This is the blog I will be using to record every character learned, every dumpling eaten, and every disease contracted during my stay at the Beijing Language and Culture Institute with the Harvard Beijing Academy on a generous fellowship through the Richard U. Light Foundation. The fellowship is unique to Yale University and is a great opportunity for total immersion in an East Asian country for language study.
The link to the fellowship is http://www.yale.edu/iefp/light/index.html. The application process was straightforward and easy to complete. Its due date of early/mid January was convenient since I had all of Winter Break to work on it, not that I used all the time efficiently. Many of the programs--HBA, PIB, Duke--all have due dates of late January to early Febrary, but obviously it's better to turn in the applications as soon as possible as admissions are completed on a rolling basis.
I found out about my acceptance to HBA as well as the Light Fellowship on the same day, February 23. I was nervous about both because of the competitive nature of program admission and the increasing number of students who have started taking Chinese, Korean, and Japanese at Yale due to both globalization and the great job the Light administrators have done to boost the fellowship popularity. Without the fellowship, which covers the entire cost of the program plus airfare and other miscellaneous expenditures, I would not be able to attend HBA. Since there were so many applicants this year, many were put on the waitlist, but because of President Levin's efforts, all students were funded in the end with help from the Greenberg Scholarship.
The fellowship has been in constant contact with us since then, putting on orientation meetings at IEFP, socials with previous fellows at Bar, and a meet-the-trustees event at the Quinnipiack Club. They have given us information about immunizations, taxes, and visa requirements that we otherwise might have forgotten about. The fellowship administration has been run so smoothly that I hope my experience in Beijing with the program goes this well.
After I can finally leave Yale on August 26th, I'll have a couple of weeks at home until I leave for China. Here is the timeline I will be following this summer:
June 14: leave Reno, NV
June 15: arrive in Beijing, China
June 16: HBA begins
August 19: HBA ends; leave Beijing; arrive in Shanghai, China
August 26: leave Shanghai; arrive in Reno
August 30: leave Reno; arrive at Yale
This doesn't leave much time for relaxing at home, but hopefully the experience will be worth it. Please leave comments for me and keep in touch.
