Hi! My name is Sejal and I am going to be living in Johor Bahru, Malaysia for the next 11 months. I wanted to be apart of this program because I love learning about other places and perspectives as well as challenging my own levels of comfort. Malaysia is a very different culture from what I am used to so I am excited to get to live so differently from my life in North Carolina. I am using this blog to update family and friends as well as to hopefully give an idea of what YES Abroad is like for others hoping to apply. To get the Kennedy-Lugar YES Abroad scholarship I had to apply in December of 2017 and then I interviewed in January as well as collected doctor and dentist information. After that, I had to wait until early March before I found out my status for the program. I learned that I was a finalist on March 10th. After an excited instagram post, I confirmed to YES that I would be attending and started the process of MANY documents to obtain a Malaysian visa as well as other information YES needed from me. Before national PDO with everyone in the program I had to have an at home interview as well as attend an AFS PDO in North Carolina. Although I hear that if you get a country that is associated with American Councils you do not attend a regional PDO. If I had to describe this process in a word I think it would be waiting. YES has a lot of different things to figure out for each student and so sometimes it would be weeks before we learned more information about my travel, visa, etc. We also had to attend many webinars before national PDO. At national PDO I finally met Mia. We had been talking since late March/early April but this was the first time we actually got to see each other. If you do get into YES, I highly suggest finding at least one other person who is going to your country with you, there is often times where I was confused or I wanted advice on what to bring and Mia was perfect for that. We also ended up becoming good friends which is always nice when you are going to a foreign country. As I am now leaving (July 30th) to head to New York for orientation before we leave I am definitely excited for the journey. I have already talked to my host family as well as a couple of people from my school and I can’t wait to meet them. I am going to miss my family and friends terribly but I know that they will be here when I get back and I can’t wait to share all that I learn in the next year. *shout out to Mya who managed to text almost everyday while she was in Italy lol* If any of y’all are reading this, I MISS YOU ALREADY. My plane is about to land in New York as I write so I’ll sign off now but I just wanted to say that I am planning on using this blog as little updates through out the exchange and Mia and I made one together in hopes of making reading both of our journeys more convenient of others so that no one has to go on a witch hunt to find our blogs. I also might talk about logistics later on that were difficult that I had not seen on others blogs. Overall, I am very excited and glad that I’m finally on this plane hurtling me closer to Malaysia as I type :)
thanks for the beginning of this blogspot so that we can get an understanding of what it was like to get ready for the program. Thanks for sharing Joe
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