A little backwards...

So, all I want to do is type about what I've been doing for the past few weeks, but I promised myself that I would finish the story up until leaving the US before I went forward anymore. Here goes, one last lead up post, then the good stuff.

So after the interview I was made to wait a whole 3 or 4 weeks (which from what I hear is pretty fast for the average) until I got the call back from the recruiter. We chatted for a bit, I didn't come up with any questions, so he went ahead and told me that he felt "comfortable nominating you for a position in Sub-Saharan Africa. It's French speaking and would be leaving in June."

Now, if you are paying attention you will notice that it is currently April (before June) and I am already in Senegal. More on that later.

With the nomination came a packet in the mail with all kinds of paperwork for me to fill out, the most annoying of which were the medical forms. So that took me a good month of running around to get tests, fill out paperwork, dental things. It was a big to do that needed to get done right the first time otherwise everything was going to get pushed back on me and I wouldn't be leaving in June. I was told that the key to making this happen was to be proactive about it and make sure that the right tests are getting done. This is definitely the case, there were several instances that I had to ask a couple extra questions to get the right tests done in order to make everything get done right.

That took me until Thanksgiving to get it all sent back in to the Peace Corps, and the the waiting game began. Turns out that's a pretty big thing in PC, hurry up and wait. Anyway, there is this online system they have set up that gives you updates whenever there are updates to your application. Pretty quickly everything went through except my Medical - I was stoked about this because I was most worried about my Dental papers getting okayed.

It was the start of December and everything was okayed except Medical.

     Graduation.

          New Years.

               Nothing.

My brother, Adam, has moved out to Seattle and had begun settling in, and I'm still waiting for this one last okay from the Peace Corps. I pretty much constantly had ants in my pants. For the record if this all doesn't get okayed on the first time through I wont have a chance of leaving in June and my paperwork get put back on the bottom of the pile for getting okayed. All of this, plus the fact that this is the Peace Corps makes it a pretty big deal for me.

So, towards the end of January there was a family crisis which brought me home from Point, and the next day my brother home from Seattle. I went to pick him up from the Milwaukee airport and on the way back we stopped in Germantown for food. Neither of us had eaten since breakfast and it was after 3 already, so we sat down and had ourselves some Chinese cuisine. We finished and were just about to pay when my phone rang - I’m in the process of applying for a ton of jobs so I answered it and ditched him with the bill. Kidding, I left him money since I was planning on paying for food anyway.

As you may have figured out by now, it was none other than the Peace Corps on the phone! It was a woman in Washington DC who just wanted to chat for a little bit if I had time.  I said that I had the time, so I went out into my car in the parking lot to chat with her. After paying Adam came out to the car as well and was content sitting there listening in on the conversation. She was telling me about the fact that the position I had been nominated for no longer existed (my assumption is that there was political unrest wherever that was) and Adam's phone rang too. He was working on finding a job too, and after a long conversation was able to set up an interview (that didn't work out, but he did get a job now!). He was off the phone just in time for PC woman to offer me a position starting in MARCH, which I said okay to with the knowledge that I would be getting a packet in the mail to review before I would actually accept.

This is the Peace Corps... I had been working on this for over a year at this point, I wasn't going to say no to anything they offered me right away.  She did sense the hesitation in my voice and asked me about it, I reassured her that it was just shock for the most part because I was expecting that if the date were to move at all that it would get pushed later, not to mention the family things.

Okay, I'm done with the stuff that happened in the US and am ready for the updates of life in Senegal.  I know there is a bit of a gap in the story, but I'm sure you can fill in the blanks at this point.