Organised Chaos

I always planned on making a blog for my trip to Indonesia, but after reading Louise's blog (a past ACICIS student... bet you cant tell where i got the layout :P) I thought I'd make a Blogger account rather than just using my myspace account.

I'm probably getting a little a head of myself, because I haven't even been accepted yet, in fact, I'm still in the application process, but I'm pretty determined to go! So, most of you are probable thinking "What the hell is he going on about?? Trip to Indonesia?? And what the hell is ACICIS??!!" ... Well, early last semester we had someone come into uni and talk about this unknown "ACICIS", it stands for the Australian Consortium for In-Country Indonesian Studies... Basically, it allows me to go and study at an Indonesian university for either 6months or a full year. If you don't already know, I'm studying Teaching/Arts at Uni and I'm majoring in Indonesian and Japanese. The ACICIS program is a great opportunity for me to study in Indonesia, I think the best way for me to learn about all aspects of Indonesia is to go there, not just as a tourist in a hotel, but rather live like a local. Anyway, I'll talk about the program when I am accepted (not IF :P)

So far the application process is a little muddled, for the last two or so weeks I've been running around trying to find out as much as I can, but ACICIS is run through Murdoch University in Perth, so naturally, no one at my uni knows anything about it (even though several students went last year). Half the ACICIS forms cant be used, so I've had some trouble finding out what needs to be done and I've finally managed to get them edited by the school. The current travel warnings prevent my uni from granting me permission to go, so I had to sign away all of my rights witnessed by a JP... but it finally all seems to be underway... Now I'm just waiting on an email from the head of my school and my Indo lecturer. Once I get those, I can finally start to put my application together!!