Sponsoring a Student from University of Atma Jaya Yogyakarta

In August 2012, I contacted my friend, Lukas, the Dean of the Communication Studies, Political and Social Sciences at University of Atma Jaya Yogyakarta expressing our interest in sponsoring a student. The drum rolled and by the end of September we received 13 applications. Based on 3 criteria: academic performance, leadership, and financial hardship, we selected 5 students for an interview which would take place on November 21, 2012 at the University. The Dean welcome our plan, and in October we finalized our trip plan for Indonesia ... to interview the 5 candidates on campus. This trip was very exciting for both my husband and I for we will be sponsoring a university student this time. After 20 hours of flying from San Francisco, Mitch and I arrived in Jakarta on November 18th, 2012 in the morning, then connected to a domestic flight to the city of Semarang (my hometown) on the island of Java. We had one day of rest to ourselves, on Nov. 20, and then on the 21 we drove 3 hours to Yogyakarta to interview the 5 university students who passed the screening. This was very exciting to both Mitch and I. The next day we flew to Bali and spent 2 nights there. Eating, diving, snorkeling, getting massage, walking along the beach, etc. The last day in Bali was not very enjoyable for we missed the flight and had to spend 1/2 day at the airport. The tickets were only refunded 10% because not only it was our fault, but we decided to go on and fly another airline instead of getting a replacement flight which would be the next day. The worse was from Yogyakarta, the road was so jammed, that it took 4 hours to cover a distance of only 61 miles. We arrived in Smg looking tired and joined my family for dinner as scheduled. It was raining so hard and we drove through a flood the height of almost to the floor of our car. Luckily was not for long, only a stretch of 200 yards. The food was good though the restaurant was almost closed by the time we arrived, so food was limited. The next day Mitch had to pack to catch his flight from Jakarta back to the States. By the time Mitch left, we had not made our decision yet, as to who the winner of our scholarship would be.