One measly week until I leave for Philly, and then The Gambia. That’s not very long, and time seems to be accelerating pretty quickly. There’s still a lot I need to do before I leave, although I got a lot of it finished up today. Most of the things I need to still do involve last-minute purchases (like, fresh boxers for instance cough), and doing things that I won’t be able to do while I’m over there (mostly this involves hanging out with friends, going to Montreal (Quebec, Canada) this next weekend for some real night life (sorry Burlington, you’re great most of the time, but ya just can’t compete).

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It’s been months since I last had anything to report on as far as official correspondence with the Peace Corps goes. The last thing I received from them, in fact, was my Invitation, back in mid-February. Well, I just received in the mail my Staging Kit, which has - yep, you guessed it - more paperwork to fill out (apparently, it’s just stuff verifying that I’m still legal to serve), as well as instructions to call the Peace Corps travel office to arrange for plane tickets to Philadelphia on July 3rd. I’ll be spending about three days in Philly where I’ll take part in a sure-to-be-intense orientation, before I, along with the rest of my team, hop onto a trans-Atlantic bound for West Africa.

So it looks like this is basically it! T minus three weeks and counting to blast-off!

Matt’s current mood is: 30% WTF am I doing???, 70% crazy-excited adrenaline.

I’ve been working on my packing list for heading out to The Gambia in July. One of the things I’ve been told is that I may - but probably won’t - have electricity. Given this, and the fact that I’m planning to bring a laptop (something that my Solio just isn’t going to charge), I’ve been considering methods of setting up a solar-powered electricity “oasis” of sorts, and what it would take to implement this kind of free-energy, ecosystem-friendly power source.

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It’s been two weeks since I accepted my invitation to serve in The Gambia this July with the Peace Corps. Even though I have all along planned to accept my invite and go wherever the Peace Corps wanted to send me, for some reason the act of actually accepting the invite has somehow changed things, made everything much more real than they were before.

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So, I just got my Peace Corps Invitation in the mail today - I found out midday when my dad called me on my cell to convey the news - so I skipped my regular Taekwondo training after work to rush home to check it out.

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WOO HOOO!!!! I just got the most precious, coveted, Peace Corps Application Status Update email today! It reads, and I quote, “Congratulations! You have been invited to become a Peace Corps Volunteer.”

MY INVITE’S IN THE MAIL!!

And I’m not supposed to be leaving until September, this is really early! Now I get to sit by my mailbox like a cat at a mousehole. I just can’t explain how incredibly excited I am right now… How in the world am I going to concentrate on anything other than this for the next week?

Okay, that happened a lot faster than I thought it would. Only two days ago I was medically cleared for Peace Corps service, and just this morning I found that I’ve just passed my Placement Review. I’ve gotten so used to waiting weeks and even months between updates from them, that to receive two application updates in such a short amount of time is almost PC overload ;).

In a good way, of course.

So, according to the prescribed timeline, after a Nominee passes all of their required clearances (dental, medical, legal, placement), an Invitation is sent. Of course, this could take weeks to months to arrive. So what will I do while I wait to find out where I’m going?

Well, the mountains have snow on them, Bolton has a new quad lift and great woods skiing, and I’ve got a season’s pass. I think I’ll spend as much time cooling off on the slopes as possible before I go and bask in the sub-Saharan sun.

I just found out today that I’ve been medically cleared for Peace Corps service! w00t! Not much else to say about it, really, except that I’m psyched… this is definitely one of the bigger hurdles as I understand it in the Nominee’s obstacle course. Not that I thought there would be anything to hold me up, I really am quite healthy, ya know (knock on wood!).

Anyway, all that’s left, according to the timeline I’ve been following, is Placement. As I understand it, someone in the Peace Corps will review my application, qualifications, and limitations / restrictions, and determine if there’s someplace they can use me. Given what I was told about the lack of available talent in Computer Science throughout the Peace Corps, the likelihood of them not finding a suitable position for me is close to nil. However, I have entirely no idea how long this will take; I figure it will take anywhere between one and seven months, based on my understanding that I’ll receive an invitation no later than about two months before I leave, and my earliest availability date is September 2006.

So we’ll see… it could be a while before my next procedural entry in this thread, but I’ll try to keep it updated to some degree in the mean time with other stuffs going-on.

Okay, quick update here - I just finally completed my medical kit late last week Thursday, and mailed it off on Friday. It was pretty much totally finished about three weeks ago, so at that time I thoroughly went through the included checklist and found a few items missing (e.g., the eye glasses frame style couldn’t be found, my physical exam didn’t return a blood type / RH factor report, my dentist hadn’t included his phone number, and a few others).
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Okay, so I’m almost through with my medical kit. After my third visit to the doctor’s office, I now have all the forms fully completed. Mostly the return trips had to do with getting results of tests, and having other medical practices dig through their archives for my early-year immunization records. So. Much. Fun. Actually, I’m glad I’m doing this, because those early-year records were set to be destroyed in the near future (not like there’s any practical reason I’d need them otherwise, so it’s not as if them being destroyed would be all that big a deal, but still). But anyhow, unless I’m mistaken there, that’s all taken care of.

Incidentally, a note to other applicants: don’t forget to get copies of your lab results! We (my doctor and I) would have missed that part if we hadn’t scanned through it several times to make sure we had everything. It’s amazing how easy it can be to simply glaze over stuff, all the while thinking “oh yeah, I’ve already checked that part.”