ilep 2015

United States of America has never been in Lucyriver travel bucket list all this while. One of the reasons is the distance as it is totally at the other side of the world and the others are no one around Lucyriver talks of going, most of them prefer Europe, and the hassle of getting a visa. Now as Lucyriver is blogging this from South Carolina, USA it is really unbelievable how Lucyriver ended here.

All this begun when a teacher in school was applying for an educational program called ILEP which was handled by MACEE http://www.macee.org.my/ in Malaysia. She suggested Lucyriver apply too. It is open to secondary school teachers with at least five years of experience teaching in one of these subjects; English, Mathematics, Science and Social Studies.

Lucyriver did not take the application seriously as Lucyriver never really get what Lucyriver want most of the times. So application was sent in very close to the due date in April and then a SKYPE interview was offered in May to those who lives in East Malaysia.

After the interview, Lucyriver put everything behind as Lucyriver did not really think there would be further response. Then came the TOEFL test in Petaling Jaya in June where later on Lucyriver was announced as alternate candidate which means Lucyriver will only get on board if someone gives up the offer.

Everything seemed to have died down until the promotion to finalist came in September. It was really a tough decision to make with both family and work in consideration. Lucyriver declined after a long thought but soon regretted. An appeal was made to regain the offer.

It also served as a turning point in one of the darkest moment in Lucyriver life in health issue. It was like being given a second chance of life and from that Lucyriver was adamant in participating in ILEP.

A medical check up was finalised in October followed by the visa interview in November. There were also other things such as application for study leave and BTN course before going overseas.

On 4th January 2014, the five of us departed to Washington DC from KLIA. See how happy we were despite not really knowing what awaited us there. Not to mention the more than 20 hours flight with a long-stretch transit in Dubai.