April showers bring May flowers?

It's been raining on my parade all month.

1. Apparently, when applying for funding from a U.S. government agency to travel abroad, being a rootless third culture kid screws you. Why? They (seems to be both the U.S. and China) want people to have a unique study abroad experience and share "culture" (whatever the hell that means). They don't want people who have traveled a lot and are likely to instead tell them how much b.s. it is to "share culture" (again, what the hell does that mean).

So, I wasn't entirely denied the money---I was named an "alternate". Based on the anonymous forum (and spreadsheet someone started in GoogleDocs) for aforementioned grant, the people receiving this grant have never spent much time abroad. In fact, most of them are just SO EXCITED! to be OMG LIVING IN CHINA FOR A YEAR!!!

Nevermind that I have thus far paid every @!@@#& trip and year abroad out of my own pocket because my PhD program requires me to be nearly fluent in Chinese before getting to this point in the first place. Argh.

2. I won't be taking my PhD qualifying exams until September. This has its benefits, but it also has its drawbacks. Namely that while I'll have the whole summer to prepare, I will likely have to spend most of this summer unfunded. Of course, given that the economy is crap, our university seems to be imploding, and the library caught on fire spreading soot all over the fourth floor -- the books I need for QE prep -- I'm OK with eating the cost. Besides, I'll be with L in Germany all summer, then come back for the exam in September and then return to Germany. At that point (although hopefully much earlier) the rest of the funding agencies will have gotten back to me or not, and I'll be deciding whether or not it's worth trying to go to China before another season of proposal writing. If I don't get funding for China for next year, I'm not going. I'll keep applying, but I refuse to fund my own dissertation research. I already ate the cost for this PhD program once (Taiwan) and I'm not doing it again.