Dear diary: 100 days to go

I haven’t posted anything for more than two weeks. From one side I didn’t have a lot of inspiration but on the other side not much happened the past weeks. According to the school I just needed to wait until the principal contacted me for the next step. I waited patiently and tried in the meantime to earn a bit of money with my hobby. Everything went its normal way until just before Easter.

Do you have a criminal record?

“Have you done
military service?”

Just before the Easter weekend I received an e-mail with a very long question list. In this list I needed to fill out a bunch of questions for my student visa application. This was the official start. The list contained the most strange and personal questions I ever needed to answer. “Have you done military service?” What is the profession of your siblings?” “Do you have a criminal record?” “When and where did you go to primary school/middle school/high school?” For me strange questions,but the more I think about them the more they seem more obvious for people from other countries.

Belgium for once, is not so complicated

The school system in Belgium is pretty straightforward. Almost everyone starts attending school from the age of three. Until the age of 18 everyone goes to school and there are not a lot of difficulties to study what you want. After middle and high school everyone can go to any university or higher institute of their choice. We don’t need to pass an entrance exam or have certain grades to enter university. Education is almost free in middle and high school. And for university the cost is really low compared to other countries. I realize that my situation is really a privileged one, and a lot of other people are not so privileged. For my enrolment at the YMCA school I need to pay a high amount of money and this is by Belgium standards something we do not see here.

1 Mississippi, 2 Mississippi became 1,2,3,…..

“What if… I can not go to Japan?”

So, to return to the long question list, this long list needed to be filled out by the end of April. Because I needed to add a small motivation text I decided to take my time, in hopes that it could increase my chances. But suddenly, not even one week after I got the first mail I got a disastrous mail. This year there are a lot of candidates to start at the YMCA school in October. Because of that, there is a small chance that if I wait too long, that there is no place for me to start in October. As fast as I could I then filled in the list. I checked my motivation and sent it to a friend to correct it a bit. Everything needed to go very fast suddenly. And I began to stress out a bit. What if…

Cross fingers

Now, almost two weeks later, I needed to collect a bunch of papers that are relevant for my application. They ask for proof of enrolment of my current school, proof of savings, etc.  I hoped that I could assemble these papers quickly. Because these parts are the ones where I can have a bit of control over. But I also realized that my dream and my plan to study in Japan for one year are not so easy to accomplish. The needed papers are now sent to Japan. Let’s cross fingers that everything will be fine in the end. Only 100 days to go, the countdown has started.

If you have remarks, suggestions, or questions you can always post them in the comments section, on my Facebook page, Google+ page or through Twitter. See you next week.