And So Waiting Has Finally Ended..

No more waiting, people! After a whole year of idleness, the so great and wonderful scholarship program rewarded me with "UNSUCCESSFUL TO PARTICIPATE IN THIS YEAR'S PORGRAM" . I am so angry that it overcomes my sadness. The light at the end of the tunnel has gone off.

Why the hell did they give me the grant if they didn't paln to work hard to addmit me to a university! I don't feel that I want to apply again next year, but my parents are telling me to do so. Just thinking of how I should go through that all over again makes me sick. I've been rejected by seven universities for reasons I shall never know, and there's no wonder that it might happen again next time. I'm shocked at their inaccuracy and insensitiveness. They kept delaying the process untill I ran out of time, then they came apologizing saying "Sorry, but we won't send out you packets to universities anymore! Time has ended", as if people's destiney means nothing to them!

They tell you "once you get the grant there will be no problem at all", "you'll definetly go to the U.S."... so, and so... Then what? They tell you "Sorry dear, but getting a placement is not garanteed untill the last moment of the process". They should have mentioned this in their website instead of making sure to every desperate grantee that their biggest dream will surely come true!

Nonesense.

I have wasted many opportunities for the sake of this one, I've lost a year of my life, a year that will never be made up again. Gosh! Just thinking how I spend the past year locking myself up at home trying to stay safe cuz I thought I'd have the greatest time very soon. How silly of me, and how cruel of them!

And now what's the next step? This I don't know. I have to make plans again, probably find some other "little" dreams and try to work them out instead of my old big dreams that faded the way mirage fades on a dead land.

I have so much rage inside that I can't put on words, so I'd better go before I start swearing and cursing...

To The Airport and Back

So, I said yesterday that I would be flying to Amman with Mom and sister this morning. At first I didn't think that I would be able to make it with them cuz of all my waitings for the Fulbright stuff, but after the last unpleasant updates I got I decided not to waste my time anymore with this and start to have some fun.

I packed whatever I needed to take with me and asked Attawie if I need to get this and that and what else to pack.. bla bla bla... I bought the plane ticket the next day after I decied to go. Somehow, my parents managed to get me the ticket on the same day of my Mom and sister's flight. It's hard to do so now cuz all flights are reserved till mid August, but as what The Kid said, "the wise and the willing finds his way!" ;) One thing though, my flight was supposed to take off at 4:30, while Mom and sister's flight on 2:30. I didn't see a problem in that but Mom said that we'd find a way to switch places with a passenger so that I'd be on the same plane with them.

Anyways, Friday morning came and we got ready and waited for the taxi driver to drive us to the airport. We had to get there early before the Friday stroll ban which starts on 11 P.M. Though most of the road we took was a high way, I noticed that it was a hellish and deserted one. It was as if we were passing by a battle front, there was nothing but us, checkpoints with armed soldiers, barbed wires and the remaining framgments of bombings on the street's pavement. Oh, and alot of garbage!

For me and my sister it was fun to be on the road as we haven't been out for ages, but Mom was more anxious and was praying and focusing on the road. Well, she's right. After all this is the Airports's road which is famous of its deadly accidents! We reached the checkpoint, the one with the sniffing dogs. The time I saw it I thought of starting to count the checkpoints, but alas, we already passed by a countless number of them, so I quit the thought.

On another checkpoint where we had to get out of the car and have our bags searched, we were asked to have our passports checked as well. The guards and some officers were trying to be nice and funny with people to ease their fear of the road, dogs and everything else. When Mom asked one of the guards where to check our passports, he said loudly "Ma'am, go to that dumb guy, he'll check them", and he pointed to a guy who was smiling at us. Mom felt very sorry for this guy and wondered how did he get to work in this place if he can't speak. He took our passports, motioned to us to take off the sunglasses so that he can see if our faces matched the ones in the passports' photos. After finishing, he lift a thumb up to indicate all was ok, smiled and said "Have a nice journey!". Later we found out that he was playing this sort of candid camera thing to make people laugh in this scary place.

Then there were some other checkpoints and more dogs sniffing suitecases. Two American dudes helped us with one of our bags which was a very heavy one. We said "Thanks" and they motioned "Not at all".. then finally, we're at the Airport's main hall. At the time we got there bomibings started rocking the place. Sister and I stared at each other with fear, yet laughing. Mom, having been to the airport before, said that we'd hear much of that during the coming time. The driver, who was with us all the way long, suggested that we check the stamps on our passports as they have been renewd lately. Thank God we did this early as it turned that we had a problem with them!

Dad renewd the passports about two weeks ago before he went to Germany on a business trip. So we thought that we were all up to date with it. But it tunred out that a new stamp has been used just a few days ago which we don't have on our passports, and that prevented us from traveling! Time was 10:40 and we had only 20 minutes left for the cerfew, so we had to act fast and go back home. Otherwise we would be stuch inside the airport till 7 P.M. with nothing to do but envying people who were happily leaving.

The road back home was worse. I had nausia cuz of the heat outside and my empty stomach. More checkpoints were filling the streets by this time, motioning for cars to drive faster before blocking the streets. The clock ticked 11 P.M. and we were still on the road. A few cars were stopped near some checkpoints already, and we were afraid that we'd be forced to stop as well. But we were allowed to pass cuz we were women in the car and they wouldn't lest us stay out till the stroll ban is over at 7 P.M.

We made it home safely at last. Sister and I were laughing at it but Mom was angry. The trip is postponed till next week. My shoulders got stiffened from holding and pulling our suitecases down the road. I thought I would be seeing Attawie today, we haven't met since October 2003 when she came to college the last time before leaving to Jordan. We've already made plans for tonight as she invited me to a party. I was going around teasing my cousins for going to see two Iraqi singers; Hussam Al-Rsam -that is a big hit now- and Kadhim Al-Sahir, a very famous Iraqi singer, in that party.

So... That was my trip to the Airport and back!

At Stake

This is an update about my University placement in the U.S.

I received an email from the Fulbright office this morning after I sent them many emails asking about my condition.. Well, the news are bad and not so optimistic!

Five universities have rejected me so far, and there's still one last university whom they are waiting a final asnwer from. If their answer will be the same as the previous ones, then I will have no place in the Fulbright anymore, and will not participate in the program.. and will not go to the U.S.

I'm still waiting for that final answer from the last university. However, the IEE Institution itself is not optimistic about it.

I'm devastated here and can't stop crying.

While Waiting...

So, it's been a long time since I put a real post here. A few things happened during this time, and I tried to post more than once but every time I kept postponing till the topic became out of date. I came across an interesting article in a local newspaper some weeks ago and decided to talk about it on the blog. It was about ice cream in Iraq and how Iraq was among the first founders of ice cream. Well, my laziness got me in losing that newspaper! Mom found that we had too many newspapers and magazines which we kept during the past three years that now we have no place for the new magazines and papers, so she decided to get rid of them and put them all (well not all, we kept some of them as they had articles and poems written by Dad) in a big plastic bag. I saw the bag in the garage for three days and kept telling myself that "tomorrow I'll search for that article among those newspapers in that bag". But because of myself that never quits the habit of postponing doing things I lost the article when I came out to the garage one "late" day and wanted to start my search among the trash. The trash car came few days before that day and took it away.

Well. I read the article only one time and there were many details about places and names where the ice cream was first made. So I can't write it now, and don't know which newspaper was that in order to search it online. Bottom line is: never postpone the work of today until tomorrow!

Dah! As if I will really listen!

I am supposed to leave to the U.S. at the end of this month, BUT I haven't got my placement nor visa yet! I'm the only Fulbrighter left without a placement and still waiting till now. This just makes me so frustrated and worried. There were times when I wished if I didn't apply to the scholarship cuz I felt that I was wasting time just waiting without having fun or even doing something useful to myself. It's been a year and one week since I officially graduated, and this whole year has past without me doing anything at all but staying at home filling applications and sending them online, attending interviews and luncheons and having lame exams for the sake of an M.A. degree.

One of the reasons I haven't posted for so long is that I noticed that in almost every post I complained about something that was bothering me, and this is not something that people want to read on blogs that should be interesting. Add to it my concerns about my future which I feel is at stake! I was told that being a grantee doesn't assure me that I will really get to the States and start with my study there! There were still the obstacles of a University placement and Visa! Well, I was shocked when I heard this, and the person in charge confirmed it to me. At that point, my mind started thinking and jumping to some conclusions that being late in receiving any news from any university means that it's all gone! Or about to. I felt that I was hanged somewhere between earth and the sky, and that was horrible. The "what if" was killing me and I tried hard to avoid thinking negatively but I just couldn't. I started to study the available options in case there would be no placement for me but everything seemed so limited. It's not what I planned to do.

I hated answering phone calls of meeting people cuz every time I talk with a person he/she would ask "when are you leaving?", "what the hell are you doing here till now? Don't you want to escape here!" and I didn't have answers for these questions, I was just smiling all the time and say "soon". It was obvious that I myself wasn�t sure of that!
I promised before that I would announce about my whereabouts in the U.S. once I get there. But unfortunately, things have changed and I cannot do that anymore. It's true that I still don't know my destination there, but once it comes I will not be able to post it on the blog. That�s for my safety. It is why I said on the CBox several weeks ago that I had important news that I can't post and that I would send them on emails...

And during my endless waiting I'm playing this..

Reading this... I reached chapter 99 and will finish the book tomorrow...(teasing Attawie! :P)

I shoot a movie with my cousins at my grandparents' home last week. It started as a horror movie but somehow ended like a comedy. The story was about students living in one place where one of them is a killer. He kills the first victim and decides to kill the others in order to escape any interrogations, and then he persuades one of the students to be his partner and help him kill the others. Of course, the movie ends the same old classic way by defeating the evil. The killer was my uncle. I was the camerawoman but I also had a small scene where everyone laughed at my funny gestures! The director of the movie was one of my cousins and the soundtrack was an Iraqi song. The movie titled "Fear".


Keep your fingers crossed for Morbido!



P.S. Post published from Photobucket, hope it work out.