visa or not, and this cannot be postponed, and I only have a ticket to Moscow in 4 days!

I remember it was late in the evening. So the next day in the morning, I rushed to change the tickets. In the end, of course, I arrived for the interview, having managed to buy two wrong tickets for different dates, go and change them, wait for a delayed flight for 8 hours due to an emergency landing of another plane, and almost miss the plane, run to it, sit down, and ask the neighbor in the seat, 'Is this plane flying to Moscow?'

To my great happiness, everything ended safely, and I was exactly on time for the interview the next day.

The evening before it, I was, of course, worried, but I already had thoughts that if I were denied a visa, then maybe it was for the best, it meant it was meant to be, I had no one to fly with anyway.