congratulations! you have been nominated to serve in the Peace Corps.

So just to let you all know, I had my interview with Valerie, my recruiter, this past thursday and it went very well. It was a lot longer and more personal than I expected it to be but I guess also a lot more "normal" than the interviews I'm used to (after you've interviewed for GHP and done the whole thing in Spanish and after you've interviewed with Freshman Council, you're ready for anything!). However there were some slightly amusing questions that dealt with what kind of cultural circumstances I would be able to tolerate such as privacy issues, appearance issues, alcohol issues, etc. Reflecting back, I've had some pretty incredible experiences in my life and I've been in almost every kind of living situation from a fancy hotel with running water, WiFi and room service to a village "house" with a squat down latrine, sporadic electricity and eating food from a banana leaf. I'm so glad that these experiences will hopefully prepare me for my transition to life in a developing country.

Anyways, if you haven't guessed by now as per the title of this post, I recieved my nomination to the Peace Corps this weekend. According to the website the nomination means that my PC recruiter has nominated me for service in a general field to a general geographic area for an approximate departure date. I won't know any specifics about my exact job nor the country I will be going to nor my exact departure date until I recieve my actual invitation to serve. Before I can recieve my invitation, I have to get medical, dental, financial and legal clearance which i hope to work on before the end of the summer. During my interview Valerie told me that she was going to nominate me for a health position since that's what seemed to be the best fit for me but as for geographic location, she had a few choices. Because of my strong Spanish backgroung she was originally going to nominate me for a position in Latin America for a departure date of January/February but since I wasn't too excited about serving the Central America and because it's been a dream of mine to go to Africa, I pushed the whole "I REALLY REALLY REALLY want to go to Africa" and she told me the earliest she could get me to Africa was June-ish 2008. Although I was hoping to leave around March/April, I decided field and location were a LOT more important to me than departure date because the only departure restriction I had was that I wanted to be back in the US around August to apply for jobs and graduate school and leaving in "early" June would let me do that.

So basically my situation right now is that I am "in" the health program pending medical/dental/financial/legal clearance and it will most likely be somewhere in Africa around "early" June. But just to clarify, nothing is certain until I recieve my actual invitation. So there is still a decent chance that I may open my invitation and it might say I'm doing NGO work in Honduras leaving August 2008. So pray for me please :)

p.s. since my application packet is all done, if any of you (particularly those of you who are filling out the application) want to read my two essays (personal statement and cross-cultural experience) for an example of what's expected, just e-mail me and I'll send it to you. No real point in posting them up here...