And so, the second year began. I got even closer to my dream, but it started to get a bit scary. Ulyana and I agreed to sign up after the New Year, since we needed to find out when our exams would be in the summer and, accordingly, how early we could fly out. My passport had expired, and I just couldn't bring myself to renew it. Thankfully, I read somewhere that you can sign up without it and bring it by February. That calmed me down.

December arrived, and I heard some shocking news: Ulyana had just signed up! oO I threw a tantrum, of course (I love doing that), about how she could do that, what I was supposed to do now, how we were going to leave together, and I brought up a lot of things from the past ;) I need to prepare for everything mentally, and here I was presented with a fait accompli that she had to pay the invoice by the end of the week and I could go with her to sign up. I fought with my mom because she also needed time for moral preparation. But in the end, I was given the money, and I left the next day to sign up.

The Moscow IEC office is certainly extremely amusing. I will never forget how Vanechka tested my English level. In the end, I answered him in such a way that it was clear he took a long time to process it ;) Don't get me wrong, my English is quite good: English specialized school, 98 on the Unified State Exam, no problems at university, plus, in parallel with the embassy interview, I'm preparing for the BEC Vantage certificate exam (taking it in May too, curious to see which comes first). But of all the people working there, I can only single out Zhenya, who is a total sweetheart: she listens to all my questions, repeats everything a hundred times, explains everything clearly, and even laughs at my jokes afterwards :D

By the way, off-topic: never pay attention to all those threats from the IEC that you need to bring your passport/fill out an additional agreement/bring an offer by a certain date, otherwise there will be a fine or something worse. If a deadline is approaching and you're struggling with something, just write to them. You can always reach an agreement (I recommend writing, because I've seen how "diligently" they answer calls or "benevolently" solve problems over the phone). I started processing my passport at the end of January, even though I had to bring it by February 1st. They called me around the time I submitted the documents for the passport, asked how things were going, I said it was going poorly, and in the end, they asked me to write to the coordinator about it. The coordinator asked me to come in and write a statement, and that was it! No promised fine or other troubles ;)

I made my friend swear that she would stop giving in to pressure from her mother (that's exactly why she went and signed up alone), that she would honor, respect, and support me, always go to the IEC with me, and all that other stuff. Yeah, I can be a bore, but I don't mean to, and it's very rare ;)

So, after that, there were all sorts of contracts, agreements, banks, cards, invoices, and other tedious stuff. I want to highlight the work of the Paveletsky branch of BSGV; there works one very sweet girl whose name I unfortunately always forget. She's even better than Zhenya from the IEC! Let's move on to the most interesting part - searching for an offer...