Dental Clearance Nonsense

So my online application status still shows that I don't have dental clearance so I called the dental office for the second time. Once again the dental coordinator did not pick up the phone. I have called her one other time and sent two emails and have never gotten a reply, and all this is over a very long time period. So I got a hold of someone else who checked on my file and said my dental work was completely missing. She told me I would have to resend in my dental packet. I am so frustrated right now. I turned in my dental packet back in October, they sent it back to me because they didn't like my x-rays. I resent the packet and never heard from them again. Now I have to go and get all my dental paperwork redone. SO AGGRAVATING!!! Especially since I've already accepted my invitation to serve.

Now I'm hoping that possibly my dental office made copies of the paperwork since it did have the dentist's signature on it and from my experiences with the medical paperwork that means they should have made a copy and put it in my file.

Moldova Invite!!!

It is finally official. I can rest easy tonight knowing that I have finally reached the mountaintop, an official Peace Corps invitation to serve in the Eastern European country of Moldova. The country was actually surprising because it wasn't a surprise. I had been expected an invitation for Moldova for so long now that I had convinced myself that in the end I would receive an invite to another country.

The packet that comes with the invitation is very official and is awfully meaty. Paperwork, paperwork, paperwork. I went through it all rather quick and was happy that it was very well organized and was thankful that although the packet is a monster the actual amount of paperwork I need to do is really nothing more than sending invitation acceptance email to Peace Corps, filing online for a Peace Corps passport, and emailing yet another resume and aspiration statement to Peace Corps. In this case I guess it is unfair to call it paperwork since none of it is really filled out on paper...Although there is real paperwork I still have to complete but it is not required until staging.

I'll sleep very well tonight indeed...and if the coming snow storm happens to delay school or cancel it altogether I will be a very happy and well rested person tomorrow.

Update: Snow storms are awesome and I am VERY well rested.

Indescribable Amazingness

I received a phone call on Friday from my placement officer and we had a half hour conversation about issues she thought might cause a problem during my Peace Corps service. Questions such as how I will cope with not having another American nearby to converse with in English, and along the same vein, having limited conversation with family and friends in America and how I would cope with that as well. We also discussed my reasons for joining the Peace Corps and how my past experiences could help and hurt me during my service. At the end of the phone call I felt like I had went through the recruiter interview all over again just with slightly reformed questions. I wasn't very confident in the answers I gave her but at the last few seconds she mentioned that she was passing me through the last phase of the application process, which is basically waiting on an official invitation to a specific country, which she said should be on its way in about 2-3 weeks! One of her questions asked about my willingness to serve in another region so that sort of lead me to not hold too much hope for Eastern Europe even though she assured me that my invitation should come from there but that if necessary I might be receiving an invitation to somewhere else.

For a while it has been sort of awkward when people ask me questions about joining the Peace Corps. Conversations seem to go sort of like this...

"So when do you leave for the Peace Corps?"
"June"
"When in June?"
"No idea"
"Where are you going again?"
"No idea. I was nominated for Eastern Europe"
"So you don't know what date your leaving or what country your going to?"
"Exactly, I don't even know if they will accept me yet. They are still looking at my application."
"Didn't you start your application back in June?"
"Exactly. Its a good thing I got started early."


At least now when people ask I can at the very least tell them with confidence that I AM going SOMEWHERE, SOMETIME in June.


P.S. I am going to start working on my Where? page to the blog (one of the tabs at the top of the page) under the assumption that in the end Moldova is where Ill be invited to, so if anyone is interested they should check that out as well.

Waiting on an Invitation

So I made it successfully through my last semester of undergraduate classes, and I did it amazingly well. All A's and one B. Had a month long break that is slowly coming to a close and I'm about to start my last semester, this time student teaching at both a high school and a middle school. However, while I am quite anxious about lesson planning and classroom management, I'm much more anxious to hear from Peace Corps about my invitation. I'm not so much worried as much as just antsy to finally make it official. But the last email I got was in October and it didn't give me any timetable of when they might contact me next. I went on Peace Corps Journals and noticed that some applicants leaving in June are starting to get their official invitations. I want mine. Or in the very least a new email to let me know they didn't forget about me.