I'm not just going to China, I'm going to China for free! (well, almost)

Those of you who have me as a friend on Facebook may have seen that I've  not only finally got confirmation of my place at Xiamen University but have also found out that I am one of the Confucius Institute scholarship winners! As I was going to go to Xiamen as part of the Xiamen-Southampton exchange scheme anyway, I already didn't have to pay tuition. The scholarship will pay for my accommodation, insurance and give me an allowance (not sure how much) each month. Not bad! It won't pay for my flights there and back but it will be free once I'm there. 

I applied for the scholarship back in April when I suddenly realised I only had two days until the deadline. They were probably some of the most stressful two days of my life. There was so much to do in order to apply! I needed to scan a copy of my passport, a passport photo, my A-level certificates, reference, proof of study at Southampton, proof of study at Confucius Institute and write an 800 Chinese character "study plan" (bit like a personal statement). This required borrowing my lovely housemate Jack's scanner, asking my mum to find, scan and email me my A-level certificates, asking Fanjie Meng (one of the Confucius Institute teachers) to write me a reference, going to the Humanities office to get proof of study at Southampton and waiting for the Confucius Institute to write me something similar. Then there was just the small matter of writing 800 characters... The most I'd written before was probably around 600 so this was quite a lot to write. I made sure I did plenty of sucking up though "I think that learning Chinese is very important because China is becoming more powerful", "Xiamen University has the most beautiful campus in China", "China is one of my favourite countries",... etc. We then weren't sure exactly what they meant when they said the deadline was 25th April. What time on the 25th April? Chinese time or British time (7 hour time difference)? To make absolutely sure, Seb and I rushed to submit our applications on the evening of the 24th, just after midnight in China on the 25th, but even then we weren't sure we'd get it and had no idea when we'd find out. It seems to have all been worth it in the end though as I've been granted the scholarship!

My main concern was about whether I'd actually got a place at Xiamen in the first place. If you've seen my last post about China, it's been quite stressful applying to the university as we were told about it when it was impossible for us to make the deadline. I prepared all my application materials as quickly as I could and sent them off to China before flying out to Spain. I then kept anxiously checking the Post Office's track & trace website to see whether or not it at had arrived. It took about 5 days for it to reach China but it didn't get to Xiamen until two weeks after I'd posted it! I emailed to ask if they'd received it but didn't get a response. A couple of weeks later I emailed to see if they could tell me anything about my application. Again, no response. I'd got tired of checking my emails every day so decided to have a day of not checking them on Monday. Of course that was the day when the all-important email was sent! At 1:54am on Monday I received this:

Dear Imogen,

We posted the admissions documents for you to the address below by express mail. You will receive it in a few days.
IMOGEN SOPHIA MORLEY POSFORD   (home address and phone number)

By the way, in the documents the column of financial supports was wrong due to a mistake made when typing in data into our system. Don't worry about it since you can see your name in our CIS winner list:
http://oec.xmu.edu.cn/shownews.aspx?news_id=2531
http://english.xmuoec.com/shownews.aspx?language=en&news_id=73

Yours,
Eric Jiang

Such a relief! I checked my emails yesterday just before I was going to go out to meet a friend and couldn't believe it when I saw. Needless to say, when I met up with her we had a few beers to celebrate! (3 euros for a bucket of 5 beers, such a bargain!)

When I get back to the UK in August I'll be busy with preparations. I need to apply for my student visa and get health checks done in the three weeks I'm home before going on holiday with my family. Leaving everything a bit tight!