The Button of Destiny

Well, I am getting ready to submit my Fulbright application. I have made the needed revisions and all I need to do now is upload the essays to my online application and click “submit”. No more interviews or additional essay writing, yet my heart is in my throat. One little “submit” button is all it takes to possibly hurl my dream of teaching in Latin America into reality. That possibility is pretty scary. Dreams are safe. You don’t actually have to do the crazy things you want to do. You just fantasize about them. But as soon as I click that button everything is set in motion towards making it real. I’m not even sure which thought is more terrifying: being rejected or being accepted. I will try not to obsess over the what-ifs until March when I should receive the answer from Fulbright. I am sure I will have plenty to keep me busy until then.

Today I will dance around that “submit” button and proof-read my application a few more times.

The Interview

Last Tuesday, I sat down in a conference room with my Fulbright Advisor and four campus committee members. My nerves were jacked way up (as they always are for interviews) despite how much I had prepared over the weekend. All of the committee members are faculty at UWT and three of them are previous Fulbrighters themselves. I definitely felt a little intimidated in their company.

Their questions began abruptly, and even though I had practiced answers for ones I knew would come up, all of my prepared responses vanished from mind. I felt like I was scrambling for words and not making much sense. I tried to tell myself to take it easy, that this wasn’t a job interview, but my brain kept sending freak-out mode messages to my body anyway: my hands started shaking, my mouth went dry, and my body temperature soared.

The interview is a total blur in my mind. I don’t remember much. But after all the Q&A the meeting took a very different turn. It was at this point that they began to give me feedback on my essays and overall application. The room became comfortable and relaxed. The committee members began outlining the strengths of my application and they said it was already very good. They gave me advice on what to elaborate and where to go into more depth. They also gave recommendations on what to add, based on my answers to their questions.

Later that day, I received an email from my Fulbright Advisor that provided her notes on our meeting. She began by saying that the committee was very impressed by my maturity, experience, and commitment to students. She also noted that my application was already very strong, and the recommended revisions would only make it better. What a huge confidence boost. Even though I feel like I messed up on a couple of my responses due to stress-induced amnesia, I left feeling like I might actually have a shot at this.

Now I have until Oct. 14th (the national deadline) to make these revisions and submit my entire application to Fulbright. This will be a challenge, but I am excited to finally finish and focus on other responsibilities, like my NAFSA project. I will also start looking for other international opportunities to apply for, in case my Fulbright dream doesn’t come true. Until then, I will be working three days per week in the study abroad office, training and guiding the new Study Abroad Ambassadors. I am so excited for this new year of international programs at UWT!

More to come as I begin putting the finishing touches on my essays.

University of Cartagena – Cartagena, Colombia.  (Qué linda, no?)

Done! …But not.

A few days ago I submitted my Fulbright application for the campus committee to review. I was hard pressed for time and still trying to edit, but at 7pm on Wednesday I decided to stop messing around with my essays and just click “SUBMIT.” These past couple of days have felt odd now that I don’t have a major looming deadline. I can’t shake the sense of feeling like I need to be doing something.

(Not so) Luckily, I have another deadline approaching of a different sort. My Fulbright interview, conducted by the campus committee, is on the 23rd. Only ten days away. There is much to be done to prepare. Unfortunately for me, I am notoriously good at screwing up interviews, so I can’t say that I am too excited. However, I am hoping that by thoroughly preparing this one will turn out differently, as it is for a different kind of opportunity.

My preparations will include studying. A lot of studying. I have to refine my knowledge of Colombia because a major part of the interview is grilling the applicant about their chosen host-country and why they want to teach in that country specifically. But beyond this, I also have to be able to explain the feasibility of my chosen project for civic engagement and portray my suitability to be considered an “ambassador” of the US while I am abroad (among other points of consideration). So yeah, I can’t say that I am not nervous. Once this step is finished, the committee will give me some pointers on how I can strengthen my essays and overall application, and lastly I will officially submit everything to Fulbright by the national deadline of October 14th.

On another note, I will have something else to be working on over the next month and a half. Something that I honestly wasn’t expecting to have to be working on at all. In the late spring, I submitted a poster proposal to NAFSA for their upcoming bi-regional conference in Portland, OR. NAFSA is an association of international educators in the US. It consists of university offices for study abroad and international student services, study abroad companies (like CAPA, CIEE, and SIT), international internship providers (like IE3 Global), ESL providers, organizations like PeaceCorps, and maybe even more groups of international educators that I don’t know about. I became a member of NAFSA to further integrate myself into the world of international education as it is the field I would be working in as an English teacher abroad. It also the field that I have the most experience in so far, since I have been working and interning in the study abroad office of my university for the past year.

Anyways. Their bi-regional conference is in November, which is for all of the international educators on the west coast (including Alaska and Hawaii). One of the components of the conference is the “poster session,” where presenters bring projects and such that they want to share with their colleagues in international education. They present in an exhibit hall, with posters, and the others at the conference go around the room observing their work and listening to their presentations. It is essentially like a science fair, but for international education instead of science.

Well, I submitted a poster session proposal for this conference several months ago to present a project of mine that centers on “first time effect” study abroad programs. An example of one of these programs is the Expedition Fellows Program that I helped to lead earlier this year. Programs like this focus on students who have had minimal (if any) international experiences. I can elaborate on my project and overall argument in a later post, possibly closer to the conference when I have done more work on it, but all in all, I recently got an email saying that my proposal had been accepted. Exciting, yes. But also intimidating, since my first participation in a NAFSA conference will be as a presenter. At least this way I get a discount on the registration fee!

Deadlines

My Personal Statement is in its final throes. By the end of the weekend it will have morphed into something Fulbright worthy. I was so excited this morning when I got an email from my Fulbright advisor saying that she was very impressed with my last draft. She gave me a few more tweaks to make, but I am finally beginning to feel confident about my application. 

I have started now on my Grant Purpose essay. Here is where I explain why I am applying for this opportunity, why I have chosen Colombia as my host country, as well as describe my proposed side project. I have sent my (very) rough draft of this essay to my Fulbright advisor for feedback on my ideas, so hopefully I will have a decent plan for it by the end of the day. Working on this essay will take up my most of my weekend. 

The deadline for my entire application is next Wednesday (yikes!). Close friends will be visiting us Monday evening through Wednesday morning, so considering this, my personal deadline for my essays is Monday evening. I know I won’t get much done with our guests around, especially since we will be celebrating their return to the US from their year-long residence in Norway. So I will just expect to be thrown from reality upon their arrival. 

I am still waiting on a couple of referrals to be submitted, as well. I hope that my referral providers will be able to finish their evaluations by the Wednesday deadline. If not, it isn’t a total loss. Luckily my Fulbright advisor said that it would be okay if one or two of my references were submitted a little late, as I was relatively late beginning the application process. Today I will send out another reminder email to ensure that my providers know the deadline is swiftly approaching. 

Sanctuary of Our Lady de Las Lajas in Colombia.

Feeling the Pressure

I sent the third draft of my personal statement to my Fulbright advisor earlier this week. Her reaction to my overall essay was good, she thought it was very powerful. But she also had several recommendations. For instance, I began the essay with a short description of the influence my study abroad experience had on my personal growth. But she told me that because most students who are applying for the Fulbright have studied abroad too, many of the essays that the committee receives begin with that sort of intro. So she recommended that to make my personal statement stand out I should begin it with what makes me more unique- being a first generation student. So in my fourth draft I have rewritten my intro, but this change a long with all the other changes I need to do is making things difficult. I have to re-structure the entire essay and so far I am pretty frustrated. All this stress and I haven’t even begun the second essay. Guess what I will be doing over Labor Day weekend?

Also, I need to get this fourth draft completed as soon as possible for another reason. One of my recommendation providers has asked to see a draft of my essay so that he could get a better understanding of the context in which he is writing his recommendation. As I need everything (including the recommendations) submitted by Sept. 10th, this is becoming another huge pressure point under which I am working. However, what will be beneficial is that when I send him the latest draft of my personal statement I can ask him to give me some feedback on it as well. The more perspectives I can get, the better. 

The process of writing my personal statement has been surprisingly stimulating. I don’t think I would have ever truly understood exactly why my life is the way it is without trying to articulate it. Forcing myself to put my feelings about my background and my future into words has elevated my awareness of myself and has put components of my life into better perspective. For example, I didn’t really understand why I felt inclined to so strongly embrace my Hispanic heritage and add a minor of Hispanic Studies to my degree. I just felt that it was a part of my background that I wanted to know more about. But after forcing myself to write as much as I could about it, more started coming out. I realized that it was more about not letting my family’s cultural heritage fade away, like what happens to most immigrant families through the generations. Preserving pieces of our past and having pride is important, not only to my own identity, but to the identity of this country, which was built upon the backs of immigrants, both willingly and unwillingly. Though we are “Americans,” it is our individual stories that collectively weave the fabric of our American-ness. I realized that this is why I felt the need to retain my diverse background. Because losing that, for me, meant losing my own identity as well as a piece of the grand mosaic that is our nation. 

A Little About Colombia

I have finally finished a decent draft of my personal statement essay. It only took three drafts and two weeks in total, but finally, with a little (okay, A LOT) of help, I have produced something that I feel is worth sending to my Fulbright advisor. She will hopefully be able to give me more feedback on the direction and content of my essay, before officially submitting it with the rest of the application.

Unfortunately, I have to endure this process all over again once I start my grant purpose essay. That essay will go into more depth about why I chose the country I did (Colombia) for the English Teaching Assistantship grant and what my proposed side project is. I still need to do some more brainstorming and fleshing out of details for my side project, but currently I am thinking of creating a community newsletter of some sort for whatever area I would be placed within Colombia. 

I chose Colombia as my host-country because it is a nation that has intrigued me for some time. Most Americans think of drug cartels and violence when they hear “Colombia.” And admittedly, once upon a time, that is what I thought of too. During my study abroad program in Ireland, I listened to a seminar on Colombian refugees in Ecuador. I had never known of such a huge displacement crisis in Latin America before- it even rivals that of Sudan. When I returned to campus I began researching more on the issue, shared what I learned with my LSU club members, and gave a presentation on it to my Spanish class. And it is STILL shocking to me how little the media has chosen to dedicate to such a crisis.

Anyways, it was this initial interest that partly influenced my decision, but it was the people I have met from Colombia who secured it. A good friend of mine and her husband are Colombian. I met her at my gym and whenever we got the chance to workout together she would bear with my (very) novice Spanish skills so that I could get more practice. I have never met someone quite as encouraging in my language learning experience as her. She painted a picture of Colombia that I had never seen before. An image that you would never get from the media or from Hollywood. I can’t even count how many movies I have seen that present Colombia as a horribly dangerous place. And in some spots, yes it is dangerous, just like most other countries that feel the burdens of poverty and political tension. But most areas are incredibly pleasurable places to be. And the people- I have heard overwhelmingly wonderful things from even non-Colombians about their hospitality and friendliness towards foreigners. I REFUSE to let the promoted ugly sides of countries prevent me from experiencing the beautiful character underneath. And I refuse to let possible danger restrain me from living my life in the most fulfilling and meaningful fashion I can. (end rant)

Now, this is not to say that I would go to a place like Syria in its current, war-mired condition. A great indicator of the safety of a country is, in my case, the Fulbright grant itself. As my advisor mentioned, Fulbright would not offer grant opportunities in Colombia (there are currently 30 English Teaching Assistantship grants offered in Colombia) if it did not consider it a safe site for its grantees. This is opposed to my recent example of Syria, where there are no ETA or research/study grants available. This is true, in fact, for most of the Middle Eastern and North African countries. One day, though, hopefully this will change (I know, naïve optimism, I can’t help it).

 

A cathedral in Bogotá, Colombia’s capital.
http://www.nuevalenguatours.com/english/tours.htm

(Re)Introduction

As stated in my revised “About” page, I have decided (at the suggestion of my boss/mentor) to not limit this blog’s function as a travel journal and to include the journeys of my attempts at other international opportunities. Because this blog is present on the Office of International Program’s website, it will hopefully be a useful tool for other UWT students who are also interested in such opportunities. 

On a side note, I would like to explain the title of this blog because I don’t think I have yet. “Gypsy Feet,” for me, isn’t just a clever way of describing my love for travel. When I was young, my mother and I moved A LOT. From southern WA and the Portland, OR area, to the Puget Sound, to the deserts of Pasco and Walla Walla wine country, we have lived in almost every area of Washington state at least twice. Though this is not a vast area and our residency has mostly been contained to this state, we nonetheless were lovingly given the description of having “gypsy feet” by my grandfather, due to our incapability of staying in one place for too long. This did have some effect on me to a point; friends came and went quickly and starting over at a new school every year or two wasn’t so fun. However, the constant change did provide me with a decent ability to adapt  and, of course, a subtle need for new surroundings and adventure.

I feel that the term “gypsy feet” still applies to my life today, but possibly in a different manner than it used to. I am no longer picking up and moving every year or so, but I do have a constant craving to throw myself into unfamiliar environments and test the limits of my abilities. And so, as I do this throughout my life by traveling the world (something that I don’t ever expect to stop doing), it felt very suitable to title my online travel journal with what described me so well from the start.

As for right now, I am in the midst of doing something very scary. Scarier than applying for a study abroad program, or for a position to help lead ten students around Europe. Even scarier than applying to grad school (which will be on my list soon enough). I am applying for a Fulbright English Teaching Assistantship grant. For those of you who don’t know what Fulbright is, it is a highly competitive, highly prestigious program that provides grants for “international education exchange.” The specific grant that I am applying for allows the grantee to serve as an English teaching assistant in a country of their choosing for approximately ten months. The grantee receives a living stipend, gains highly valued international work experience, and can go on to teach English elsewhere. 

Now, I know that this is a long shot. And it is pretty petrifying. But teaching English abroad is something that I am going to do no matter what. Even if I don’t get to call myself a “Fulbright Scholar” in the process. But this grant would be PERFECT for what I want to accomplish, so I am going to take a chance, sacrifice hours to the application process and essay writing, and see what happens. Luckily, I have a great support system on campus to help me a long the way. But I don’t have much time. I decided to go for this opportunity a little late in the game, which could definitely be to my disadvantage if I don’t stick to the timeline. My application, along with the two essays I have to write, is due by my campus deadline of the 10th of September. After that date, the appointed advisory board at my university will interview me and then pass on my application to the Fulbright committee, whereafter I will be notified if I will, or will not, receive their funding. My next post will outline my own application process and detail a little more about my grant proposal. 

 

I’ll Be Back

My family took me to Marseilles yesterday. What a gorgeous city. My cousins don’t like Marseilles much because it is just a “big, dirty city.” But I found it enchanting. It is a historic city of huge Roman influence and is right against the Mediterranean, which gives it a very romantic feel. My view was from the Basilica Notre-Dame de la Garde. I don’t think I would ever tire of the surrounding landscape. Here it is:

The Basilica is situated high above the city and is a combination of Romanesque and neo-Byzantine architecture. Every year, many Catholics make a pilgrimage to this site on Assumption Day.

Today was very laid back. One of my cousins took me to the Montpellier beach where we walked in the warm sand and kicked a soccer ball around with his friends. It was probably the most beautiful beach I have ever been to. The water was such a deep blue and the sand was golden in the sunlight. I think I have fallen in love with the Mediterranean…

Tomorrow morning I will catch my first flight in route to Sea-Tac, making tonight my last night. I have had so much fun here and the wonders have not ceased to deliver. The great food, warm people, gorgeous weather, and antiquated backdrops have made this one of my top favorites of all the places I have been so far. Not to mention being with my family here has been a blast. The hilarious language faux pas, the early morning dance clubs, and trying my hand at driving in a very different traffic-culture has definitely added to my treasure trove of travel memories. I can’t wait to come back.

Some more photos from Marseilles
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At the beach in Montpellier
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Busy-ness! And More Über Cool Old Stuff

Yesterday I went to my cousin’s English class as a “surprise guest.” His teacher (who is from Portland, OR!) was thrilled to have a young American come and give the students an idea of the culture. I stood at the front of the classroom and the students began pummeling me with questions. Most of which were related to American pop culture and sports. And of course they wanted to know if I had ever met President Obama. A few of the students were a little shy, so the teacher allowed me to ask them some questions as well. I asked about high school in France and what they planned to do after graduation. One student asked me if I had to pay to go to university. I told him yes, and explained to him how many tens of thousands of dollars I owe for my four-year education. They were shocked. And rightly so, since in France higher education is free for citizens.
After the class, the teacher and I spoke together for a few moments and I asked her about how she came into her position at the school. I guess France has a similar government program going on as in Spain, where English-speaking teaching assistants are being hired by the thousands for placements in elementary and secondary schools all over the country. It was through this route that she got her foot in the door as a permanent English teacher in France.

The day before, my uncle took me on a tour of the oldest parts of Montpellier. I had no idea of this before, but not only does this city have a giant stretch of ancient Roman aqueducts, it is also home to THE oldest medical university in the world, which dates back to the 12th century AND is still functioning as a university and museum. I told my family that I would become a doctor JUST to study there. Because it is so gorgeous! And I mean, it would be so cool to say you got your M.D. at the most antiquated university for medicine in the world!

The aqueducts, which cut right through a bustling area of the city center:

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The oldest university of medicine in the world, the University of Montpellier:
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After this jog around Montpellier my uncle took me to a city named Millau to see France’s infamous viaduct. The viaduct is a huge, modern, beautiful bridge that was finished in 2004. It looms over the quaint, old city of Millau which is nestled in a pretty little valley. This bridge broke several records upon its construction and is a source of serious pride for the French. There is a visitors center where you can buy viaduct souvenirs and watch a video in almost any language that explains very succinctly the process of its creation. And, yes, I watched it. It was actually really interesting!

The viaduct in the distance:
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And up close:
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I guess at night the entire bridge lights up, and is quite a sight.
Here are a couple random photos of sea food, which is something the southern French are VERY good at:
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And Thomas, I found the recruitment office where you can sign up for the French Foreign Legion, haha.

It Was Only a Matter of Time

I apologize for the delayed posts, but it seems that I have picked up a nasty bug from one of my cousins who was just getting over a cold upon my arrival. I guess I should just start expecting to get sick while traveling, apparently it is something I can always count on. So this post will unfortunately be very short so that I can try to keep resting as much as possible today. Despite the developing sickness, though, my family kept me very busy over the past few days, so I will catch you all up on the events as soon as I am up to it.