Medical and Interview Date

By Colin

Since my last post, I have been in London for a medical examination, which I passed without any problems.

I had to fill in a form that had general questions about my health (and which was very similar to one I had to fill in and bring with me to the appointment).  Then I was back and forward to various rooms to do different tests and get various checks.  I had a chest x-ray, got weighed and measured, had an eye test, had my ears examined and had a top-to-toe examination of my general exterior health.  I also had a blood sample taken to rule out several diseases.  The total time for the examination was around an hour and a half.  This fitted well with my flight schedule home, and thankfully the process was easily completed in one day, as I had planned.

I was told that if I had heard nothing after 4 days, I had passed.  I heard nothing.

The next stage is an interview at the American Embassy in London, which has now been confirmed for February 12.  An overnight stay was unfortunately unavoidable, because the interview time is scheduled for 8:00 in the morning.

I thankfully had the opportunity to speak to someone at the medical who had already completed his interview, and he told me that it isn't much to be concerned about.  The main thing he told me was to be there in good time, because there was a long queue even when he arrived an hour before his allotted time.  I have a checklist of documents I need to bring, all of which I already have.

I'll post again after the interview - hopefully with some good news.

DS-160 and Medical

By Colin

The next stage for me was to fill in an extremely in-depth form online: DS-160. This is the official K-1 visa application for submission to your interview embassy.

I was asked questions about myself, including details of my previous visits to see Victoria, employment history, a basic outline of my education and endless questions about whether I have been involved in things like genocide, people trafficking, terrorism, recruiting child soldiers and other shady things.  As with all forms, it is important to read all of the questions carefully and not presume that the answer will be no to all of them.

At the end, I had to upload a picture in the passport standard size, which proved to be a nightmare.  Every picture I took myself, would NOT crop down to the specifications required by the online "help" tool.  In the end, I went back to a photo shop where I got my passport pictures taken and they put the original onto a flash drive for me.  I uploaded that, and it worked perfectly.

One other problem that I encountered with the DS-160 was the very first question, which asked the location from which I was filing the application. I selected Belfast (being the closest place to me), but I hadn't realised that the answer should have been London, since that was the embassy which was processing the application. I received an email asking me to fill in the whole form again, because I made that one mistake.

I also have booked an appointment with the embassy doctor in London for my medical examination, which I will attend this Wednesday (Jan. 7th).  I've booked the trip so that I don't have to stay overnight, so hopefully I'll be okay for time, getting to and from the airport.

I'll post again later this week to go into more detail about what was involved for the medical.