As I believe I mentioned in an earlier post, Argentina and my exchange helped me realize that I wanted to go into the international field and to start planning with that in mind. With that I decided apply to scholarships through the State Department because I wanted to go on exchange again and this time for a year. But of course my school informed me that in order to go on exchange my senior year and not threaten my graduation, I would have to graduate this year with the class of 2015 instead of my class of 2016. I was all for it! So I started my then three applications to study abroad. These include at the time NSLI-Y, CBYX, and YES Abroad.
*below is a little overview of each program:
NSLI-Y the National Security Language Initiative for Youth is a State Department scholarship that offers high school age students the chance to study abroad for either the summer or a year and learn either Arabic, Russian, Persian, Chinese, Korean, or Turkish. CBYX or the Congress-Bundestag Youth Exchange is a scholarship that focuses on trans-Atlantic relationships with the United States and Germany. The US send 250 kids to Germany to live with a host family, attend school, and learn the culture of Germany and Germany send 250 kids to the United States to do the same. The YES Abroad scholarship send students from the United States to significantly high Muslim populations to learn about the culture and fill in the gap between Muslim stereotypes and USA stereotypes through intercultural learning and understanding. They send 65 students to either Bosnia and Herzegovina, Macedonia, Turkey, Egypt (terminated), Tunisia (terminated), Ghana, Senegal (new this year), South Africa (terminated this coming year), Oman, Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand, and India.
Besides applying to all these programs I also applied to 6 colleges including Utah State University, Oregon State University, Montana State University, University of British Columbia, University of Washington, and Arcadia University and got accepted to 5 and waitlisted for one (which was okay because I don't know why I applied there as I can't afford it and didn't really have any desire to go there).
After getting rejected by NSLI-Y Russian year program in December, I was quite upset as I really had a passion to learn Russian and go to Russia even before Argentina but it was okay. Over 3500 kids apply for the 625 positions so I was just happy that I tried. In late January I found out that I was a semi finalist for CBYX and would have an interview on February 28th. I was beyond happy and excited, especially after my initial rejection from NSLI-Y. Shout out to all the YES abroad applicants who kept me sane all throughout this process! I don't know what I would have done without them especially when I received bad news from the YES abroad program the day before my CBYX interview. I got rejected, again, and from the program that I really thought I would get into. I was super upset. But I took all that anger and being upset and went to my CBYX interview the next morning and rocked it! I felt really good afterwards and I guess it kind of helps that I have done this before and have interviewed students who decided to apply for Rotary this year. Oh! And a little but earlier in February, I found out about the ExCEL program which is a program that was literally just made in thing in late January 2015. (It send students from the US to Lithuania and I can't say too much as this program is brand new and the works are still getting worked out! But I should hear back from them in about a week or so, either late March or early April).
After being rejected from YES and even though I thought I rocked my interview, I lost all hope in spending next year abroad and started to prepare myself for two more rejections and told myself that I was most likely going to college. With that I decided that I would attend Arcadia University in Pennsylvania in the fall. Arcadia is the #1 ranked study abroad school in the USA and I had fallen in love with it's international program. I was also accepted to their First Year Study Abroad Experience, FYSAE, to London spring semester of 2016. My mom even bought tickets for us to go and visit it just to make sure I actually liked the school. I accepted the fact that that was where I was going to go and even considered withdrawing my CBYX and ExCEl applications because I thought I would just be rejected in the end and I didn't want to go through that again. But then, a surprise came my way. On March 23rd, I got a phone call from one of my interviewers informing me that I was one of the lucky recipients of the CBYX scholarship and would be offered the opportunity to study in Germany as a 2015-2016 exchange student! I freaked out! (I will write another post about this as how I found out was quite comical and this post is already super long). I accepted.
So now I have to go through the process of deferring for the year from Arcadia (and pray that they will still give me my scholarships), officially graduate from high school, and prepare for my year in Germany. This blog will no longer just be my Argentina blog but my overall traveling blog for my exchange in Germany as well hopefully my study abroad programs in college and anything in between! (Hence the reason why I changed the name) I hope to blog more in Germany and to keep y'all informed on my life there and leading up to it!
