INVITE!!!!!!!!

My invite arrived yesterday!!!!!! I turned into a little bit of a crazy person with the shrieking and jumping up and down when I saw it outside my door, but oh well!  I did startle my step-father though.  He was in the house and thought something was wrong when I started freaking out. Ooops. Anyway, onto the important stuff.

I'm going to GUYANA!!! 

I've been invited as a Community Education Promoter.  As far as I can tell this means I'll be teaching literature and working with PTAs, but I'm still pretty vague on what it is I'll really be doing.  Guess I'll find out when I get there! I leave January 30th.  I was actually kind of surprised to get Guyana.  I work with a woman from there and asked her a bit about it when I found out my time of departure and thought it might be there.  She said they really only speak English there and as I had been told there were indigenous languages, I crossed it off.  Not a bad surprise!

Guyana is in South America, above Brazil, and is culturally Caribbean.  Best of all: its warm all year! Right now, when I'm pretty cold, this is even more appealing.  Hopefully I'll still appreciate the warmth once I'm there, in the humidity, and most likely sweating like crazy.  I've already been shopping too. I've got 3 new pairs of sandals and some summer/early fall clothes that were on sale. I figured I better get what I can now while it's still around.  If I tried getting this stuff in January I might have a little bit of trouble....

My aunt was doing some research and found that 90% of the population lives on the coast.  From what I've seen online from volunteers who are there now, most of them are also on the coast.  And apparently PC tries to group people together, so no one is totally alone.  I'm personally hoping to be placed on the coast with a few other people near by. But I won't find out until I've been there for around 3 months, so expect another post with lots of !!!!! around April. 

SO EXCITED!!!!

Final Interview!!!!!!

I just had my final interview. My invitation is being mailed today!!! AHHHHH!!! SO EXCITED!!!!  I'm being invited as a Community Education Promoter!!! To somewhere is C/SA leaving in late January! So maybe El Salvador or Guyana?  My PO said somewhere Spanish speaking, but where there are local, indigenous languages.  Where volunteers are usually placed in the interior of the country, probably with little access to electricity.  Not thrilled about that bit, but it would definitely being interesting and a learning experience!

How long does it take to get mail from DC to Delaware? Maybe I'll have it by Saturday??? I can always hope...

For those of you going through the process my interview took about 30 mins and here are the questions I was asked:

1. What are your reasons for wanting to join PC?
2. How does your family feel about your decision?
3. How would you cope with living in an isolated area? Without structure in your day?
4. When can you leave?
5.  How have you been preparing for PC since you began applying?

There may have been more, but I think  that was the biggest part. It's really not bad, really just a conversation. Though, if your anything like me, you'll have butterflies anyway :-)

SO EXCITED!!! I can't wait to get my invite!!!!

Can I do what?!?

I have my final interview on Wednesday! SO EXCITED! I emailed my placement assistant last Wednesday since it had been 6 weeks since I had sent in my updated resume and I hadn't heard anything. She emailed me back saying I would hear from my placement officer in the next 2 weeks.

He emailed 30 minutes later and I set up a time for my final interview. I received another email from him today with some questions:

1. What's your phone number? Please update you'r toolkit.

2. Are you able to bike? Yes.....(here I can sense what the next question will be. Getting prepared)

3. If you can ride a bicycle, would you be able to ride, say 7-10 miles per day? Yeah, probably....maybe....

4. Would you be able to ride up to 20 miles per day? (i.e. 10 miles each way to your work site) Ummm....I'm sorry? Yeah, probably not.

I actually started laughing when I read the last question. I made the mistake of emailing him back saying that I could do it.  I'm going to have to retract that statement.  I'd love to be able to and I think I could work up to it, but I wouldn't be able to right when I got there (wherever there may be).

For anyone who is waiting to hear something, I encourage contacting them. It can help. More to come on Wednesday....