Project Casa Herrera: Stage One

I feel that now with all the "How it Started"'s I am caught up enough to start writing about the actual process of getting involved in a study abroad program in Guatemala.
As I mentioned in the last "How it Started" post, while I was in Guatemala in March 2011 I got a tour of a building called Casa Herrera. During the tour my travel group was told about a brand new program University of Texas at Austin, the college Casa Herrera branches from, was planning to run in the Fall of 2011. The program offers four classes at the Casa Herrera building with faculty from UT Austin and tutoring in both Spanish and Mayan at a local language school called Proyecto Linguistico Francisco Marroquin (PLFM) based in Antigua. The part of the program that really intrigued me was that Prof. David Stuart, one of the top Mayanists in the world, would be teaching two of the classes.
While I was in Guatemala I spoke to Prof. Turner about what she thought of the program and the opportunity it offers for undergrads. She was also very excited about the program and she encouraged me to apply for the Fall.
We returned from Guatemala on the 14th of March, and by the 17th I started talking to my school, MassArt, about the process of applying to the Casa Herrera Program. The original deadline for UT Austin was March 1st, but they had extended the deadline til April 1st so I needed to get my application together as quickly as I could. When I did the travel course through MassArt I worked with Lisa Armstrong who works on all the travel courses. I went to Lisa to ask about a study abroad, but she didn't handle semesters abroad, so she sent me to Meghan Houghton, who was standing in for MassArt's Study Abroad Director Amy Holland for the Spring semester. I sent Meghan an e-mail asking to meet with her to talk about preparing me for the study abroad in the Fall.
I was distraught when I got a prompt reply letting me know that the process of applying for a study abroad was much more complicated than I originally thought. MassArt has a deadline for students applying for study abroad's in the Fall; all paperwork needs to be turned in by March 15th and Casa Herrera was not a program that was approved by MassArt. Since I had come back from Guatemala on the 14th, and I hadn't even known about the program until I was in Guatemala, I persisted with asking to meet with Meghan so I could convince her to help me get into the program with MassArt's support. Meghan was extremely nice in all of our e-mailing back and forth, and she really tried to convince me to try for a study abroad in the Spring of 2012, that way we could take the time to go through all the important paperwork and really figure out what I would like to get out of a semester abroad.
I, however, had my heart set on going to Casa Herrera and that program is not being offered in the Spring. I am also finishing my undergrad in the 2011/2012 school year and it is necessary for Art Education majors to do their student teaching in their final semester, so the Fall is really the only available time for me to go on a study abroad.
I will continue with this in Project Casa Herrera: Stage Two.