July 2003

At last! On July 17, 2003 the dry spell ended as I discovered some rather important differences:

"You know just because they speak English in another country doesn't mean you'll be able to understand everything they say, slang and otherwise. I was scanning the The New Zealand Herald online and found a word I had never heard of before, spate using context I was able to get the jest of it, but I looked it up to be sure. The word was used in referenct to a recent spree of arsons. In other news there is a man in a coma after being attacked and the police are appologizing to a rape victim for a bungled investigation. Guess some things are constant throughout the world.

Hmmm looks like I need to learn how to convert Celsius to Farenheit as well as the exchange rate for New Zealand money to American. Ah so much to do. Need to get my passport... Yep yep... I will be going. I'm keeping a positive outlook. "

And on that Thursday I received the BIGGEST NEWS EVER (even though I didn't post about it until July 20, 2003:

"On Thursay, just after I posted, I received an email saying I had been officially accepted to the overseas student teaching program. Later that afternoon I got another email saying I was accepted to go to New Zealand! I was so beside myself it was all I could do to keep from jumping up and down like a giddy child. I found out just before I had to give a workshop on how to make a website, so I had to keep my cool, but as soon as I was out of there I called my parents and told Aya. Everyone I've told has been so happy for me and supportive. It's a wonderful feeling. Even people who I don't know very well are happy for me. Then there's the people that do know me who knew something was up right away: I walked into Aya's house and her mom's like "Ok, what's the good news?" I was like "Huh? How do you know there's good news?" "Because you've got a huge smile." hehehe ok ok... so I had a permagrin, can you blame me? ;)

It's now been three days since I found out and I'm still so excited it's hard to sit still. I told poor Aya to just ignore me when I burst out with the random "Wow!" as I do when it strikes me again that I get to go."

I remember being back and forth with the people in charge of the program - phone and email all that Thursday afternoon while I was working in the computer lab. Originally they thought I was wanting to student teach THAT fall (2003) and were saying NZ wasn't available, but perhaps Australia. After several phone calls I got the email confirming that since I had my paperwork in SO early they had been confused, but that also mean that finding a placement in NZ was no problem!

I was so unbelievably emotional. I almost started crying. I called home and told my mom and she DID start crying. She was so happy for me... I was so happy I was shaking. I've never felt quite like that, not before and not since. I had been dreaming and hoping and praying that it would come true and when it did... I just didn't know how to process it.

Still... I'm surpirsed it took me so long to blog it! 3 days! But I was celebrating with friends and such...

You can see some of my enthusiasm bubbling over on July 23, 2003 when I posted about just a few of the things I wanted to do:

"Plans, plans, and more plans...

I'm such an over-achiever. Or maybe it's because I'm so excited.

I am planning what I want to see, where I want to go, I know I want to stop by Australia and pick up a boomerang. I want to see some kangaroos and koalas. I want to go to the top of a few mountains see some big volcanoes. I want to go to Ashburton where my spinning wheel was made. I want to see any remains of the LOTR filming.

I could go on and on but I have work to do."

I'm VERY pleased to see I did all of the above and much, MUCH more. But that's another story ;)

On July 24, 2003 I received the link and login information to my personal Global Student Teaching webpage. This was a great site that provided me with all sorts of information like NZ climate, contacts in the country and people who had completed there student teaching there. It also was the place where the GST program kept me up-to-date with what I had done and what I still needed to do.

Move on to AuGust 2003

Back to JuNe 2003