The Very Beginning

So I thought it was time to begin blogging on my thoughts/feelings/ideas of going to Egypt, since I'll be leaving in exactly two weeks! As of right now, I'm excited, but at the same time I'm not as excited as I should be because I kind of don't believe I'm really leaving so soon. Although I'm going to miss my friends here and everything, I'm feeling pretty ready to move on to a new place for a while. It's not like I'm never coming back. It's quite odd to be finishing high school right now though since everyone else still has another semester left. I'm kinda sad I'll be missing all the Senior traditions, like senior skip day, senior pranks, the cookout before the last day of school for seniors, and of course graduation. But I suppose that's a small price to pay for living in Egypt for five months!

So I guess I should write about the basics in my first blog. Last January I applied for the NSLI-Y full scholarship to study abroad. I found out about the scholarship about two weeks before the application was due, so there was a ton of frantic running around trying to get medical forms and letters of recommendation and whatnot. Before the gifted coordinator at my school, Miss Mills, told me about the scholarship, I had never really entertained the idea of studying abroad in high school. I just figured I would do it in college because the high school programs are really expensive. But then I found out about this scholarship! I had absolutely no clue if I would get it or not, but I figured I should give it a shot. You should've seen me when I found out I got it. When I get super excited about something, I just go crazy in my room and dance like there is no tomorrow. It was fantastic. So up until a month or two ago I thought I was going to go to high school in Egypt, but I found out that I'll actually be doing a community service program instead! Which I'm really excited for, although pretty nervous. I haven't had that much community service experience, and all the other kids on the conference call for it had a loooot. I feel pretty inexperienced. But I guess everyone has to have a starting point, right? So in Egypt I'll be living with a host family in Giza, right across the Nile from Cairo. My host family has two sons but one will be in America the whole time I'm in Egypt and the other is older and doesn't live with them. He'll be around on weekends and holidays though. I had wished for a host family with like six kids but I'm sure I'll still have a blast. I've just always wanted to live in a household with tons of siblings. So I guess that's it for this blog!
Egypt here I come!