soupy says

How long will you be gone?
27 months: June 6, 2006 - August 25, 2008. The first three months is cultural and language training. After that, I’ll then be sworn in as a volunteer.

What will be doing?
I am a Health Extension Volunteer working under the program Community Based Health. I received a very broad job description with my invitation. The jist of it is “designing sessions and training programs in public health awareness and education.” Current volunteers have told me that every volunteer ends up teaching some English. I will probably work for a NGO or a local health department.

Where are you going to be in Mongolia?
I don’t know. I’ll be living with a host family in one city during training, and then I’ll move to my site when I become a volunteer. I won’t find out where I’ll live as a volunteer until the end of training. However, due to my job, I will post likely live in an aimag (provincial) center with populations ranging from 40,000 - 80,000 people.

What’s the housing situation like?
I will most likely be in a ger or an apartment.

Which do you want to live in?
I’ll get back to you.

Are you going to be updating your blog?
I hope so! Since I will be in a city, I should have decent Internet access. It seems that at least some health volunteers have ‘net access through work. However, I have been told that ‘net access the first three months isn’t wonderful. So, letters would be nice. *ahem*

What’s the best way to get in touch with you?
E-mail. However, I’ll put you on list of amazing people if you send me a letter or a package, and I’ll send you a letter complete with a Mongolian stamp! For those that use Myspace to post important life event via bulletins, please e-mail me this information. I’ll probably won’t see it otherwise. However, if you post a comment to this blog, I get an e-mail with the text. Thus, it is a good way to say hello. A few people have asked if I can use skype, and I don’t know. I’ll get back to you.

I want to send you something! Any requests?
I will add you to the list of amazing people right away! The Peace Corps office has a makeshift library, but I would love reading material. I quite enjoy magazines, and that will be harder to come by. As many of you know, my tastes range from The Economist to Bitch. So, anything. You don’t have to buy anything. Whatever you have lying around. Or what your friends have lying around. You get the idea. You can send media at a discounted rate via M-bags. I have my laptop, and music and movies would be great too. I’m sure I’ll have more ideas once I’m there.

When can you come home?
If I have enough vacation days, and I pay for the ticket, whenever I want.

Speaking of that, how does vacation work?
Not including training, I earn 2 days of “leave” for every month I’m there. However, if I leave my site on a Saturday, that Saturday counts as a day. I get a small amount of vacation pay.

What about money?
I get roughly $100 for a monthly stipend. For every month I’m there, not including training, I earn $225 re-adjustment allowance. This adds to $6,000 re-adjustment allowance that I’ll receive at the end of my service. However, this is before taxes.

Are you coming home?
I don’t know yet. I’m leaving the possibility open, but I don’t plan on it.

What are you doing afterward?
Hey, I haven’t even left yet, and I’m supposed to figure out future plans?

It’s wrong to want to live in a ger because I’d get to live in the “Roundhouse.”

ger, a round, traditional Mongolian house:



“Roundhouse,” an early 90s Nickelodeon television show:

“[Mongolia] is a beautiful land, with huge skies and vast horizons — kind of like Texas.”

– President George W. Bush, November 22, 2005

Great. I’ll have no problems adjusting.

I’ve tried to write this entry a few times now, but I just can’t seem to get it off the ground. However, I am thrilled about my assignment and Mongolia. Sure, it is going to be a cold like I have never experienced before, but what was my alternative? Sitting around sweating all day, everyday? According to RPCVs, the Mongolians help make the country a positive experience. Yay.

So, what now?

• I accepted the invite on Thursday.
• I told work that I won’t be there after April 30th.
• The June garage sale my mother and I planned moved to May.
• I need to decide if I want to sell some stuff on ebay.
• I am selling my car and putting the money in a mutal fund. I’ll use it to buy another car when I get back.
• I’m visiting Texas. I think towards the beginning of May. I had wanted to do some other US travel, but I don’t think that is possible with this new depature date.
• And other stuff I don’t want to think about right now.

Of course, that list doesn’t include the Peace Corps supplied to-do list.

My parents are pretty pleased about the country. There is already some talk about visiting me during the 2007 Naadam Festival. Since my invite did not say Africa, my mother is thrilled.

Oh, and what’s a ger? It’s the Mongolian name for yurt. I won’t know if I will actually get to live in one until training.

Mongolia

more later…

For all Peace Corps applicants, the Peace Corps Online Toolkit holds all official communication from the Peace Corps to the applicant. Your toolkit updates itself at 5 AM if there were any changes to to your status (medical, dental etc) the previous day, and you are sent a notification email. Since I have sent in my medical paperwork, I have checked the status of my toolkit as soon as I woke up every morning.

At 5AM this morning, my toolkit has changed to invitee. The pages have changed from urging me to complete medical paperwork to tips on packing. I can even download forms to get a jump start on the paperwork to come.

It is starting to feel real.

Today marks two months since my Peace Corps medical clearance.

Yesterday, I called my Placement Officer to see what was going on with my assignment. He said that it was his last program he was sending invites for, and that the others were leaving before mine. He looked at my file and noted experiences with various feminist groups, “That’s fine in the US, but are your prepared to be in a situation with severe gender inequality and not being able to speak out against it?”
I said yes.
He asked me if I had any tutoring experience or any real work in agriculture.
I said no.
“How would you feel doing a health extension assignment?”
I told him that it was one of the programs that I was originally interested in.
“One of your preferred regions is Asia. Is there any specific region in Asia you are interested in?”
No.
“Would you be able to leave at the beginning of June?”
Uhm, what? I told him it would be possible, but I would prefer July.
“I might pass your file along to one of my colleagues. If I do, you will hear from them.”

I went to work. On my lunch break, I checked my voicemail.
I had a message from a new Placement Officer.
I called her back. Amazingly, she was still in the office at 6pm DC time. She told me more about the new assignment. It is a Health Extension Assignment involving HIV/AIDS and includes life skills teaching (sex ed etc). She and my original Placement Officer think it is a much better fit than my original assignment. I think so too. According to the Placement Officers, my original assignment had a strong agriculture focus. I don’t remember that fact from my interview.
“With your experience with the Rape Crisis Center and Planned Parenthood, we think you are better suited for this assignment. Technically, you are qualified for your original assignment, but you don’t have to skills to back it up.”
I like to eat vegetables, but that’s really all I know about them.
We decided that she should go ahead and send me the invitation. It is being sent my Fed-Ex, and I should receive it Thursday. I am receiving my invite via Fed-Ex because the assignment leaves June 3rd.

So. Yeah. This assignment sounds like me. Not only do I have work experience to back it up, it is a subject that I have been passionate about for a long time. My mom has been a gardener her whole life, and I still don’t know much about plants.

After I hung up, I walked to Best Buy and bought Matt Nathanson’s At the Point. I sat in my car and listened to “Church Clothes.” After that, I went back to work.

I am still in a state of shock.

Oh, and after a quick and dirty Internet search, my money is on Mongolia.

According to the yahoo group PeaceCorps2, there are community development programs leaving for the Eastern Caribbean and Jamaica that typically leave in July.

And no, I have not heard anything new.

Thanks so much, Stacey! Your file is now complete, with no problems :-) Sorry again for the confusion and hopefully you will hear from your placement officer soon.

I got an email from Peace Corps today

Greetings from the Placement Office of Peace Corps in Washington. You were medically qualified for service a week or so ago, and I am now reviewing your file for placement. Overall your file looks great, I just found one problem. For some reason I only have your Cross Cultural Essay, not your Motivational Statement. I contacted your recruiter, Jennifer L. Marciniak, and she doesn’t have an extra copy, unfortunately. Is there any way you can forward me the essay?

Done. I looked over my easy before submitting (doesn’t everyone wish they could do “one more edit?” because when I wrote the application essays in June, it was like pulling teeth. I just graduated, and the last thing I wanted to do was to write essays. But after looking over it some 7 months after writing it, I think it is pretty good, and that reference to Ben Folds Five, “Army” does work thankyouverymuch.

Monday’s Presidents’ Day so there should be no activity until Tuesday (at the earliest).

I restarted the GRE studying this morning. That will not happen again tomorrow morning because I have to be at work for an all-store meeting at 7:30AM.

• The great thing about the Internet is the abundence of information available.
• The bad thing about the Internet is the abudence of information available.

Back in the fall, I didn’t think about Peace Corps that much. It was still far away, and I had my Asian adventures to look forward to. Not anymore. While I have fun adventures between now and then, the main thing is Peace Corps. The recent activity with my file hasn’t helped any either. After lots of poking around on the Internet, my prediction is that if I receive an invitation for my current nomination, then I am going to East Timor.

Thank God that I have 6 days of work on the horizon. Something to do besides sit here and digest all this information. I also really, really need to get my rear in gear on the GRE. I realized today that the closer I get to the Peace Corps, the less I am going to want to take it. (And right now it is not really high on the list of things I want to do.) At this point, I am also very happy that I am not in school right now. If I was, I don’t know how I’d be able to concentrate on anything.