April 8, 2018 ~ First Post!
Overview
Hello! This is Joseph Fisher, and a couple of weeks ago I found out I am a finalist for NSLIY Chinese Summer in Kaohsiung! If you are a future applicant, or just one of my friends or family members who just wants to keep up with what I am doing, this blog is for you! Especially if you are an applicant in the coming years, I found it difficult to find a Chinese summer blog that was easy to navigate and was consistent, so hopefully this will be a great resource for you!
What is NSLIY?
If you don't know, NSLIY stands for the National Security Language Initiative for Youth. Now to the uninformed, that might just sound like a whole lot of nothing. It basically means that the State Department is trying to protect the language diversity of Americans in future generations. They do this by assigning what they call critical languages (languages they don't want to die out in the youth), getting a lot of funding, and creating this program! They partner with universities and exchange programs in countries with large numbers of these "critical language" speakers to send a group of American high-schoolers over there for a summer or for a full year! Now it is not a walk in the park to apply. The application progress is pretty rigorous and includes a bunch of essays, an interview, and a letter of recommendation. I'll go into the details later, but I was one of the lucky 1 in 6 who got selected. If you do get selected, it is all worth it. The state department pays for everything. Your flights, your room and board, your meals, your metro card, they give you a weekly stipend, and I even heard they are giving us a local phone when we get there! I will be in Taiwan for 7 weeks with this program, studying Mandarin Chinese with 23 other finalists. I am so lucky to have this experience! If you are at all interested, apply!!! You can apply next fall at nsliforyouth.org. Here are the languages and countries where they offer them:
- Chinese (Mainland China and Taiwan)
- Korean (South Korea)
- Turkish (Turkey)
- Hindi (India)
- Bahasa Indonesia (Indonesia)
- Arabic (Jordan and Morocco)
- Russian (Russia, Estonia, and Moldova)
- Persian (Tajikistan)
A bit more about my program
Like I said, I applied for the Chinese Summer program and got selected as a finalist for Kaohsiung, Taiwan! In particular with the Chinese program, they have MANY locations (Zhuhai, Xi'an, Deyang, Shanghai, Nanjing, Qinhuangdao, the list goes on). They sort you into a location by your approximate language skill. In my case, most of the kids going to Kaohsiung have around two years of experience. You can go into NSLIY with no language experience or fluency, they don't discriminate! Before you start any NSLIY program, every finalist is flown to usually an American university to meet everyone and have a pre-program briefing. NSLIY calls this a PDO or pre-departure orientation. The Kaohsiung PDO will be at Columbia University in New York! Our PDO is from June 18-20, but immediately after that, we will all fly to Taiwan. We will be in Taiwan from June 21-August 5, all together exactly 7 weeks! We were lucky to have one of the longer programs. Our whole group is an experiment, because this is the first year they are introducing a summer program in Taiwan! They have had academic year on the island for many years, but now they are trying a summer program! If you have anymore questions, feel free to comment. It is officially 70 days until PDO, so I will have time to read and answer them :) Thanks for reading!
May 4, 2018 ~ April-May Update!
There have been a couple of moments throughout this process where there's been a realization that I'm actually doing this... and I just had another one!
Hey guys! It's been about a month since the last post and I wanted to catch you guys up with some of the recent developments that have unfolded since the last post! There has been a lot more logistics and stuff from NSLIY that we got so stay tuned for that too! I looked at my stats for the first time before I wrote this and realized a lot of people are actually reading! Thanks guys! Anyways I guess I'll just go topic by topic:
That's about it! Thanks for reading it all, I know it was long! There is one more thing though: Don't forget to leave a comment! If you have any questions or if you just want to leave a nice note, just go for it! It's nice to read people's comments and for me to respond to them, since I get to see that people are actually reading! Sorry for posting this late in the night and thanks again for reading!
- The Vlogs - So as a lot of you guys noticed, there is a link to my youtube channel for vlogs... with nothing on it yet. Stay tuned though! I plan for my first vlog to be an unboxing video of my program materials once that package comes in. Should be in the next couple of weeks! When I actually get to Taiwan, I'm gonna vlog regularly (once a week or more?). If you guys know of any affordable video editors for Windows tho let me know!
- The Facebook Group - Not sure if I mentioned it in last post, but we have a Facebook messenger group of all the kids going now! Well we don't have everyone yet, but I'd say a solid 75% (17/24 i think?). We also have two NSLIYers who are on academic year in Kaohsiung right now who answers all of our questions. We had our first video call a couple of weeks ago, and we plan to do another one too!
- Parent Webinar - Last week NSLIY had a webinar for the parents to go over program details and what not! Some of us students snuck on too, so we were able to ask some questions. I always love these sporadic info bombs, because you never know what little piece of the puzzle you will encounter that time! I did find out that we can't bike to the university, sad, but small in the grand scheme of things!
- NSLIY Email Bomb Part 1 - This week NSLIY has been on it with the emails! It first started with us getting our OPI registration email out of the blue! It was awesome! For those who don't know, OPI stands for Oral Proficiency Interview. If you not on your NSLIY application that you have studied your target language prior to the application, you have to take it before and after your trip. If you have no language experience, you only take it after (again, they don't discriminate!). What it actually is for NSLIY students is a 20 minute phone interview for them to see our language skills and sort us into classes respectively. I head that there is also an exam when we get there, but the OPI is a big part of what determines your placement. I scheduled mine for May 21 at noon, Wish me luck!
- Debit Card - I got a debit card this week!! They do give us a weekly stipend for spending money, but it can never hurt to have a way for my parents to wire money to me electronically. There are ATMs in most 7/11s so there shouldn't be any problems taking out money on the Taiwan side. For the curious: Taiwan uses the New Taiwan Dollar, where about 25 NTD = 1 USD.
- NSLIY Email Bomb Part 2 - In addition to the OPI emails, NSLIY sent out another email later this week! The moment all of us were waiting for... our student webinar! I think the email said May 9, so right around the corner! I'm super excited to get to know the kids better, add them to the facebook group, and hear more info about the trip!
- NSLIY Email Bomb Part 3 - Just hours after that webinar email we got a third email from NSLIY!! You have to understand, up to this point we have been grasping for straws lol. Now we get 2 emails in one night?? Nothing short of a miracle. This wasn't any fluff email either. It had our Pre-Departure Forms, Wenzao (University) Application, and most important of all... Our Student handbook!!! It is 29 pages if just pure hype for our trip! It's a great read! I'm gonna attach the link if any friends, family, or future NSLIY applicants/finalists want to read it. They also told us we'd start receiving weekly email updates! The Wenzao application was cool too! Other than like name, number, and nationality, we actually have to do two things in Chinese too! I thought they were awesome prompts, so I'll share them below:
a) Write a small paragraph (Chinese words or Hanyu pinyin) to introduce yourself and your study objectives. The purpose of this is for us to understand your Chinese level. Please don’t use a translator. You can write in English if you do not have any Chinese training. b) Please send a 3-minute recording using as much Mandarin as you can to tell us a little bit about yourself.
Cool, right? This is all amazing, but all of these forms and applications have mid-May due dates, so I have to juggle finals, AP exams, and filling out these forms lol! - Sendoff Party - I decided it would be a cool idea to throw a sendoff party for friends before I left since I won't be there most of the summer! The date is not solidified yet, but it should be around the week of June 10. Keep your emails open for an evite!
That's about it! Thanks for reading it all, I know it was long! There is one more thing though: Don't forget to leave a comment! If you have any questions or if you just want to leave a nice note, just go for it! It's nice to read people's comments and for me to respond to them, since I get to see that people are actually reading! Sorry for posting this late in the night and thanks again for reading!
May 22, 2018 ~ OPI, PPLP, Stickers, Oh My! (Mid May Update)
It's Only Been A Few Weeks But So Much Has Happened!
Hello! Welcome to another blog post!! There have been a few more developments in the last couple days, so I'll let you guys in on the deets. I liked the format I did last time so maybe I'll do that again.
1. Student Webinar! - A couple of weeks ago we had our student webinar! No new information per say, but it was mainly a recap of the parent one with a few added details. Stuff like contact numbers, medical insurance, gifts for host family, etcetera. The highlight of the webinar had to be meeting our resident director (RD) and seeing everyone's faces. Our resident director is named Wujun (or June for short). She is a native speaker originally from China, but lost and recently rekindled her talent with the Chinese language. She is currently a student at UC Irvine. Seeing her and actually hearing what she does made me think if that was something I could do for iEARN when I'm her age! After the formal lecture part was over, they turned it over to us for Q&A. When they did this, they turned on all our video cameras so we could see each other! As Bethany said, "It was cool to put faces to names".
2. Package Arrival - Probably a week or so after the webinar, I finally got the NSLIY package! This was going to be my first vlog, but the package was a bit underwhelming. All it was was a physical copy of our handbook (linked in the last post) as well as our textbook. Cool stuff for me, but I doubted it would make an interesting video.
3. New First Vlog Idea and a Call to Help - Now that I had to come up with a new first vlog, I thought it could be a good idea to just do an intro to me! Just a basic video saying who I am, what NSLIY is about, etc.. A pretty bland video to start with, but I thought I would need some practice filming/editing before I left. I have a free day tomorrow (no exams!!), so I enlisted the help of my mom to film. Should be out soon (I mean it this time)! As for the call to help, I haven't decided on a video editor yet! I have tried 2 computer programs, and picked the one I liked best. For me that was Filmora, but I have not purchased it yet and am still open to suggestions! Feel free to comment below, and remember I will be using a Windows laptop :)
4. Stickers!!! - If you know me, I like to switch around my laptop stickers a lot. Probably not the most economically sound idea, but I like to think I've developed a nice relationship with redbubble.com! For my Taiwan trip, neither I or RedBubble disappointed. If you couldn't see from the oversized photo beneath the title of the post, my laptop is lookin pretty Taiwan snazzy. My favorite ones I got have to be the "Bubble Tea Runs Through My Veins" and the I heart Taiwan with Taipei 101 as the "i".
5. My Recent "Personal Investments" - At age 15, I finally received my first debit card!!! It's been a while ride of many purchases this week, most of them under the excuse of "preparing for my trip". Some highlights of my shopping spree have been: my first pair of Chaco's, my amazing laptop stickers, and of course, another travel journal.
6. PPLP is In Session! - PPLP, for those who don't know, stands for Pre-Program Language Preparation (someone should make a boom for all these acronyms). This basically is a 5 week, loosely structured course for beginners and experts, created by the RD, to get you language-ready for your course and living in the country. For us, there are weekly assignments usually consisting of a written/spoken exercise and something from the book. We are also required to sign up for 2 office hours with our RD, 30 minute video calls with her and 1-2 other students. Knowing me, I signed up for 4. This is the first week, so I have already completed one written assignment and one office hour segment. Our written assignment this week was to create a 7 line introduction about yourself directed towards your host family. We also had to read about 20 pages of our textbook. Office hours turned out to be a lot of fun! I did mine this week with Bethany and Sophia. We had to each read our written assignments for this week aloud and then act out the dialogue from the textbook pages we read. We also did some speech and pronunciation exercises. Afterwards, Bethany, Sophia, and I all chatted on our Messenger group chat, creating backstories and drama for each one of the characters from the dialogue. It was a lot of fun overall :)
7. OPI from Hell - This morning was the dreaded Oral Proficiency Interview. I decided to try to make the best of it and go in with a positive attitude, but was quickly reminded of the horrors of my limited vocabulary as soon as the phone rang. The OPI is divided into two parts: the question-asky part and the roleplay part. First were the questions. I don't think I've ever said or will say “我听不懂” or “我不明白” in my entire life XD. Next was what I was most worried about, the roleplay. Before she read it out, I was trying to think of the situation, but it could've been anything. I was one of the last OPIs so I heard about the roleplays other people had to do. They ranged from "Vacation in China" to literally IT tech support on a computer. Finally after all of the nerves and the worries, she read out my roleplay:
"You are in Beijing at the airport and you are trying to get back to New York but your flight was cancelled. Ask the counter associate 3-4 questions in full Mandarin so you can try to get home"
W h a t. I was so shook XD. My extent of knowledge in transportation is literally "我今天坐飞机去中国", Today I fly on a plane to China. Now I'm supposed to talk to the counter lady about a cancelled flight? I barely remember how to say airport lol. Literally my best question I think was asking about the weather in New York. Sad, I know. So the OPI was a bust, but at least I'll show improvement!
8. Party Evites - After my crushing OPI defeat today, I wanted to do something productive, so I got most of my sendoff party details hammered out and sent the evites! I invited 26 people, and I think 6 have replied yes so far! To be fair, it will be in the summer and it is the first day. Other than that, today has been a good day (or should I say yesterday because I'm currently writing this at 3AM).
9. Santa Fe - On a way more serious note, the Santa Fe shooting did happen this week. It gets more and more scary as they continue to happen, as I keep on feeling like someday it could be my school. At the one in Parkland, I had a friend who went to that school. Now this one in Texas, one of the students killed was an alum of the YES Abroad program. For those who don't know, YES abroad is another exchange program through the State Department, which sends teens to Muslim-majority nations all around the world for an academic year, aimed at increasing ties between them and America. They are basically NSLIY's sister program, so this hit very close to home for me. The student's name is Sabika Sheikh and she went to her native land of Pakistan and returned home to a "safe country". Months later she was killed at a high school very much like another. All I am asking is that sometime in your day today you take a minute to send your prayers to this girl and her family, they really need it. Rest In Peace Sabika.
10. We are less than a month away! - As of the time I am writing this, it is currently 27 days until PDO!!! Needless to say I am excited out of my mind, but it has also been a very busy time in the Fisher family. Vaccinations, signing things, writing things, notarizing forms, re-notarizing forms, we are doing it all. If you ever have any NSLIY questions though, I will always have time to answer them. Feel free to comment on this post or shoot me an email! I also added a feature onto the blog that allows you to sign up for emails whenever a new post comes out! Check it out below! Other than that, thanks for reading and have a good day!
2. Package Arrival - Probably a week or so after the webinar, I finally got the NSLIY package! This was going to be my first vlog, but the package was a bit underwhelming. All it was was a physical copy of our handbook (linked in the last post) as well as our textbook. Cool stuff for me, but I doubted it would make an interesting video.
3. New First Vlog Idea and a Call to Help - Now that I had to come up with a new first vlog, I thought it could be a good idea to just do an intro to me! Just a basic video saying who I am, what NSLIY is about, etc.. A pretty bland video to start with, but I thought I would need some practice filming/editing before I left. I have a free day tomorrow (no exams!!), so I enlisted the help of my mom to film. Should be out soon (I mean it this time)! As for the call to help, I haven't decided on a video editor yet! I have tried 2 computer programs, and picked the one I liked best. For me that was Filmora, but I have not purchased it yet and am still open to suggestions! Feel free to comment below, and remember I will be using a Windows laptop :)
4. Stickers!!! - If you know me, I like to switch around my laptop stickers a lot. Probably not the most economically sound idea, but I like to think I've developed a nice relationship with redbubble.com! For my Taiwan trip, neither I or RedBubble disappointed. If you couldn't see from the oversized photo beneath the title of the post, my laptop is lookin pretty Taiwan snazzy. My favorite ones I got have to be the "Bubble Tea Runs Through My Veins" and the I heart Taiwan with Taipei 101 as the "i".
5. My Recent "Personal Investments" - At age 15, I finally received my first debit card!!! It's been a while ride of many purchases this week, most of them under the excuse of "preparing for my trip". Some highlights of my shopping spree have been: my first pair of Chaco's, my amazing laptop stickers, and of course, another travel journal.
6. PPLP is In Session! - PPLP, for those who don't know, stands for Pre-Program Language Preparation (someone should make a boom for all these acronyms). This basically is a 5 week, loosely structured course for beginners and experts, created by the RD, to get you language-ready for your course and living in the country. For us, there are weekly assignments usually consisting of a written/spoken exercise and something from the book. We are also required to sign up for 2 office hours with our RD, 30 minute video calls with her and 1-2 other students. Knowing me, I signed up for 4. This is the first week, so I have already completed one written assignment and one office hour segment. Our written assignment this week was to create a 7 line introduction about yourself directed towards your host family. We also had to read about 20 pages of our textbook. Office hours turned out to be a lot of fun! I did mine this week with Bethany and Sophia. We had to each read our written assignments for this week aloud and then act out the dialogue from the textbook pages we read. We also did some speech and pronunciation exercises. Afterwards, Bethany, Sophia, and I all chatted on our Messenger group chat, creating backstories and drama for each one of the characters from the dialogue. It was a lot of fun overall :)
7. OPI from Hell - This morning was the dreaded Oral Proficiency Interview. I decided to try to make the best of it and go in with a positive attitude, but was quickly reminded of the horrors of my limited vocabulary as soon as the phone rang. The OPI is divided into two parts: the question-asky part and the roleplay part. First were the questions. I don't think I've ever said or will say “我听不懂” or “我不明白” in my entire life XD. Next was what I was most worried about, the roleplay. Before she read it out, I was trying to think of the situation, but it could've been anything. I was one of the last OPIs so I heard about the roleplays other people had to do. They ranged from "Vacation in China" to literally IT tech support on a computer. Finally after all of the nerves and the worries, she read out my roleplay:
"You are in Beijing at the airport and you are trying to get back to New York but your flight was cancelled. Ask the counter associate 3-4 questions in full Mandarin so you can try to get home"
W h a t. I was so shook XD. My extent of knowledge in transportation is literally "我今天坐飞机去中国", Today I fly on a plane to China. Now I'm supposed to talk to the counter lady about a cancelled flight? I barely remember how to say airport lol. Literally my best question I think was asking about the weather in New York. Sad, I know. So the OPI was a bust, but at least I'll show improvement!
8. Party Evites - After my crushing OPI defeat today, I wanted to do something productive, so I got most of my sendoff party details hammered out and sent the evites! I invited 26 people, and I think 6 have replied yes so far! To be fair, it will be in the summer and it is the first day. Other than that, today has been a good day (or should I say yesterday because I'm currently writing this at 3AM).
9. Santa Fe - On a way more serious note, the Santa Fe shooting did happen this week. It gets more and more scary as they continue to happen, as I keep on feeling like someday it could be my school. At the one in Parkland, I had a friend who went to that school. Now this one in Texas, one of the students killed was an alum of the YES Abroad program. For those who don't know, YES abroad is another exchange program through the State Department, which sends teens to Muslim-majority nations all around the world for an academic year, aimed at increasing ties between them and America. They are basically NSLIY's sister program, so this hit very close to home for me. The student's name is Sabika Sheikh and she went to her native land of Pakistan and returned home to a "safe country". Months later she was killed at a high school very much like another. All I am asking is that sometime in your day today you take a minute to send your prayers to this girl and her family, they really need it. Rest In Peace Sabika.
10. We are less than a month away! - As of the time I am writing this, it is currently 27 days until PDO!!! Needless to say I am excited out of my mind, but it has also been a very busy time in the Fisher family. Vaccinations, signing things, writing things, notarizing forms, re-notarizing forms, we are doing it all. If you ever have any NSLIY questions though, I will always have time to answer them. Feel free to comment on this post or shoot me an email! I also added a feature onto the blog that allows you to sign up for emails whenever a new post comes out! Check it out below! Other than that, thanks for reading and have a good day!
May 31, 2018 ~ Late Night Post :) [Including Application Story!]
It's 3 am and raining... AKA the perfect time to write :)
I've been particularly bored tonight, so I thought I would write a little before I went to bed in a couple of hours. I just went on a walk in my neighborhood to get some inspiration, and in the end I decided to write about my Chinese experience in the last two years up to NSLIY. I'll talk a little about my NSLIY application process too if you are interested in that. There haven't been too many program updates, so I'll save them for a later post. In about a week I'm supposed to hear about my flight itinerary and my host family, so stay tuned :)
Where to begin... I guess I'll start with talking about how I even got into Chinese in the first place. There is no clear cut moment of inspiration, but I guess a lot of little moments that influenced me to try it out. My earliest memory of hearing about learning Chinese was probably from my dad when I was six or seven. He told me I should learn Chinese because it would be the "global language of business in this century". I told him that was stupid and I went off to learn German for some reason (and failed). Going through how the image of China has changed in my mind throughout my life is a bit excessive, so I guess I'll skip to the summer before I decided to take Chinese I. It was the summer before 8th grade, and back then I was really into learning Japanese. I loved Japan and everything about it (yea I was kind of a weeb). Anyways, learning Japanese I guess was my focus in life at that point. I was pretty upset that my school didn't offer Japanese, so I decided one faithful day, sitting in Panera alone, that I would fill out the google form that I had an "interest in taking Chinese", in my mind the next best thing.
Now for some background about the Chinese department at my school. Our department is small and surely underfunded, but it is fully developed. We have Chinese I through V and AP. We have one teacher for the whole department. The one thing that is unique to our school's Chinese program (and Latin) is that they have an opportunity for the 8th graders at the feeder schools to take Chinese I as a zero-period before school starts. You have to drive to the high-school, but a bus takes you back to the middle school after the class is over. Me, the high-achieving eighth grader I was, decided to do this. It turned out to be one of the best ideas I have had.
Chinese I was not only unbelievably easy, but also fun. I think there were only like 12 of us with the one teacher, who might be the nicest person in the universe. Anyways, the 12 of us formed a real bond taking this easy course with no tests and many movie days. Even though I did spend the first few months trying to connect what I was learning with Japanese, I had a fun time and learned a lot about Chinese and China as a whole. The class almost made it worth it to get up every morning :) If you are considering taking Chinese I right now, do it!!! I can't assure you it will be as easy as my school was, but I can assure you it will be every bit as interesting! At the end of my Chinese I year, I had a big decision to make. Since I took Chinese I before school, my eighth grade year was still open to take a language at the middle school: either Spanish or French. I ended up taking French with Chinese I that year. But now that I was going into high school, 2 AP classes and honors everything else for my freshman year, I would have to drop either French or Chinese so I wouldn't have to take a zero period freshman year too. It was a really hard decision, but ultimately I chose to continue Chinese and drop French. I can't exactly tell you why, but it just felt right. Another great decision for my part. I'll put my 8th grade and 9th grade classes below so you can see what I'm talking about visually.
(See original post for class list)
One other thing happened my freshman year that had a big impact on my life: I got to visit Japan for 3 weeks in the winter. It was an awesome trip, I got to see Japan, practice my Japanese, and have a nice winter vacation from school for a couple days. A few weeks before our trip, my dad and I decided to extend our trip by a week, but we wanted to do something with that week that would be meaningful. First thing we thought of was going to the beach in Okinawa, so we added Okinawa. As you might guess though there aren't many flights from Okinawa to Atlanta, so we had to find somewhere after Okinawa to fly home from. Our final choice: Taipei, Taiwan. Yes, I did get to see the country I will be living in all summer for a few days last year. I like to think of it as a preview. While we didn't get out of Taipei, I thought Taiwan was nice! It was a mixed bag of good and bad, but you'll get that anywhere. Looking back, it was a lot nicer than I initially thought when I was there. Overall, I am excited to see how life is on another part of the island and I am sure as heck ready to go back :)
I started my freshman year taking the most rigorous classes I could, while balancing that with the huge time commitment that is marching band. There was one other thing that kept my fall occupied, trying to find an exchange program so I could study Japanese in Japan. Now I did go to Japan, but if you know anything about me, I have no problem with getting out of America for the summer XD. Believe it or not, this is how I found NSLIY, some Google search online for a Japanese exchange program. Now if you know anything about NSLIY, they of course do not have a Japanese program. But they did have what I thought was, again, the next best thing, a Chinese program to spend the summer in China. Now after convincing my parents to let me apply back in September, I did more research about the program. I was stunned. I found Youtube vlogs from alums that made it look like a dream come true. I couldn't believe that I had been handed this opportunity on a virtual silver platter. I spent 2 weeks just hardcore hammering out my application, until finally, on October 13, 2017, I hit submit. I read from alum that there are 3 things that they are looking for in an application: passion, independence, and drive to use what you would learn from NSLIY later in life. I made sure to max all 3 of them out in my application.
Quick Side Note: Prior to my NSLIY application, I had very little passion for China and Chinese. Throughout this arduous journey of essays and interviews and long waiting periods, I developed such a strong passion for the language I grew to love. NSLIY gave me the opportunity to find what I love even before I step on that plane. Even if I didn't get in, I knew I would be content with the fact that NSLIY had given me love for China, that I will never lose.
Back to the application process. NSLIY's acceptance rate is about 16.5% for the unacquainted. It shakes out to be about 1/3 of the applicant pool are selected as semi-finalists (December 1), and 1/2 of the semi-finalists are offered finalist positions (Mid-March to April). Most apply 3 times, flat out rejected the first time, next time rejected after semifinalists, and finally usually accepted the third time. So almost all of NSLIY finalists are sophomores, juniors, and seniors. So come November 30th, I'm stressing out (first-year freshman applicant), just waiting for my rejection letter. That next day, I get the email. I got offered a semifinalist position as a freshman!! I was so ecstatic I was almost crying. When you become a semifinalist, you then have to schedule an interview. Now it gets serious. But then again, my odds just went from 1 in 6 to 1 in 2 :)
The day of my interview came. Me, as always, showed up so early my interviewers weren't even there yet lol! I was the first interview of the morning. Since I was there so early, I got to help them set up, so I think that increased my chances a little. When it was time, I went downstairs and had my interview. I had heard conflicting accounts whether the interviewer has access to your application or not, and for me, it was not. I had to explain my story to her, as well as answer a few "what would you do" scenarios. They have a sheet that tells them what questions to ask, so my person just picked and chose which ones from the list to ask. My interviewer did tell me one thing that surprised me though. About midway through the interview she told "Just so you know, I care more about how you react as you answer my questions rather than what you respond." I think that is good advice that you don't hear a lot, so any future applicants, don't forget to show your passion! My interview was pretty smooth and very fast, but nothing extraordinary that would make me think "yea I have this in the bag". On my way out, I did meet my first alum, a girl who did the Oman program a couple of years back. It was fun to meet one in person instead of through YouTube! But yea, my interview wasn't anything special, but I guess in the end it was good enough :)
The longest waiting period in the whole process is between the early January interviews and the March-April finalist results. NSLIY does their finalist results kind of differently though. Since there are 16 programs in total (8 languages, 1 summer and 1 AY for each), NSLIY does rolling decisions. But it is over a looong period of time. Anywhere from March 1-mid April your program could publish decisions. But if your program releases and you don't hear anything the first day, you're almost a definite no. This year Chinese had to wait a while, while most of the other summer programs released. I was checking Facebook and College Confidential constantly... First Hindi and Russian, then Persian, then Arabic, then finally, Chinese results came in at the most unexpected time. I was home sick from school that day, so I was in bed on my phone. Suddenly I got the email. I literally fell out of my bed LOL! I got in!!!! I rushed down to tell my parents. It went something like this:
My mom: How are you feeling?
Me: I GOT INTO NSLIY!!!!
My Mom: oKAY BUT HOW ARE YOU FEELING
XD but more seriously, all of my hard work paid off. In my haste to tell my parents I didn't even read my program location. So I ran back upstairs and scrolled in the email...
TAIWAN??? I was not expecting that! I thought that was only for the academic year kids! Turns out, we are the guinea pig year, the first summer program in Taiwan. Was I sad at first? A little. But I got over myself pretty quick. I was going to Taiwan for 7 weeks for free!!
The rest is history :) or I guess 3 blog posts lol. But that's my whole story. How I got into Chinese, how I found NSLIY, my whole application process, everything. It's 4:30 am and I'm very dazed so sorry for the weird sentence structures XD. If you have any questions for me, please comment or email me at [email protected]! I love sharing my story and maybe someday it will help someone get in :) If that's you or even if you read this before or after applying, please let me know! I'd love to be a resource to help you if that's editing your essays or just answering a question. I am about to post my whole application, essays and all to my blog, so read that too. Good night guys :)
My mom: How are you feeling?
Me: I GOT INTO NSLIY!!!!
My Mom: oKAY BUT HOW ARE YOU FEELING
XD but more seriously, all of my hard work paid off. In my haste to tell my parents I didn't even read my program location. So I ran back upstairs and scrolled in the email...
TAIWAN??? I was not expecting that! I thought that was only for the academic year kids! Turns out, we are the guinea pig year, the first summer program in Taiwan. Was I sad at first? A little. But I got over myself pretty quick. I was going to Taiwan for 7 weeks for free!!
The rest is history :) or I guess 3 blog posts lol. But that's my whole story. How I got into Chinese, how I found NSLIY, my whole application process, everything. It's 4:30 am and I'm very dazed so sorry for the weird sentence structures XD. If you have any questions for me, please comment or email me at [email protected]! I love sharing my story and maybe someday it will help someone get in :) If that's you or even if you read this before or after applying, please let me know! I'd love to be a resource to help you if that's editing your essays or just answering a question. I am about to post my whole application, essays and all to my blog, so read that too. Good night guys :)
June 4, 2018 ~ Ultimate Packing Post!!!
Its 4 AM June 4, officially 2 weeks away!!!
But that's not what this post is about! It's about packing for your NSLIY adventure! This is mainly a post for NSLIY soon-to-be participants, but if you are just interested, feel free to read!
Packing for a 7 week government sponsored trip is harder than it sounds (and it already sounds pretty hard I think). Luckily, I'm a good packer! And I have resources. NSLIY did have a packing list and a sort of what-to-do-when page in our student handbook that has been suuper helpful! I modified their packing list and added some stuff using this website, an online packing list maker. My plan is to list out my packing list, explain some stuff that needs description, and at the bottom list the stuff I still need to do to prepare for my trip!
My Packing List
To-Dos
Clothes
I opted to bring clothes for 5-7 days, that might fluctuate depending on the room in my suitcase. Worst comes to worst, I can buy some clothes there.
Gear
Electronics
Washbag
Documents (and a lot of em)
First Aid Kit
That's it for the packing list! Now let's see about all the other stuff I have to do before I go! (I do highly recommend Packtor tho, it asks you a bunch of questions like "male or female?", "where are you going", and "for how long?" and basically makes you a packing list. All I did was modify theirs with the extra stuff NSLIY wanted me to bring.
- Charge devices that I need
- Digitize documents - NSLIY requires you to digitize and/or have handy a copy of a lot of documents, such as: birth certificate, passport photos, drivers license (if applicable), and vaccination record. This is so you have this on hand if there's any problems in Taiwan.
- Get Vaccination Record
- Copy Passport Photos
- Go Shopping!
- Buy gift for host family! - Of course you have to buy a gift for the family who is taking you in for 2 months! It should be something that is unique to where you are from, or just America as a whole. Luckily, I have some ideas...
- A cookbook of American recipes! (I really love to cook)
- A cutting board in the shape of Georgia (or other extraneous Southern-decaled accessories
- American snacks and sweets for host-siblings
- American boxed-cake mix or other boxed stuff to teach them how to make American foods LOL
- I'd love to hear your suggestions! Comment below! Keep in mind I do have a constraint of a budget and space in my suitcase.
Clothes
I opted to bring clothes for 5-7 days, that might fluctuate depending on the room in my suitcase. Worst comes to worst, I can buy some clothes there.
- Underwear
- Socks
- T-Shirts
- Long Pants (only one pair)
- Chacos - In Taiwan, it is considered rude to show your feet (like open toed shoes) in a classroom, so these are mostly for house and stuff outside of school. They were pretty clear that we should bring one pair of tennis shoes, one pair for relaxing (my Chacos), and a pair of dress shoes.
- Tennis Shoes
- Shorts
- Bathing Suit - I was pretty confused by this, judging they said we can't swim in the ocean or most likely pools also, so I guess for New York maybe?
- Jacket
- Dress Outfit - There's some sort of formal dinner at some point, so they want guys to bring slacks, dress shoes, a tie, a dress shirt, and a suit jacket.
Gear
- Sunglasses
- Fanny Pack - I asked my sister to buy me a fanny pack for my birthday in April with her residential college at Yale's name on it. It's bright yellow and I love it. I'm gonna use it to keep my wallet, my passport when I need it, my local burner phone, and probably a pen or pencil. Thanks Jazzy!
- Wallet - Here are the things I will bring in my wallet:
- My School ID (from America, they asked us to bring it)
- Money
- My debit card (I've heard the best ATMs are at the 7/11s)
- Basic School Stuff - I've decided to buy most of my school supplies for our Chinese classes there, since I'll basically be in the land of stationery! I am gonna bring a couple of pens and pencils and a notebook just in case, and for PDO.
- Journal
Electronics
- My Phone
- The Other Phone - I don't know if i've mentioned this, but they are giving us a phone for local calls and stuff! It's so we can contact our host fam and our RD (resident director) really easily. We are supposed to carry it at all times for emergencies, so I'll probably just stash it in my fanny pack. Not expecting like the newest iPhone or anything, but I am looking forward to the Taiwanese budget phone aesthetic lol
- My Laptop (don't forget the stickers!)
- USB (probably gonna need it some time for the university or smth)
- Earbuds
- Chargers
- Extension Cord
- Plug Adapter - Taiwan does also use the two prong thingies (same as America), but I've heard they almost never have that little bottom hole. It shouldn't be a problem for most, but since I'm bringing an extension cord with 3 prongs, I'll just bring one or 2 adapters from 3 prongs to 2 just in case.
Washbag
- Deoderant
- Toothbrush
- Tooth paste
- Mouthwash
- Shampoo, Conditioner, etc - May not even bring this since i'm staying with a family
- Brush
- Glasses (just in case!)
- Contacts
- Contact fluid - Message for those who wear contacts: I usually wear bi-weekly contacts, but for the trip and leading up to it, I decided to switch to daily lenses. This is for the convenience of just throwing away the contact every night, and also I don't have to worry about solution since each lens comes with all that you need. My parents didn't trust the Taiwanese contact solution companies, so I don't even have to worry about it. I'll bring just a small bottle for emergencies.
Documents (and a lot of em)
- Passport (bring electronic and physical copy of it)
- School ID
- Birth Certificate (copy only)
- Any Insurance stuff - They de give you a "traveller's insurance" from NSLIY, but I'm just gonna bring a copy of my insurance card to be safe. NSLIY also already has a digital copy in their database.
- Plane tickets (should be getting itinerary any day now!)
- Money - I decided to order only a little bit of NTD (New Taiwanese Dollars) ahead of time, as I can just withdrawal from any ATM with my debit card. I think I am ordering about $600 NTD, just to be safe. I also might order a little bit of yen since I'm 90% sure our layover is in Tokyo and 0% sure for how long (and who doesn't love yen).
- Debit Card
- Guidebook - I am not sure if I'm gonna get a Taiwan or Kaohsiung guidebook yet. We are going with the experts, but it would be nice to have something physical so I could see what the '"things to do" are wherever I go. This is a maybe.
- Books - Since I am coming back 3 days after school starts, I am bringing all my summer assignments. This happens to be reading 3 books and writing 3 essays. I also am bringing my AP Chem textbook to review over the summer so I don't die.
First Aid Kit
- Benadryl - I do have a peanut allergy (very mild be it), but NSLIY requires me to bring "the proper allergy medication" including Benadryl and an EpiPen
- EpiPen
- Other Drugs - Once your mom knows your'e going to Asia, she will run out to the store and buy tons and tons of drugs, anything from environmental allergy medication to diarrhea control. Just wait for them to start piling up on the counter.
- Malaria Pills (actually not bringing) - So I originally was gonna take malaria pills like a week before my trip, but then my parents all the sudden didn't want me to, so they called our program coordinators in New York to see what they thought. One of them said she took them before she went to Burma and had hallucinations and nightmares. Especially since Kaohsiung isn't by any means malaria-central, I decided to skip it. I'm also not getting an optional Japanese Encephalitis (JE) vaccine since there are only like 1 or 2 reported cases in the whole city every year, and I'm not about to drop $600 on that.
That's it for the packing list! Now let's see about all the other stuff I have to do before I go! (I do highly recommend Packtor tho, it asks you a bunch of questions like "male or female?", "where are you going", and "for how long?" and basically makes you a packing list. All I did was modify theirs with the extra stuff NSLIY wanted me to bring.
Things to Do!
- Digitize all those documents
- Order more contacts
- Order money (probably about $600 NTD, 3000 yen)
- Buy my third book - did that tonight!
- Return my phone case (I bought a Mophie for this trip, but I ordered the wrong size lol)
- Copy Passport Photos
- Buy Host Family Gift
- Write by cookbook to the host family
- Buy a USB
- Buy Plug Adaptors
- Plan my whole party
That's all for tonight! You can tell the trip is getting closer by how often I am posting lol! Again, don't forget to subscribe for email updates every time a new post comes out, and feel free to check the other pages of my blog! I added one tonight that's basically every NSLIY vlog I've seen for the Chinese program! Other than that, thanks for reading and have a good night!
June 5, 2018 ~ Flight Itinerary Released!
Finally!!!
NSLIY just gave us our flight itineraries! It's actually not what any of us expected lol. I'll walk you through it for those unfamiliar with airport codes :)
I1) Flying out of Atlanta (ATL)
This wasn't a shocker lol. I live about 45 minutes from ATL, so this is always my home airport.
2) Flying into Newark (EWR)
For the unacquainted, all of the NSLIY Chinese programs have PDO (Pre-Departure Orientation) for 2 days at Columbia University. The kids fly solo from wherever they live to get here; meaning individual itineraries for each kid. For me that means flying into Newark (EWR), which is an airport I don't think I've been to. They shuttle us from the airports to Columbia. I luckily got a morning flight, meaning I'll get to Columbia sometime in the afternoon. This is good so I don't miss the first get-to-know-you dinner :)
3) Layover in San Francisco (SFO)
After PDO, all of the NSLIY kids take one flight to the host country with our RD (resident director). Since there are few nonstop flights from America to Taiwan, there's usually a layover. We all thought the layover would be in Tokyo (NRT) like all of the previous Kaohsiung programs, but I guess they wanted to mix it up this year and we got San Francisco. Kinda sad I won't go back to Japan, but we wouldn't have left the airport anyways.
4) Final Destination: Taipei! (TPE)
This was another shocker! Since the pervious program layover destination was in Japan, they had been able to fly nonstop to Kaohsiung. This year, I guess the only choice is to fly into Taipei! I'm excited since there is a bullet train the runs from Taipei to Kaohsiung, so maybe we will get to ride it :) Also, my avid blog readers will know I have been to Taipei before, so I am excited to be back!
My return itinerary is an exact carbon copy of my itinerary going there, so no surprises there. I will get home 11:59pm Sunday night, ready for my first day of school the next day :)
Thanks for reading! I know it was a short post, but I'm planning to write again once I get my host family stuff any day now. My party is this Saturday too! Maybe I will post some pics. For now, so long!
This wasn't a shocker lol. I live about 45 minutes from ATL, so this is always my home airport.
2) Flying into Newark (EWR)
For the unacquainted, all of the NSLIY Chinese programs have PDO (Pre-Departure Orientation) for 2 days at Columbia University. The kids fly solo from wherever they live to get here; meaning individual itineraries for each kid. For me that means flying into Newark (EWR), which is an airport I don't think I've been to. They shuttle us from the airports to Columbia. I luckily got a morning flight, meaning I'll get to Columbia sometime in the afternoon. This is good so I don't miss the first get-to-know-you dinner :)
3) Layover in San Francisco (SFO)
After PDO, all of the NSLIY kids take one flight to the host country with our RD (resident director). Since there are few nonstop flights from America to Taiwan, there's usually a layover. We all thought the layover would be in Tokyo (NRT) like all of the previous Kaohsiung programs, but I guess they wanted to mix it up this year and we got San Francisco. Kinda sad I won't go back to Japan, but we wouldn't have left the airport anyways.
4) Final Destination: Taipei! (TPE)
This was another shocker! Since the pervious program layover destination was in Japan, they had been able to fly nonstop to Kaohsiung. This year, I guess the only choice is to fly into Taipei! I'm excited since there is a bullet train the runs from Taipei to Kaohsiung, so maybe we will get to ride it :) Also, my avid blog readers will know I have been to Taipei before, so I am excited to be back!
My return itinerary is an exact carbon copy of my itinerary going there, so no surprises there. I will get home 11:59pm Sunday night, ready for my first day of school the next day :)
Thanks for reading! I know it was a short post, but I'm planning to write again once I get my host family stuff any day now. My party is this Saturday too! Maybe I will post some pics. For now, so long!
June 18 ~ Stuck in the Airport for 3 Hours... Blog Post?
The day of reckoning is finally here :)
It's day one of PDO!!!!! It's 7 am and I'm still in Atlanta, so I'll do a full day blog post later tonight!
I haven't posted in a while and I've kinda just been lazy, so this post is half update post half hype post!!!
Refresher for those unfamiliar, PDO stands for Pre-Departure Orientation, where me basically all go to Columbia University for two days. We meet each other for the first time, some alums give some presentations, and we get lectured about safety and stuff. It's a really fun way to start the trip because a) I love Columbia and b) It'll be cool to meet everyone that I only know virtually!
So a couple of day ago, I did get my host fam info!!! It is a mother and father with two sons, one is 20 who is in University in Taipei, and the other is 18 and lives with the parents. They seem really cool! I reached out a couple days ago by email and I gave the host mom my Line. She reached out to me on Line last night and we have been chatting back and forth through the night :)
That was about the only update oops... I guess I really do blog too much LOL. Well I don't think I have talked about my sendoff party yet, that was a lot of fun!! Thanks for everyone who came!
Now for the hype part. Like the night before PDO, a lot of people write about how excited they are. I'll be honest with you guys, I was just too tired haha. I guess I'll do it now!!
Words cannot describe the feelings I am feeling. While on one hand I'm so ready to get out of Atlanta, it's sad to leave my family and friends. The overwhelming feeling tho is excitement! This is uncharted territory even for me, and I'm just pumped to experience it with such amazing people! I'm excited to meet my host fam, go back to Taiwan, learn exponentially more Chinese, but most of all, I'm most excited to meet these people I've grown so close to in these last couple of months even just from behind a phone screen. They are all so unique and funny, and they are just amazing people. In just a few short hours, I'll be able to meet them face to face! So overall: excited to trek into the unknown :)
Words cannot describe the feelings I am feeling. While on one hand I'm so ready to get out of Atlanta, it's sad to leave my family and friends. The overwhelming feeling tho is excitement! This is uncharted territory even for me, and I'm just pumped to experience it with such amazing people! I'm excited to meet my host fam, go back to Taiwan, learn exponentially more Chinese, but most of all, I'm most excited to meet these people I've grown so close to in these last couple of months even just from behind a phone screen. They are all so unique and funny, and they are just amazing people. In just a few short hours, I'll be able to meet them face to face! So overall: excited to trek into the unknown :)
Oh! There's another update! I went to Chicago!!! I vlogged the whole thing but the footage was super ratchet, so I just used it to practice vlogging the real thing. Trust me, I'm already vlogging at the airport today!
The biggest news from my trip tho by far was getting to meet Buddy, another NSLIY finalist on my program!! He was super nice and it was great to hang with him and his friends in his stomping grounds. In Chicago the government throws money at education (sounds familiar), but mainly into public selective enrollment schools. His school literally is a Castle it's insane. But we went for pizza and it was delicious :)
The biggest news from my trip tho by far was getting to meet Buddy, another NSLIY finalist on my program!! He was super nice and it was great to hang with him and his friends in his stomping grounds. In Chicago the government throws money at education (sounds familiar), but mainly into public selective enrollment schools. His school literally is a Castle it's insane. But we went for pizza and it was delicious :)
That's about it guys! My flight takes off at 10:45, so I still have oodles of time (its 8:10 rn lol). Idk what I'm gonna do, but I'm just excited to get to NYC already!!! Bye guys and see you for my post tonight :)