Archive for Peace Corps

Power Move

March 23, 2008 at 3:52 am · Filed under Just me, Peace Corps

The hardest thing about putting everything you own in storage for two years is deciding what stays and what goes to charity. Clothes not worn in three years, wash and donate. Ditto small appliances and little tsktoksi dust collecters. Then the real packing begings.

 Today my sister and her husband, four of their sons, daughter  and two grand nephews helped me move my stuff out of my second story apartment into storage. Six pickup trucks loaded, along with lamps and art stashed in their club cabs. When we arrived at the 10×10 storage facility I rented and I opened it up everyone gasped. How can we do this, it’s too small? Well we did, in about 10 minutes.

 Amazing, they started moving my stuff out around 10:20, drive to storage about 15 minutes, we were done at noon. My family rocks!

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Miss, Won’t Miss

February 4, 2008 at 7:50 am · Filed under Just me, Peace Corps

With Super Tuesday coming up, I realized that there are many things I won’t miss while in Vanuatu. Political ads top the list. I don’t watch TV very often but when I do (I love House, even the reruns) the ads are for Hilary Clinton, Barak Obama and Ron Paul. Same ads, over and over again. While you folks suffer the same as we lead up to the November election I’ll be cracking open coconuts on a sunny beach.

 I also won’t miss cars, traffic, unwanted telephone calls about…you name it,and paying bills

 What I will miss are lunches with my brother and sister, chats with my TC friends, working at WordsWorth Books and all my friends there and NPR.

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Vanuatu!

November 27, 2007 at 2:18 am · Filed under Peace Corps

I got my Peace Corps invitation today, YAY! I’ll be in Vanuatu as an Agro-enterprise Advisor.  Orientation is April 10 – 12, Pre-Service Training is April 12 – June 19, service ends June 2010.

I most likely will be on a remote island without electricity, so this blog will fade away. But if you’d like to be one of my pen pals, I’d really appreciate it. Yep, the old fashioned way of writing letters on paper and the long, perhaps a month or more wait…and I mean before you or I receive the letter. Anyone game?

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Medical Clearance from PC

October 28, 2007 at 5:45 am · Filed under Peace Corps

Hooray! I faxed my stress test report to Peace Corps on the afternoon of the 25th and got an email the next morning – medical clearance. And another email saying “We wanted to get in touch with you to congratulate you on receiving your medical clearance and therefore, for completing a very important part of the application process. Over the next few weeks, we will be conducting a final review of your application materials, and we will be in contact with you in the event that any additional information is needed. Once the application review is complete, we will update you on the next steps of the process.”

From what I’ve learned dental doesn’t delay the placement process, so I’m in the process and awaiting placement news. The great thing is the email was from a fellow from Inter-America Pacific Unit, so my nomination for Pacific is still under consideration. Yay.

I really want to go to Vanuatu, if I get that invite I’ll tell you why. But, no, it has nothing to do with “Survivor” being filmed there.

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Peace Corps Update

October 23, 2007 at 2:24 am · Filed under New to me, Peace Corps

Nothing is easy. After extensive medical and dental exams I sent off all the forms to PC on Sept. 26. On Oct. 9 I got a letter from the dental office - You need to visit a periodontist for evaluation and definitive treatment. Did that, have one more appointment on Nov. 19, and if I’ve been doing my flossing and gum massaging well I should be okay.

 Then on Oct.16 I got a call from Janet at Medical. The doctor is concerned about your heart palpitations, you need to have a Nuclear Stress Test and submit a personal statement addressing your occasional palpitations.  Had the test this morning. It wasn’t bad, everyone was nice. I was scared though, so PC will probably look at the test and require a heart transplant or some such.  No, I doubt that.

It’s just that when you think you are tooting along well, healthy and get slapped in the face it is disconcerting. The dental was not too surprising, but the heart – yipes. So here is my personal statement:

There are two occasions I felt palpitations of note. Each time I sat down, did some deep breathing, one time meditated on calming (I was driving and pulled off the road) and the other time read “The Diary of a Worm”. When my doctor asked me if I had palpitations, I said occasionaly. I only learned I had Mitrovalve Prolapse in 2000 and never thought about my heart function until then.  At the age of 54, those are occasional palpitations.

However my heart may race as I race to finish NaNoWriMo.

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