Officially Accepted

I called up the Placement Officer today to accept the invitation. He quizzed me on the materials they sent me, which threw me off a bit, but I answered the questions well enough.

Apparently it was expected for me to have sent in the visa forms and such already. They're not due for a while though, so it's not problem. Around mid-June I'll be receiving a packet with more information about my job and things to bring to pre-staging.

July 18th!

I woke up this morning and found out that I had been medically cleared. Apparently they didn't care about the whole chlamydia thing.

A few hours later I got a call from some Peace Corps official in Washington who informed me that my official invitation is in the mail, and that it will be here by Friday. "w00t w00t," I exclaimed. He told me I'll be departing on July 18th for my pre-departure location (which is somewhere in the US).

I still don't know which country I'm going to, but I did find out that I'm definitely going to be teaching English in French-speaking Western Africa.

More updates coming soon.

Almost Done

w00t

School done.

Out of My Hands

I mailed in my medical and dental forms today, thus finally completing the application process. Hopefully the forms will get to Washington in time for me to depart with a group in June or July. Now I just have to wait about 4 to 6 weeks, and eventually I'll get a letter in the mail which details my exact departure date, my country of service, and my specific job.

When I was getting copies of my lab tests today I found out I never got a chlamydia test. It says on the application to only note the results for that test "if applicable", so I'm hoping that means only women needed to get tested. I suppose it doesn't really matter now if I screwed up any of the forms, since there's nothing I can do but wait and see. Also, gamble on basketball. Go Pistons!

My last final is tomorrow, and then I'll be completely done with school. I'm really looking forward to having absolutely no responsibilities. Except, of course, resisting the urge to show up to work blind drunk, just to see if they'd notice (they wouldn't).

Application Woes

According to some email I just got, I have to mail in my medical forms this week or I might miss out on leaving in the summer. The problem is that the clinic that assessed my tendinitis a year or two ago has to send their files to the UT doctors before I can complete the medical forms, and I have no idea if that's happened yet. Tomorrow should be fun as I track that down.

Once I take care of that, my application will be complete, and I'll just have to wait for the Peace Corps to send me a invitation letter, which names the country I'll be going to and the job I'll be doing. They've told me that I should anticipate going to western Africa to teach English, but that could change at any point - though it won't, since French-speaking volunteers are in short supply, and that's the only job I'm qualified to do.