Will it still be a dream?

Last month, I met again with an old friend of mine from Germany, Anja. She visited Indonesia this year for the second time, but this time she came with her boyfriend, who is so attractive :p. How cute they are! To make it short, we had a really fun little reunion. She knows that I’m eager to go to Germany and keep asking me when will I go -_- and by any chance, she suddenly remembered a 2 weeks Summer Academy held in Germany which offers a scholarship and ask me to apply. Yuhuu, definitely excited!

Unfortunately the deadline was in the same day with my other deadlines which was also important (to fulfill job recruitment form, lol). Since I’m a lifetime procrastinator, I couldn’t make it in time. I missed the deadline. Then again, Anja told me it was 12 PM German time which means 5 AM Indonesian time.  Ah so true! So, with the 5 hours left before the deadline, I tried my best to write the essay and fill the form. Not trying to be conceited but I didn’t find it hard to write the essay since the theme of the summer academy is Intercultural! Oh Gosh I couldn’t be more excited! I’m interested in those kinds of issues and it was also the issue I used for my final scientific journal; cultural identity. One more thing, I’ll celebrate my birthday there if I’m going!

Couple days ago, I got a long awaited reply in my email. It was the announcement and..… thank God I’m accepted! But it was not as beautiful as I expected. I got only partial-scholarship which means I still have to pay half of the participation fee. It’s exclude the airfare and accommodation. Whoa, how many do I have to pay in total? Like thereabouts €1000? I don’t have parents like Richie Rich’s :p

So instead of giving confirmation, I sent them an email to bargain if they could consider me as a full-scholarship holder. I propose to write a report, article and bla bla when I return to Indonesia. And you know, this time I don’t mind to spend my own expense for the return flight ticket, even though it’s only for 2 weeks! I’m about to invite you to go back to my previous experience.

In 2012, I was accepted being successful participant among other students worldwide (halah) to attend an International Student Festival held in Greifswald, Germany. I was so excited back then. Can you imagine, a German Studies student who finally got a chance to go to Germany? There was no such as participation and accommodation fee. It was all provided! Except, return flight ticket. I was accepted together with my ‘soulmate’ Mira. To cover the flight ticket, we decided to write a proposal to look for a scholarship. We started it from zero, we wrote word by word, we spread the proposal to companies, and so on. We prepared to apply for the visa as well.

Mira told me that she is not going if we get no fund. But for me, I was still confused about going or not. As parents, of course my mom and dad asked me to go and they will buy the ticket. But that was the problem for me and Mira, we don’t want to ask more money from our parents as we have just asked money for flight ticket we needed in the previous year. We know it wasn’t a little money.

Each day we became closer to the D day. We had to decide either we go or not. Considering many aspects finally we decided NOT to go. The main reasons were:

1. We got no successful response regarding our proposal

2. We missed the chance to apply for the Visa. It’s another long story, but for short: I input wrong passport number and made me failed to apply for visa and there’s no time left to re-arrange the new one.

  

Wushhh~ the dream to go to Germany just go with the wind. Years after, I have just realized that money is not as important as the experience I would get, IF I HAD GONE THERE. As long as we have the money to spend, use it! We’ll never run out of money (I mean like there’re thousand ways to get money, although we have to estimate as well). Money will always come to us, unlike a chance.

So learning from that experience, I decided to take this chance if I got the full-scholarship. It’s not worth to go if I still have to pay a big amount of money (with the partial-scholarship) because I have to estimate my life when I come back and afterwards. So will I be going this time, or it will, still, be a dream? Wish me luck :)