We're Not Procrastinating (anymore)

All right, it's the middle of November and we haven't even sent in our medical packets yet. We got them at the beginning of September and after a month or so of fruitless calls to the VA hospitals near us, I finally had some luck at a military base about 2 hours away. We had to go to a federal facility because we didn't have the $1500 or so that it would have cost to get the tests done on our own (no insurance--sorry mom!). We had our appointment set for the middle of October and after an undue amount of bureaucratic fervor we made it onto the base late but in enough time for our blood to be drawn for the labs and for the doctor to see us before lunch. We considered ourselves lucky to be back home before dark, but we still had to wait for the lab results to come back before we had our forms filled out and mailed to us.

After we got our packets back Holly noticed (after I failed to for a week or so) that our forms weren't signed by the doctor. We are going to have to mail them back and cross our fingers that we can mail them to the Peace Corps sometime next week. Now I really regret waiting at all after we got the forms, but maybe this way we won't have the months of waiting that punctual volunteers complain about ;).

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No reservations

JERRY: I don't understand, I made a reservation, do you have my reservation?
RENTAL CAR AGENT: Yes, we do, unfortunately we ran out of cars.
JERRY: But the reservation keeps the car here. That's why you have the reservation.
RENTAL CAR AGENT: I know why we have reservations.
JERRY: I don't think you do. If you did, I'd have a car. See, you know how to take the reservation, you just don't know how to hold the reservation and that's really the most important part of the reservation, the holding. Anybody can just take them.

To be continued.

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Nominated!

When Paul and I first decided that we wanted to join the Peace Corps, we wanted to teach English in a Spanish-speaking country. When we first began looking into the Peace Corps, however, we quickly learned that Latin America doesn't request teachers and so there were no TEFL assignments in Spanish-speaking countries; once we learned that our top choice wasn't an option, we still remained excited about the Peace Corps and decided we'd just learn a different language and go somewhere else.

Though Paul and I were certainly disappointed in May when we weren't nominated, the wait was well worth it! Last week we received a call from our recruiter to offer us a nomination. Our recruiter began by saying that he was surprised by our nomination and didn't think this would have been an option for us, but that we were being offered a spot teaching English as a foreign language (TEFL) in Latin America and leaving either in April or May 2007. This is exactly what we've been hoping for for nearly two years now and we could barely contain ourselves on the phone.

It turns out that there is just one TEFL program in Latin America and it is brand new; the first group of teachers left sometime in 2006, and we'll probably be just the second group to participate in the program. Right now we feel excited and very lucky because we've always read that the Latin America positions are some of the most competitive and coveted, let alone the one TEFL program in Latin America.

We were immediately curious where in Latin America we might be going; a nomination only provides the region, assignment, and month for departure; the specific country isn't known until the invitation is received only a few months before the actual departure. However, with just one TEFL program in Latin America, we thought we might be able to do some detective work. Eventually I came across this article, a press release on the Peace Corps website discussing how the PC program in Nicaragua is being expanded to include a TEFL program. We certainly don't want to get our hopes up on a hunch, but this seems pretty convincing! We're especially excited about a potential Central America assignment since we loved our trip to Belize earlier this summer.

From here our tasks our to fax in a copy of our marriage license, wait patiently for our medical packets, and try not to get too excited about our dream nomination!

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Oh yes. There will be waiting.

We heard back from our sincerely nice and helpful recruiter at the end of May who told us that they couldn't find a spot for us in the March/April/May slot, so they'll try again in August. The bad news is that we probably won't end up in Africa. The good news, however, is that we'll most likely be in Eastern Europe.

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Feeling Withdrawn

It's really scary to see on my toolkit that my application has been withdrawn, but I knew it was coming. Our recruiter e-mailed us yesterday to say that he was going to withdraw it because it might look bad for our applications to sit idle for so long since they can't be submitted until May 5 with placements to come in middle to late May. He will reactivate our applications just before he can submit them to DC for couples' placement. This doesn't make a lot of sense to me since there is nothing we could be doing to keep our applications from sitting idle (if it were up to us, we'd take a placement today!) and since it seems better for us to have applied early, but I think our recruiter knows what he's doing and is trying to help us out.

Paul still hasn't received his toolkit login information in the mail and is still waiting for two letters of recommendation that are supposed to be done over spring break, which is next week. So, those two things are really all there is for us (him) to do between now and May 5.

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