I'm knee deep in pre-travel prep. Most of the large administrative tasks, such as applying for a work visa and booking flights, are done by the program organizers, but that still leaves me to get vaccinations, power adaptors, proof of international insurance, etc.
Advice for students travelling out of Pittsburgh: STA Travel, on Meyran Avenue in Oakland, can dispense international student ID cards (ISIC). They won't do passport photos, but they'll give you business cards and send you down the street to the CVS. Show the business card to the photographer and you'll get a discount on your photos. I got 6 photos for about $7, and the whole photo process takes less than 10 minutes.
I've been wrestling with the issue of whether or not to bring my laptop. I don't expect to have steady or reliable internet access, and since I haven't been explicitly told that I need my own computer, I am fairly sure I don't need one to perform my job. But I want to take a lot of photos, and I shoot digital. So the laptop needs to be around for photo storage.
I also have to put serious thought into what else I want my laptop to do while I'm there. And the obvious answer is gaming. Cleary internet gaming is out. However, I have a box of old Playstation games sitting at home and I haven't actually finished any of them. I think it's time to find an emulator or two.
...which means my MacBook has to dual boot, because the PSX emulation options for OSX are pathetic, and they haven't been updated in 4 years. So I'll be installing boot camp sometime within the next 3 weeks. An XP partition will also give me easy access to other platform emulators and all my Blizzard games (Starcraft and Warcraft 3) that are too old for OSX.
Note to my parents (and anyone else who thinks, after reading this, that I'm going to spend all of my time playing video games): I won't.
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