Woo hoo!

The Marshall Islands has its first ever Gates Millennium Scholarship finalist, and she goes to Marshall Islands High School. It’s pretty exciting. Two months ago five students of mine completed Gates Millennium Scholarship applications. They were the first ever to apply from within the Marshall Islands. Four of them were rejected, but one made the cut. It was sad to break the news to the four who were turned down, but it pretty sweet to tell the one who made it.

She now has one month to produce the remaining paperwork, namely pell grant eligibility, an updated transcript, and a letter of acceptance from a college. Final notifications will be produced on a rolling basis as soon as finalists produce the remaining paperwork. Spirits are pretty high right now as the final documentation is crunched out.

My only other bit of significant news is that I’ve requested to move up the termination date of my contract. Currently it’s August 14th, but graduation is June 5th. While I’m generally OK with receiving a few extra paychecks, I expect I’d get bored with pretty much nothing to do for over two months. Moreover, it would prevent my replacement from being hired in a timely manner because I would still be under contract. That means my replacement probably wouldn’t begin work until after school begins, a prospect I don’t like.

Taiwan Scholarship applications are in full force. As expected I have more applicants this year, including my host sister who graduated two years ago. We’re looking at up to fifteen applicants in all, about twice the number compared to last year. Six will be accepted this year, the same as last. Applications are due at the end of March. I think we’ll hear by the end of April.

One of the girls who went to Taiwan last year was actually back for a few weeks. She took advantage of her Chinese New Year vacation and returned to visit her family and friends. She stopped by the school and spoke to me and this year’s seniors. It seems like she’s doing well and her Chinese is definitely passable. The seniors seemed pretty struck and I’m sure her presence had a lot to do with the increased number of applicants.

Something relatively cool happened this month. The Chinese Association of the Marshall Islands was created, intending to organize and protect the estimated 300 Chinese in this country. The first meeting was held the weekend before Chinese New Year and over 150 people were in attendance. I attended and was asked to become the secretary for the purposes of communicating with the community at large. I accepted. I like it. It feels like a portion of my life here has come to a very constructive conclusion.