How It Began...

 Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines, sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover. – Mark Twain

                Well after lots and lots (and I mean lots) of planning, it’s about time to start the biggest journey of my life: moving to London. I first decided I wanted to move there after my first visit, back in summer 2007. I was sixteen at the time, so that wasn’t going to happen immediately. I returned the following summer, where I heard from two Canadians staying with my aunt about a special visa for Canadian youths. This peaked my interest – and my idea’s feasibility – because until then I thought the only way I’d be allowed to live in England was through company sponsorship. The Tier 5 Youth Mobility Visa solved that problem for me. And so I started planning. About two years after that, a friend of mine told me about SWAP. It’s a Canadian program that facilitates the visa application process, specifically, the Tier 5 Youth Mobility one. It’s more expensive than just getting the Visa on your own, but they check all your documents and offer a lot of things that you wouldn’t get by doing it on your own. Eventually my friend Sarah decided she was as crazy as me and decided to join in on the adventure. It’s awesome because now all the stress and confusion I have to go through before and after the visa application process, I can share with else. We leave for England April 1^st. And here is how we got here (in case you ever think you may want to do something similar):

Step 1

                After much examination of the SWAP website (www.swap.ca), we bothered to see if there was any actual offices for us to visit. Lo and behold, there was a Travel Cuts (who is partnered with SWAP) at our university. So, more than a year before we would actually apply), we went and talked to them. Our travel agent for the entire process was Danielle Bruce and she is a goddess. Not only has she done lots of travelling, she’s been in the industry for over a decade and really knows her stuff. She gets excited with you and gets almost as frustrated as you are when things aren’t going right. If you are planning a trip and live in Calgary, go see her at the university, or give her a call at 1-403-282-7687, or email her at dbruce@travelcuts.com .

                At our first meeting with her, since it was so far in advance, we basically wanted to just get a sense of what the process was like and what to expect. You can apply with SWAP either on their website or through an affiliated agency like Travel Cuts. After this meeting, we knew we wanted to deal with Danielle. There’s something reassuring about being able to communicate with an actual person, rather than the internet. Sure, we had to put pants on and drive and pay for parking but it’s worth it when you think of something in the middle of talking about something else and there’s a person – not a computer – right in front of you with the answer. Like I said, we weren’t flying for another year, so we had what we needed and waited to go back closer to our departure date.

Step 2

                The SWAP website says you need to give yourself about eight weeks to go through the process. Originally, Sarah and I planned on going in January, immediately after graduating university. When we returned to Danielle, we learned that was not going to happen. I was going to New York at the end of October, while both Sarah and I were headed to Mexico for New Year’s. We were told that if everything went right we would maybe have our passports back before Mexico. But that was a pretty big gamble so we decided to hold off until we got back.

                If you’re wondering why we didn’t just put our applications in earlier, it’s because you can’t leave the country after you submit your initial application to SWAP. We could pay the fee but that was about it, otherwise I would have broken the protocol, even though you don’t surrender your passport until much later.

Step 3

                Back from Mexico, Sarah and I once again returned to Danielle. The first thing you hand over is a short form to register with SWAP. It’s pretty basic questions like your name, address, citizenship, etc. You also pay your fee. At the time we registered it was $630. Ours was cheaper because we did not need accommodation. Even if you get the package with accommodation, however, they only give you a couple days in a hostel. Not worth it, in my opinion. The cost went up a few weeks after Sarah and I paid, because the Canadian dollar is the devil and agencies are having to increase the cost of just about everything to make up for how low it is.

Step 4

                We were told it would take roughly 2-3 days for SWAP to email us all the forms we needed to fill out. Surprisingly, we got them the next morning. The email has four attachments.

1. A welcome letter from SWAP that also has a step-by-step guide for filling out the application. It is very, very specific. Sarah and I both went back to it several times to check some information, almost always finding the answers.
2. A note about travel insurance. With SWAP you absolutely have to have travel insurance in very specific amounts. They seem daunting (it’s something like $5 million in medical) but I guess it’s pretty standard amounts. SWAP recommends a form of insurance with Travel Cuts, but you can use your own. You just have to fill out a form and send it to them.
3. A short part of your visa application. In order to quality you obtain points. You need fifty. They are given in three sections: Citizenship, Age and Money. You have to be a citizen of a handful of countries, between 18 and 30, and have the equivalent of £1800 in your bank account. You also have to specify the documents you will be providing the British government to prove this. For Sarah and myself, we used our passports as proof of citizenship and age, and obtained letters from our bank, RBC, to prove our funds. This form does not get submitted to SWAP. You bring it to your VAC appointment later.
4. The main application form. It is very long and very comprehensive. It asks about everything from your basic information to incredibly specific travel history. For me, travel history was the most difficult. There’s two parts to it. In the first, you list your last five visits to the United Kingdom. You must provide dates and everywhere you visited (so try and remember your little day trips). The second, most evil, part of the travel history was a list of everywhere you’ve gone outside of Canada in the last decade. I travel a lot. I filled two pages. You must specify exact dates, as well as where you were and why you were there. And I’m pretty sure with a travel history as extensive as mine, ‘holiday’ just won’t cut it. So if I went for a concert, I listed concert. If I had any family living where I went and happened to see them, I listed visiting family. It was exhausting.
   Tip: If you have a lot of dates, like me, go through your Facebook timeline. I found every date I left and returned all the way back to 2007 because I always post a status about leaving and about returning. For pre-Facebook I had to start improvising. We went through home videos and photographs. At one point I asked my aunt to check a date on a postcard. My dad even went through his golf score cards to figure out when we were in Florida!

Step 5

                After finishing all the forms we took them back to Danielle to courier to SWAP in Toronto. Technically, we could have submitted them a day after we got them. We ended up waiting several weeks. As I’ve mentioned before, the Canadian dollar is terrible. The year before, £1800 was about $2800-2900 Canadian. By the time we were filling out our forms it was switching between $3200-3400, depending on the day. It was a nightmare. It’s a lot of money for two recent university graduates. We were finding ourselves constantly counting our money down to the last cent and it was getting stressful. Ultimately we decided to wait for one more paycheck, even though it meant we would be in Calgary longer.

                Once your forms are sent to SWAP they fill out the online application and lodge it with the British government. At that point they know you exist. You must have £1800 in either a checking or savings account on this day and you can no longer leave the country.

Step 6

                After the application was lodged Sarah and I received emails from the government, giving us our next steps. First, we needed to get our bank letter. With SWAP, they want to check your letter to make sure it’s correct prior to your VAC appointment. There’s a lot of very specific things. When I went into my branch I had printed off both the checklist and sample letter provided by SWAP. They were very helpful, even if they weren’t too sure what I was asking for. Some of it is very straight-forward (your name and address, for example) but it gets tricky when you must specify the date. My application was lodged on February 10^th but I didn’t go to the bank until the 12^th. My letter had to say the money was in my account on the 10^th. I explained it very clearly it needed to have that date – not the day I closed my tax-free savings, not the day I came in – and they did as I asked. I emailed my letter to SWAP and they gave it the OK.

                It was at this step that we were very grateful for choosing SWAP. Sarah got her letter done at another bank and when she emailed the letter to SWAP, they told her it was incorrect. So she had to go back. No big deal, except if we didn’t have SWAP checking it for us, that would have been the letter submitted to the government – and then lead to the rejection of her visa application. More money, more waiting, and a situation I don’t think anyone wants to deal with.

Step 7

                About a week after our application was lodged, Sarah and I had to pay a visit to the VAC (Visa Application Center). There’s only a few in Canada, so we had to drive up to Edmonton. We almost died because Alberta has messed up weather. Somehow, against all odds, we made it to our appointments on time. It is here that you surrender your passport, any old passports (or a letter explaining why you don’t have them), the visa application SWAP lodged, the bank letter and photocopies of everything (just in case). You also have to get a photo taken (something to do with facial recognition) and fingerprints.  Basically, biometric testing. It is at this point that you put everything in an envelope and mail it to New York. And wait.

Step 8

                They tell you it takes 15 business days for the passport and visa to come back to you, which is three weeks. Because you’re with SWAP, it goes to their offices in Toronto first before getting couriered to your travel agent. This feels like the longest 15 days in the world. After 10 business days Sarah and I received emails saying our visas were approved. I emailed Danielle to see what the next step was. She emailed SWAP.

                Now, between the time Sarah and I mailed out our passports and when we got approved, the VACs all got bought out by another company. We thought we were lucky, like when the SWAP rates changed weeks after we registered. Now you have to pay $115ish at the VACs, where before it was free. When SWAP got back to Danielle, they told her that because of this transition, our passports would be shipped directly to us. So we waited. And waited. And waited. A week went by and we were getting worried. I emailed Danielle again, who told me that if we didn’t have them back by Friday (10 business days from our first email) SWAP would look into it. We didn’t have them back by Friday but it appeared SWAP had taken the initiative and looked into it for us before then. Just as I was logging in to my email to inform Danielle of this, she emailed me to say that SWAP found our passports. The British government had held onto the passports during the transition. By Tuesday, our passports had already been to Toronto and were now back in Calgary.

Step 9

                Wednesday we made our last trip to see Danielle. We got our passports, with the visas glued inside. All that was left was to get plane tickets and travel insurance. We both chose to go with the Bon Voyage travel insurance offered by Travel Cuts. A one year Plan B (all the required insurance but without baggage or passport insurance), good anywhere but the United States, cost us $432. If we had taken Plan A it would have been over $700. Either option with the inclusion of the United States would have been over $800.

                As for flights, we ended up not using Danielle. We wanted to, but the flight we found that we liked was online-only, which meant she couldn’t get it for us. We had initially been hoping to use www.canadianaffair.ca but they only fly on Saturdays and it wasn’t a significant enough price difference for us to change our minds. Our flight was $662 and direct. What is even better is that it leaves at 10:00pm, and we will be tired. It gets to London at 1:55pm. What does that mean? We don’t have to stay up as long and might have been able to sleep a bit on the plane! Instead of trying to keep yourself the entire day to fight off jetlag, we can get through customs, to where we’re staying and it will be around 4:00pm. Grab an early supper, put on a movie and 9:00pm will come soon enough. (I find that if you stay up until 9 or 10 you will pretty much beat jet lag.)

Honorary Step

                Have a goodbye party! Our mutual friend organized a goodbye party for Sarah and myself. It happened several weeks before we left. It seems early but in the last few weeks you’ll find yourself so busy you will be glad you did it. Ours was perfect. We started out having dinner at a restaurant called The Keg, which is the place Sarah and I always go out to eat together. There were about twenty people at dinner. We had a good time talking and eating and drinking. It’s basically a fancier way to pregame. We have many friends who don’t like nightclubs, so it was also a good plan for people who had plans later or just didn’t feel like going out.

                After the restaurant we went to Roadhouse, which is the club in Calgary Sarah and I go to the most. We had the VIP room which meant there was a separate place for us to keep our stuff, complete with places to sit. You have to go downstairs if you want drinks or to dance, but I love the VIP room. We also had a party package which gave us $25 drink certificates and two bottles of champagne. There was about 30 people at the club (some people only came to that part which made up for the people who left after dinner).

So What Now?

                Once our passports got back to SWAP in Toronto we were registered for BritBound. It’s basically another version of SWAP, except located in the UK and not exclusively for Canadians. You don’t have to be with SWAP to use BritBound – they offer several packages for people new to the United Kingdom for different prices. We received the Hit the Ground Running package as part of our arrangement with SWAP. We haven’t exactly used them yet but it looks like they are a good bargain. Again, it’s important we have actual live people to deal with and, with an office in Shoreditch, BritBound will do that. They also have an orientation meeting that I’m really looking forward to and – what I didn’t know – a traditional pub lunch, which I think is a pretty cool idea.

                So we’re on to the last few steps (and days) before England – so what do we have to do now? FILL OUT MORE FORMS OF COURSE! BritBound has a massive form you need to fill out. It is really confusing at first. It took me a few visits to their website to get it all done. Some of it is easy, like saying when you’re flying. Some of it is daunting, like the employment section. And some of it doesn’t make any sense, at least at first, like setting up your Bank Account and Money Transfer, and a SIM card for your phone. As it turns out, you don’t need to have everything done right up until confirmation of your bank appointment for your BritBound forms to be considered finished. Which was nice, once we realized it. I’m still absolutely happy we used SWAP/BritBound but there definitely needs to be more clarity on the forms.

                Oh well, it’s an adventure?