YES Abroad Application

I submitted my YES Abroad application! After constantly trying to find something wrong with my essays and incessantly changing my country rankings I decided to just submit. It was kind of an impulse decision but I'm glad I did it. Now I will wait until probably February 28th to see if I am a semi-finalist. This will be a long 66 days! (Yes, I already have a countdown)

This is kind of random but my final rankings ended up being Morocco-Tunisia-Ghana-Turkey-Oman-Indonesia-South Africa-Bosnia-India-Egypt-Mali-Malaysia-Thailand. It was super hard to do that and really, Thailand would be just as amazing as Morocco!

NEWS!!

So actually I got this news quite a while ago but I just made this blog and I thought it deserved it's own post.

Dear Lili Zubar,

You have been selected as a semi-finalist for the NSLI-Y program!  Complete the following steps to remain in consideration for a 2014-15 NSLI-Y Scholarship.

I am an NSLI-Y semi-finalist!! So this means I will have to get a medical and dental eval as well as an interview. My interview is scheduled for January 11th and I am so excited and nervous at the same time. Wish me luck!

As for my YES app, it is due January 9th. My essays have been written to perfection(hopefully!), my recs are in, and my countries are ranked (which was very hard to do). Tomorrow I will apply for a passport to complete the app and send it in!

How It All Started

My name is Lili and I am applying to two programs (NSLI-Y and YES Abroad) in hopes of being an exchange student next year!

YES Abroad is the reciprocal program of YES, a program started after 9/11 to promote understanding between America and countries with high Muslim populations. A couple years ago YES Abroad was formed and American could go to one of 12 countries (Bosnia, Egypt, Ghana, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Mali, Morocco, Oman, South Africa, Tunisia, Thailand, or Turkey) to learn about Islam and help break down stereotypes.  http://www.yes-abroad.org

My top country choices are Morocco, Tunisia, Ghana, South Africa, and Turkey. I had a really hard time ranking because all of them are so interesting and unique that I would be super excited to go anywhere!

"The National Security Language Initiative for Youth (NSLI-Y) program, sponsored by the U.S. Department of State, provides merit-based scholarships for eligible high school students and recent high school graduates to learn less commonly taught languages in summer and academic-year overseas immersion programs. 

NSLI-Y is part of a U.S. government initiative that prepares American citizens to be leaders in a global world. Now more than ever, it is important that Americans have the necessary linguistic skills and cultural knowledge to promote international dialogue and support American engagement abroad. NSLI-Y aims to provide opportunities to American youth that will spark a lifetime interest in language learning." (http://www.nsliforyouth.org)

The languages that NSLI-Y offers are Arabic, Mandarin, Hindi, Korean, Persian, Russian, and Turkish. I am applying for Russian and Arabic academic year.