Peace Corps Application - Part 11

Jessie and I have been invited to volunteer in Philippines!!!

Wait, what happened to Turkmenistan and Central Asia? Let's backtrack a little.

At the beginning of February, while we were in Mexico, Jessie and I were contacted by our placement officer by email. She said that we were still on track to be volunteers but due to the necessity of medical accommodations (probably Jessie's asthma), we couldn't be placed at the location we were originally nominated for. This was fine with me because I wasn't exactly excited about it. Don't get me wrong...I would have done it no matter where we were sent. But let's face it, some places are more interesting/desirable, for some people, than others.

When we got back, I called our placement officer on February 12. She told me that she had a list of countries that could probably accommodate us and had already been in contact with one of them. It was a country in Asia, Jessie was still going to be a teacher-trainer, I was going to be switched to youth development, and we would be leaving in mid-August. Looking at the list of possible Peace Corps countries in Asia (Cambodia, China, Mongolia, Philippines, Thailand), we figured it was probably the Philippines because that country's recruits left last year in mid-August and they had the programs were were nominated for, minus the health extension, which was my original nomination.

It turns out we were right! Except we still had to wait a bit...

On March 3, we received an email from our placement officer indicating that we had, in fact, been invited to that particular program. They still couldn't tell us what country, because it is Peace Corps policy not to let you know the specific country until the actual invitation is in your hand. We were super excited, though, and figured that it was a matter of days until we got the invitation.

Wrong.

It didn't land in our mailbox until yesterday, March 18. If you are currently an applicant for the Peace Corps, you know that it can be exciting/stressful to wait for updates and new information. Jessie and I generally didn't have that problem. We knew the process was slow and were really calm about it...until we knew we were getting an invite. We were excitedly checking the mail every day...it was really quite a pathetic sight. I would always call or text Jessie to see if we got it yet. When she said no, I would swear a little bit, wondering what could be taking so long. I know it sounds dumb, but you would understand if you have gone through this. Remember when you were applying for college and were expecting your acceptance/rejection in the mail? Multiply that by 10.

Anyway, we are super excited now. We have a packet with all sorts of information (maybe for a future post) and have a lot to take care of in the next 5 months. I will try to post more regularly about that aspect of the process.

Until then...