A lot has been going on for Selia over the last two week. She won a partial scholarship ($500) for next academic year which will be a tremendous relief to her family since her tuition is taking all of their extra cash and then some.
She continues to talk to me (and anyone who talks to her) about her burning desire to come to the USA. She wants to come here sometime in the next year. She is hoping to secure either an internship or an acceptance in to a Master’s program. She has a few colleges in mind (Monterrey Institute of Languages, Georgetown, Arizona State University and a few other places that faculty have mentioned to her.
As some of you know, she has been sending out a PowerPoint of her project “Illegal Marriages in China.” It is being well received by all who view it but no one has any solutions to offer her. However, through the efforts of two Sias Board Members, it fell in to the hands of a California organization: The Children and Family Foundation. This organization has agreed to pay Selia’s full tuition for next year and they have invited her to complete an internship with them in January 2013. This good fortune was beyond her wildest dreams.
All of this was going on behind the scenes and around the same time that I offered to sponsor a trip to Selia to come to the USA this summer for a month. The more she talked to me about her choices of where she wanted to apply to college, the more I worried about the reality of these choices. So I offered to fly her over here in July and we will make an East Coast college tour trip. We plan to travel from Virginia to Vermont, stopping at ten colleges along the way that offer graduate programs in translations and foreign policy. This will be a great opportunity for Selia but it will also be great, great fun for me as well.
All of these plans are pending her ability to get a USA visa which is very, very difficult to do. She has to show that she has honorable intentions, she has the appropriate financial support and she is not planning to sneak in and stay and be a financial burden to all of us.
She got her passport today. She has a letter from the CA foundation, inviting her to a workshop this summer. She has my letter of financial support. She has a letter from the president of Sias University which states that she is matriculated to return to Sias for the fall semester. She has the visa application completed. Now she has to make an appointment with the US Embassy in Beijing and go there to be interviewed. She will be told on the spot whether or not she can come. And if she can’t get a visa, I am going to be very disappointed.
Selia has an appointment with the US Embassy on June 27. She will be told that day if she qualifies for a visa. And if she does qualify, she will be here by July 15th.
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