In about...four or five months now, I'm leaving. I'll be leaving America for the first time in my life to live in Europe, away from my parents, my family, and my friends, for an entire year.
It's both exciting and really, really terrifying.
Last year, about this time, I realized that I would really love to go on a student exchange. (This didn't just hit me from nowhere, this epic revelation or something. We had been hosting a girl from Japan.) After doing some research and working out an elaborate speech to present to my parents, it was finally decided that I could apply to become an exchange student and go to France.
If that wasn't exciting, I don't know what is.
By the end of the summer, I had chosen a program (CIEE), had printed out all the paperwork, and was ready to start applying. Eight months, three letters of recommendation, several translations, a lot of worrying, and a couple arts-and-crafts projects later, I was finally ready to actually send my completed application in. The finished monster was somewhere around forty pages, nearly a fourth of them completely in French. Goodness, that was a lot of paperwork.
And now, a month after all of that, I'm still waiting for a response.
Okay, yes, I understand that it takes a long time to review forty pages of application, especially when you've got a whole bunch of them from a whole bunch of kids, and then it will take a lot of time for the French branch of the program to look through it. I know this.
But it really doesn't stop me from being anxious and absolutely terrified.
There's this little voice in the back of my head (everyone has one) whispering "You've messed up. They won't take you, you're not good enough. You won't get in." It's driving me crazy!
But anyway, enough of my whining.
So far I've been doing a lot to ensure that I won't have problems with this exchange:
-Completing my Junior English courses online and during the summer.
-Babysitting at my church for some money.
-Taking my Consumer Economics course a year early. (And getting a lot of confusion for it. I don't recommend anyone else doing this.)
-Supplementing my French 3 class at school with a lot of learning on my own time. (Berlitz Advanced French course book, you are my best friend.)
-Filling out all sorts of paperwork and getting my passport. (Which was a pain.)
Well...it doesn't really look like much, when I list it. But, it sure feels like a whole bunch...
I really can't think of much else to say on the subject until I'm accepted... (or not...)
Wish me luck!
~Josie
