More Waiting...

This is the current email that I have received from my placement officer. This only means more waiting! It has been a week so I suspect it to be another 3 weeks till we hear anything else about placement. This has been a long and frustrating process. It would be nice to have a final word soon. Oh well. Here is the email:

Dear Matt,

Thanks for checking in. As we discussed last week, before inviting any married couple to any program world-wide, we must email the Country Director and Programming Officer in country “X” and provide them with a summary of your respective experiences and background. They’ll review that information, confirm whether they have a community that has requested your skills, and offer the necessary pre-approval to invite you or deny the request for some practical reason.

We sent that request last Friday and just haven’t received a response yet. As soon as I receive a response from them, I’ll let you know. We generally tell applicants that it can take 2-4 weeks to get a response and this particular Post tends to fall in that timeframe.

With Thanks,
________

And The Country Is....

Ready for the latest. It is not definite but we should know by next week when we get an official invite to this country. I know the country though...are you ready...It looks like we are going to Morocco!! That is in North Africa! Africa!! They said that our departure date is September 7th. Oh my goodness... This is exciting yet scary at the same time. Now we are just waiting on the country to see if they want us for sure but they said that it rarely happens that they would not.

Normally people have no clue where they are going but I have figured it out for sure. Our Placement officer said that it would be North Africa. There is only one country that the Peace Corps serves and that is Morocco. And just to make sure I wanted to match up the departure date he told me with the one on the PeaceCorpswiki.org website and it matched up perfect! September 7th! Now we have to wait a little more but it is almost absolute now. It looks like we are going to be Peace Corps Volunteers!

Matt

Placement Clearance

This is super exciting! Just got an update from our Peace Corps Status saying that placement has cleared us officially. There is nothing else to do but just sit back and wait for the phone call tomorrow. I think we have about a 75% chance of getting placed but we will see. Yikes! This is scary! It all comes down to this.

Matt

A Little Closer to Placement....

I talked to the Peace Corps today and he sounded very positive about finding us a place to serve. He is going to get back to us on Friday!!! We just cleared up a couple of questions that they had about our application. Things like what do our parents think and did we know that if we got pregnant that we would have to end our service. Our Placement Officer said we have been cleared with Placement we now it is the next step: Placement!!! We should know where we go, when we go, or if we go on Friday! We will keep everyone informed of the situation if we are to learn anything more.

Matt

Delayed till....?

Just got some news from the Peace Corps Placement Office. I found out that we will not be leaving in July...The place that they were looking at placing us (my guess Cambodia) does not allow the restrictions that both of us have. I am a little down but he said that there might still be something on the table but it wouldn't be till August through October. He said that he would call me before Friday and talk to me about more information! At least I have some news that I can report instead of saying I don't know what's going on. Hopefully I can report a little more on Friday or Saturday. All I can think through this whole process is that if we are not invited, then what?

Nothing and More Nothing!

Nothing! That’s what I have got. No news! I understand that these people are busy but I find it very rude when they say they will get back to you next week and never email you back. This like I said, really in my last post, this is to be expected from a government agency. This isn’t little news either. This next piece of information really could change the outcome of the next several years of our lives. Yes or no either way things need to change but everything is pending on this decision. I think we are both ready for a change. I am just hoping that this wait isn’t because of a medical restriction either of has or they are having a hard time placing us. At this point the Peace Corps being busy or lazy might be the best thing!

Tanie will be walking in her graduation on the 9th of May. This also means that my parents are coming up along with my sister and my brother-in-law! This will be really nice refresher that I will be thinking about this all weekend while I am working the graveyard shift. Also my birthday is on the 8th. All I want is… news from the Peace Corps. Maybe they are holding off on the news to surprise me! Yeah right…. Man I am just crawling with pessimism.

Happy May! The best month of the year!

Matthew

Waiting Games and Rollerblades

I have an update when it comes to the Peace Corps. Yesterday I emailed the assistant placement officer that is working on my file and I asked him if there is any information that he can give me on if we have a chance of getting into a program in the Peace Corps. I know I have until June 1st till they have to tell me something about the program but still it has been a few months since they have received my file. I got a response back that said this:

"I looked into your program and saw that we have until early-June to invite people from that pool. I imagine that is why you haven’t heard more from my office by now. I talked to your Placement Officer about your file and he said that he would contact you within the next week to give you an update on the progress of your applications. He will be able to give you more information that will help with your planning."

This is still super great news though because I will hear something next week. Well at least I think I will hear something. Such a roller coaster ride so far. I have been so disheartened as of late and it is good to know I might hear something soon.
On a side note: I bought some inline skates. I did pretty well for my first outing. I only fell once but it was down a hill in front of a woman and she was like freaking out because I fell a little hard or at least it looked that way. I popped back up embarrassed and said something like, “I fell because I looked back and saw a car was coming and it scared me.” I sounded like a 10 year old child that had his heart broken. Really the only thing that came out of that was a scraped up knee. I expected something worse but I was wearing jeans.

Thanks for reading. I will update you about the news that I might get next week. We will see but it seems too good to be true right now. :(