Hello!
My name is Kate McDonnell, I am 16 years old and from Cambridge, Massachusetts. On April 12 I received an email accepting me as a finalist to the YES Abroad Program in Morocco next year! I discovered the YES program in a mildly confusing way; originally I wanted to volunteer abroad over the summer however my tutor told me about the amazing summer she had spent in the Netherlands when she was young through AFS and since I have been taking French since 7th grade I thought a summer in France living with a host family sounded appealing. Unfortunately (or fortunately as it led me to YES) that particular program no longer exists. However, by perusing the AFS website I found the year long France program. This sparked my interest and I immediately took to stalking anything I could find (I'm a class A blog-stalker at this point, need links to french blogs? I got mad links) relating to exchange and AFS. It was in this manner I stumbled upon YES, a scholarship program that sends kids from the U.S. to countries with significant muslim populations. It is an expansion of a program started soon after 9/11 that did the opposite, brought kids from these countries to the U.S. The role of YES-ers is, as YES puts it so quotably, "promoting mutual understanding by forming lasting relationships with their host families and communities"
At first this program looked elite, intimidating and ultimately unattainable. However I decided to apply as a kind of "why not" (I actually submitted my application only a few hours before the deadline, eek!) and was pleasantly surprised when it resulted in semi-finalist status and free trip to Maryland to learn more about the program as a whole as well as the specific countries, meet the other kids and participate in a myriad of interview/evaluation type activities. The best part of this was definitely the fabulous people, what struck me the most was the friendliness everyone exhibited. During meals you could sit at a random table with people you had never seen before and strike up a perfectly civil and interesting conversation. Most of these revolved around what states we were from, what our top county choices were and "omg is that an ice cream machine??" (I'm looking at you Lindsay). Another part to this weekend was the dreaded individual interview..... to all you future YES-ers: I promise it's not as bad as you are probably building it up to be! I was interviewed by two women who were as nice and unintimidating (not sure that's a word...) as could be, they really made the interview enjoyable and it was clear the goal was just to get to know the semi-finalist. When I came home I could not stop yammering on about the experience, the weekend made me much more excited and interested in the program and it became my first choice as opposed to France through AFS (not a scholarship but still cool)
I was notified of my acceptance on a Friday in the middle of crew practice. All day the YES kids had been suspicious that Friday would be the day we would get our emails as that was the day last year that the kids were informed. Naturally, I was freaking out. I can't even count how many times I refreshed my email account hoping to see a new message from YES! I was totally unable to focus throughout the entire school day and with each passing hour my stress increased. After school had ended I walked to crew practice (still desperately refreshing my mail of course). I had to leave my phone on the side of the room but when we went to go get water I grabbed my phone and suddenly I began to get emails notifying me of people posting on the facebook page (seriously technology, slow down) I logged on to facebook to see people had begun to get their acceptance emails, one person even posted a picture of his message! I switched back to my email and opened a new message, it contained what I though was the picture of someone else's acceptance and as I read it jealously I realized it said Kate at the top! I quickly understood that in fact it was not a picture of someone else's acceptance but my very own! I'll admit, I shed a tear or two just out of pure shock and jubilation before I called my parents (mildy freaked) and told my friends. For the rest of that day I just felt on top of the world.
So next year I'm going to be living in Rabat, Morocco which is roughly 3,470 miles from where I'm sitting at my computer in Cambridge right now. Pretty crazy if you ask me.
