Peace Corps Duties

Come to find out that teaching basic English is a part of the youth development program but it is not everything that we do. I am not really sure with the in's and out's of it all but I know we will be working in youth centers. We work in organized activities likes sports, arts, gender development, cultural exchange, and camps etc. All that is really vague to say when we get there we will find out when we get there. They have to assess our progress of everything really see how we are catching on to the culture and language to see where we will finally end up in country. After we find out our location then we have to assess the community and see in what ways we can help. Some things, like teaching English, are set in stone already but the other projects we have to start and develop maybe from scratch.

We have no clue in country where we will be but it seems it will probably be is a large town like Casablanca or Rabat. But who knows we could end up with the Berber people who are the farmer, lower classed types in Morocco. Either way we do not really care. We are just looking for a great experience.

It has been like a breath of fresh air since we got our invitation. I have not even updated our blog since because I have just been tired and trying to figure out what we do now. We have so much stuff to do and still have work responsibilities here to worry about. We would really like to have a going away party sometime in August. So we can explain to people what we are doing. We will see though.

We are hoping to do a video blog of sorts. We are going to buy a small portable camera called a Flip. It is very small and you can use it for up to 2 hours of recording at a time. Then you can put it on our computer.

I will write more soon. I have a ton to catch up on.

Matt

We Got Our Invitation!!

SO we got our invitation in the mail today and we have also begun our video blogging for our Peace Corps service, since it's official now.

Waiting on the Invitation Packet

Hello World,

I just wanted to update you a little. Have not received our invitation packet yet. It has only been two days now but I was under the impression that they overnight it, I guess not. I suspect that we will get it within this week. FedEx is the company that they are shipping through. I have always had bad luck with them. The last thing I got online it took a couple of weeks to get. I hope it does not take that long.

Waiting, the story of my life. Will update my you guys as soon as I hear something.

Matt

Official Invites!

It is official we are now invites to be Peace Corps volunteers woke up with this message saying that we have been invited. We should still be going to Morocco but who knows. We should get the paperwork sometime in the next couple of days yo find out for sure. I suspect that they should call us today for further correspondence. This is very exciting and I cannot believe that we are finally invited! It has been a long road but one that I think should pay off. Now more waiting till Sept: Departure!

I will blog more when I have more information.

Matt

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