South America?

Hey all, this is Sophia here reporting on the outcome of my recent Canadian interview! There is good news and...interesting news. Let's start with the unequivocally good news:

I am definitely going to be and exchange student next year. That little sentence on the application that said I wasn't necessarily accepted until they told me after this interview was just, I don't know, a precaution in case I turned up obviously high or something. But I am certainly accepted.

Now the interesting news:

I am not necessarily going to France, or even to the European continent. I knew that it was possible that I wouldn't get to go to France. I had backup options if that country wasn't available. But it never crossed my mind that they may send me to the wrong continent! I could get to France (although this is extremely unlikely- most of the exchange students this year want France, and there are only two spots!), but I could just as easily end up in Japan or Brazil. They kept asking me about South America in the interview, and I just didn't know how to respond, because I simply wasn't prepared for that question. "Where do you want to go in France?", that I could deal with. Not so with "How do you feel about Brazil?"

I think it was this confusion that contributed to my feeling that the interview didn't go too well. The closing question was, "If you were sent to South America, would that be a deal breaker for you?" At the time, I wasn't able to answer, but during the drive home my mom made a very good point. I was looking at it as a "France or Brazil?" question, but really what it was was "A year in your average American high school, or a year studying in a foreign country?" A year in any foreign country is guaranteed to be better and more educational than anything I could experience where I am now. So, to answer that closing question (albeit a little late), of course I'll go to Brazil. I'll go to Japan, or Mexico, or France if you can send me there. I'm still dying to spend the year in France, and I'll be crushed if I don't get there. But I'll get over that. And I would be so deeply honored to go anywhere in this wide world that I will go anywhere I end up ready to throw myself into the experience.

Bye for now,

Sophia

P.S. Apparently we'll be hearing in early March where I'll be going, then I'll start going to orientations/getting more information about host districts, ect. in early/mid April. You readers will be among the first to know when I find out my host country, so..bye until early March!

Postponement and Passports

Three pieces of news!

1) Passports arrived! They are beauteous and high-tech, complete with computer chips and shiny, shiny crests and lettering.

2) All the paperwork is turned in. 18 pages, four copies, complete with colored photographs of various things and letters to host people and everything else they wanted. The first test is being able to successfully complete the extremely complex and confusing paperwork, and I think I passed!

3) The District Interview has been postponed. Postponed! To February 12th! Are they trying to make me implode from the suspense? The only comfort I have is the conversation I had with our local club student exchange representative, in which he said that it is very uncommon for students to be rejected at this stage. Whew. Keep your fingers crossed for me, though, just in case :)

Next post will probably be about the District Interview...until then, bye!