Bye Bye Central Asia

Okay, so I don't know what happened with blogger exactly but for some reason it double posted the story below instead of putting up what I wrote about Central Asia. That being said, I re-wrote the post and it goes something, kind of, like this:

Now that I have cooled down from figuring out that I am actually in the US Peace Corps I have had a little bit of time to think about the other things that went down within the phone conversation I had with placement. I don't want anyone to take this the wrong way but I realized today that I am a little sad about the fact that I will not be going to Central Asia. It also kind of blows my mind that out of all of the countries within that area, that none of them can support a colposcopy (which I would only need if at the half way check up I had an abnormal pap.)

That is a lot of freaking countries! In case you didn't know which ones, here is a list:

• Azerbaijan
• Kazakhstan
• Kyrgyz Republic
• Armenia
• Albania
• Turkmenistan
• Bulgaria
• Georgia
• Macedonia
• Moldova
• Romania
• Ukraine

I spent half of my senior year, as well as a lot of extra time writing a 25pg research thesis, studying the democratization of these countries, and now to know that I won't get to see it first hand is a bit of a let down. I do know, that when the day comes and I see that big white envelope in the mail, that I will be pumped about which ever country I end up in; be it in South America, Sub-Saharan Africa, or Eastern Asia, and that is a very comforting/ exhilarating thought. 

So here's to you Central Asia countries! May your democracies flourish, your people be well fed, and your female Peace Corps Volunteers have normal pap smear results!!

Much love, 

Claire

Official w/o Invitation

Holy heck!! Just got off the phone with the placement officer...WHOOOAA! I am officially cleared to by a US Peace Corps Volunteer and have been told that I will be getting an invitation. :)

That being said, I will not be receiving an invitation until the beginning of November because there is currently a freeze on invites due to the Federal Budget mess. When the invites do start up again they will be for departures sometime between January-June.

Things I now know:
-I can not go to Central Asia because they can not support my one medical hiccup
-There are looking at Sub-Saharan Africa, South America and Asia for my placement (originally it was just Africa and South America but I asked if I could be considered for Asian placements due to my Asian Studies background.)
-It would be helpful for me to start taking doula classes, Red Cross HIV classes and CPR/ First Aid (the doula classes are something I had brought up specifically with her, so this may not be an across the table recommendation.)
-It will take somewhere around 8 weeks for me to get my actual invitation and she will email me once they are ready to go out again.
-When invites start going out again they will be anywhere for within the period between Jan 2012 and June 2012

Oi, so I feel like I kinda of know a little more, but not really. Now just have to work on eliminating my credit card debt, gaining more health skills, and getting my affairs in order to leave...at some point. Going to go chill out for a second now, very strung out on energy. :)

Hope this finds you all well!

~Claire  

Waiting...

Sitting here and waiting for the call that is going to come within the next 10mins. Needed to blow off some nervous energy so figured I would post on the blog. Attempting to breathe :) So pumped but also so nervous!!!! Will let people know how it goes once the call is done. Wish me luck!

~Claire

Placement Interview Part II

WOOHOO PART II!! Kristen just emailed me back and I have set up an appointment for Thursday at 10am :) Will let everyone know how it goes, and fingers crossed will have an idea of what the heck is going on by the end of the week.

~Claire

Placement Interview

WOOHOO!! I received the following over the weekend:

Greetings from the Peace Corps Placement Office!

I would like to introduce myself as the Placement Specialist responsible for the final review of your application.  As you may have already heard, the federal budget resolution for this fiscal year as well as projected budget realities for next year, have had a significant impact on current Peace Corps’ operating plans.  Due to the reduction of Peace Corps assignments, all programs have filled for 2011, and therefore, if you are selected for service, the earliest programs are now departing in the January – June timeframe. 

I have reviewed your entire file and have some follow-up questions for you.  Please let me know the best times to reach you between 9am and 5pm Eastern Standard Time.  Include your time zone and the phone number you would like me to call.  The conversation will last approximately 30 minutes.  Because of the high volume of applicants we are working with, I would be grateful if you would give me at least two options for times and days to call.  I will reply to inform you of the day and time I have reserved for our conversation.

I look forward to talking to you. 

Best,

Kristen

I'm so excited, and have emailed her back to let her know that I can talk with her at any time on Thursday or Friday, so finger's crossed I will have an idea of what is going on by the end of the week. Will up date more later, just wanted everyone to know and thought it might also be good for anyone that is waiting on a similar email to know that there are no more 2011 spots. :)

~Claire

Up a Wall

Hello wonderful blog family (and some blood family too, gathered by what I am seeing in my little survey thingy.) I know its been a while and I do have some recent updates so I figured I would let you all know.

About a week after submitting my updated information to Health Placement I received an email letting me know that Fran (who was super nice by the way) was sending my file onto a Placement Specialist. Around this same time I sent an email to the Placement people and asked if I could get a rough timeline for when I should be hearing from them next. The reply was that once the Placement Specialist had my file that I should be hearing from them within the next 4-6weeks. I was also told that I should be receiving a letter talking about the conditions of my medical clearance.

And then the sucky part...

I called the office after a week and dealt with a woman that just didn't seem to have the time of day to deal with me and told me to just sit and wait and that the letter would come...that was two weeks ago. I called the office again today and was told that they were going to send out another copy, which is great, but I feel shitty for having to bug the crap out of them in order to get it. I'm just really frustrated. This is probably in part because this is the first time in my PC process that I have had to wait while not having something else to complete. Its one thing to be waiting to hear about medical or an interview, when you have other PC stuff to be working on or more stuff to look forward to doing. This is the first time where I can not speed along the process myself.

Added onto this stress was also the phrasing for the emails that I received which both emphasized that the next part of the application-ring-of-death was competitive and that I should not assume that I will get placed for Peace Corps. First off, I have yet to hear of anyone that gets this far along and then is told that they just simply didn't make the cut. Secondly, what if I am that person? What if after all this insanity I just don't have the right chops? Life will go on, but I don't think the word "disappointment" would even come close.

On a side note, since I began writing this and then went out and ran errands, my degree was just conferred! This is super awesome because PC has been waiting for it and though I was told it wouldn't hold up the process, it makes me feel like I have gotten a bit closer to the end goal now. I just ordered an electronic copy of my transcript, and will be sending it on to the office within the next 30mins or so.

That's about it for the day. Sorry it had been so long, hope this finds everyone well. :)

~Claire

Orphan Promotion

Good Morning! I thought I would do a little shameless plugging right now, since it is my last day in this wonderful office, with all of my wonderful co-workers and bosses. :) The Nyaka AIDS Orphans Project has been my "summer" internship since March, and I can't say enough about all the wonderful experiences I have had here. The organization runs two primary schools in Uganda for children who have lost their parents to AIDS. We also run a farm in order to feed them healthy meals, a community library so everyone can get in on the education and are in the process of building a health clinic.

For the past 5 months I have been helping to manage the Grandmother Basket Program, which helps provide opportunities to the Grandmothers of Nyaka to extend their economic independence, and provide for the children that they care for. They make beautiful handicrafts, which we then buy for a fair price, sell here in the states and then put the money back into the organization. We also have training programs for them in community development and micro-loans. Supporting the Grandmothers of the community is essential since, after the death of their own children, Grand parents often take over guardianship of multiple children.

So it is a wonderful organization, and I have been proud to work here for the past couple of months. That being said, they recently started a blog and we are trying to get the word out there, thus the shameless plug :) http://nyakaproject.blogspot.com/ is the address, and if you are interested in helping out the project you can check out the website at: http://www.nyakaschool.org/

On a more peace corpsy type note, I am hoping to hear back from placement sometime soon, since I sent in all of the extra information and at this point the only thing they (and myself) are waiting on is my final transcript. I'm hoping that they can still work on placing me before that comes in because I feel like it would just be a waste of time to wait for a document that isn't going to be ready until the end of the month. But we will see, and I can be patient. Breathe in, breathe out, the time will come sooner than you think.

Much Love,
Claire 

Medically Cleared!!!!

WOOHOOO!!!! I just got the status update that I have been medically cleared to serve!! I had no idea it was going to be that quick, but I sent in the last of the paperwork yesterday and am now good to go. :)

Of course, Peace Corps being Peace Corps, about 5 seconds after getting the update email I got another email from a placement officer asking for more paper work. I have to submit a final transcript (which I still need to write one more paper for,) an up dated resume and a form called a Romantic Involvement Questionaire. The somewhat annoying point of this is that I already submitted an RIQ when I first applied for Peace Corps and I can't imagine that the answers are going to be any different and I have also been sending them "resume updates" since December.

So...for those of you out there who might be doing the same thing, just stop, they are going to ask for it again once you clear medical anyways.

Super pumped, going to get the paper work in quickly and hopefully figure out where the heck I am going sometime soon!!!

Keep you updated, hope all is going well,
Claire 

Medical Round 2 DONE!

Hey everybody, I know its been a bit but I have been running around and trying to wrap up life things before moving back home. That being said I finally received the last of the paper work from my doctor and have submitted to the medical office. Fingers crossed I hear something soon since we are reaching the two month point from the "confirmation" email, and now that my medical stuff is in I should be good to go/ wait a bunch. :)

Either way it is nice to have what is hopefully the last portion of this paper work in. Now I just need to turn in my final paper so I can officially graduate and send in my transcript!!

Hope all is well!
Claire  

Placement Manipulation

Hello Everybody!

So I am in the process of getting my second round medical stuff into the office, and am hoping to have everything done by the end of this next week (assuming my blood tests come back quickly.) On another note I wanted to post about some "placement manipulation" I am attempting.

Before I get into this, let me make it clear that I am serious about my flexibility and I will be thrilled to serve where ever peace corps wants to send me, that being said; I have an Asian Studies specialization and it would be cool to end up somewhere in Asia. Imagine my elation when this morning I go to poke around peacecorpswiki.com and find a few new postings for deployments in January! There are only two of them but one of them is in Thailand, which would be an amazing placement for me seeing as my Grandfather (a tenured Sociology professor who specializes in East Asia) spends a lot of time there, and my mother spent three months there and couldn't stop raving about it.

Clearly neither of these trips probably went deep into the areas in which I would be working as a Peace Corps volunteer but I would still be interested in traveling to a country that everyone in my family seems to love so much. There is also the little fact that I am currently writing the last paper of my degree as a comparative study between Uganda and Thailand's approaches to prevent the spread of HIV. I'm hoping that I can put this paper on some sort of experience addendum since I'm certainly getting an insane amount of knowledge about Thailand's HIV population.

Anyways, I guess its not really "manipulation" because (as I am sure you all know), they are going to give out whatever placement they want, and you don't get much say, but I feel better thinking I have some amount of control over where I am going for the next two years, so at least there is that.

Hope all is well,
Claire