EDITORS NOTE: Pioneer staff writer Ida Stallvik is spending her holiday traveling to Norman, in homes to get problems with her visa corrected. Along the way, she’s blogging about her experience.

I did stay up until three am, I did almost forgot my toothbrush, I counted and looked important documents ten times over. This all too familiar travelling procedure, never sickening. I enjoy the sleepless night, packing, and as my mentor and author-hero pointed out, oh, in so many different stories, advise, and ways, he popped up in the middle of the paranoia (paraphrasing)”You’re not supposed to worry about it, just take care of school stuff and enjoy yourself’.”

So I did.

It’s been over a year since I’ve been to the land of potatoes and fjords, and the fact that I will have a secular interview for an international student visa has shaken me to my core for about, well, too long. That is, unhealthy long. However, I gotta say, sitting here at an Irish bar at the Dallas-Ft Worth airport, for the first time not traveling by myself, I am feeling content, like things will somehow work out, no matter what. Scratch that, I expect to work hard, but, the things that are out of my control, that I’ve done and given my all towards; I feel like it will matter.

And I can’t even begin to explain how much that matters.