Hello Oman!

Hi everyone!
My name is Davan, I'm fifteen years old and next year I'm going to live in Oman for nine months! Yeah!
Maybe you are wondering how this has happened to me. Well, it all started last fall with a disappointing discovery. I had my heart set on going to Ghana for a year with AFS, but when I was beginning to apply I discovered two things. One, exchange is very, very expensive and two, I was actually about three months too young. You can imagine that I was a little unhappy.
I proceeded to spend the day surfing the internet trying to find exchange programs to Ghana that I was old enough for, and that is how I found YES Abroad.
Kennedy Lugar YES Abroad is a full scholarship exchange program for teenagers to study abroad in countries with high Muslim populations, to promote intercultural understanding and peace. It actually started soon after 9/11 as a program for Muslim students to study here, but over the years it has grown to include an outbound program. 
So, I applied. The application is long, but very worth it. After clicking the "submit" button with my heart in my throat I sat back and... waited for about two months. Two excruciatingly long months. And then I heard back. I was a semi finalist! I was completely over the moon. They flew me out to DC for the weekend, along with 118 other semi finalists who just so happened to be some of the most awesome people in the whole world. (I'll write more about the IPSE later)
I returned home feeling not-so-confident, because absolutely everyone at the event deserved a scholarship. I basically talked myself into thinking I definitely wasn't going to get it and tried to put the whole thing out of my mind. That was a little tricky, since the scholarship is my dream.
Then, a few days ago I received an email with the most exciting news in the world. I'm going to Oman, which is the most exciting thing EVER! Oman ended up being my top choice, so things couldn't really have turned out better. Well, unless they could have given scholarships to everyone at the IPSE.
I'm a little sad to leave Portland, Oregon, my home for the first 15 years of my life. I'll miss my family, my friends, the studio where I do aerial dance and being homeschooled. But I'm setting off on an adventure that will give me another cast of family and friends and places to miss when I come home, and let me just say that I can't wait.