Hello Family, Friends, and whomever else might be reading this!
It has been a very long past few months through this Peace Corps selection process, but I am happy to say it is all over and I can now start answering questions about: “Where are you going?” “When are you leaving?” “What will you be doing?” I now have some answers and could not be happier that this news is coming to me on “Independence Day” a day where we as a Country celebrate our Independence, but now a day for me that will signify my own independence with life.
Before I get into the info that I know allow me to give you an update about the process that I’ve gone through over the past year to give you an idea about how I landed on Central Asia. First off, one thing many people ask me is “whatever made you decide to join the Peace Corps?” That is a very good question. This dream of mine came out of a combination of prayer and passion. Since entering college I have developed a passion for ideals of service and social justice. This must have been obvious to one of my good friends and mentors Cathy, from the beginning of my freshman year. One day Cathy, my Hall Director, left me a little note in my mailbox that had a quote from Ghandi on it that said “Be the Change You Wish to See in the World.” I found that quote to be very powerful and I decided to make that my life mantra, which is coincidently the inspiration for my blog title (it also helped me get a couple scholarships and service awards throughout college and was actually the focus of one of my peace corps essays, I’ld say it’s served me well).
Since receiving a bit of inspiration I decided to start living out the quote. I have taken numerous trips to various places and countries developing my passion for service and found I have never felt like I was serving my purpose in life then on those service trips, I knew that this passion for travel and service was something that wasn’t going away and I needed to follow it. Another important piece to this complicated puzzle that I would like to call my heart is a passion for culture. I have been very blessed to have people in my life who have experienced many different cultures and passed their experiences along to me instilling a passion for culture. I have friends and family who have filled my head with dreams about Japan, Guam, China, Ecuador, Mexico, Thailand, Poland, Korea, Kenya, Egypt, Zambia, Vietnam, and Brazil and hearing about all of these cultures I just wanted to learn more and more about the world and it’s people. All of this tied into my spiritual life because I knew that God desires His people to show love and compassion to all of the people in the world. All of these conditions led me to pursue a degree in Social Work where I had some amazing professors and mentors help me to fan the flames of these passions and they encouraged me to follow my passion of social service to the world.
So all of these things combined together led me to look at the Peace Corps. A friend from high school introduced the idea to me one night randomly before we graduated. Remembering our conversation I decided to check it out. I learned that the Peace Corps was all about being an Ambassador to the world through service. It was about promoting peace, go figure! And I felt like it was something that I might want to consider. So I prayed about it… a lot. I was worried about whether or not this was something God desired for my life and every time I prayed I found more verses in the Bible about peace and social justice and knew that this was something that I needed to do. It also helped that for the past 2 service trips I took I just so happened to meet 2 people randomly (or divinely) who were also joining the Peace Corps (one leaving in less that 21 days for Bulgaria).
So after a lot of prayer and thought, I applied. It took me about 2 months to actually finish the application, but I did it and I had an interview with the office. After the interview I was told I was “the perfect Peace Corps Candidate” and I received a nomination in October 2007 (the first step in the process) for the S. Pacific Island Region to do work with Community Development scheduled to leave in August 2008. That was pretty cool because all I knew about the S. Pacific was that it was all about tropical islands, can’t complain there! But I knew I would take anything. So my next step was to get all of my medical and dental information done. After many doctors visits, having so much blood drawn my arm started to look like a heroin addict, and tears of having a bad horrible dental history be brought to life again I finally got everything done and on June 4th 2008 I received medical clearance with the contingency that I turned in one more piece of medical info for my file and began the placement process. After being interviewed by a Placement Officer I was informed that I was going to receive an invite for the Eastern Caribbean doing Community Development, thousands of miles away from my original placement.
So I waited. After about a month of complications with various things in the Placement and Medical offices I learned that my placement site would not be available and a new placement would be found for me, but I could have to wait for another 9 months before I left. This was very devastating, but after a lot of prayer, encouragement from family and friends, and a very helpful placement officer, I was given another interview for a Teaching English as a Foreign Language placement that was scheduled to leave in September. So yesterday I had an interview with another placement officer and we talked about the experiences that I had had with tutoring through my social work internship with the Saginaw Family Court and my social work tutoring that I did 2 semesters ago. Apparently, all you need to do to teach according to the Peace Corps is explain a few concepts to a few people and my tutoring experiences were enough to secure an invite for the Central Asia region, another few thousand miles away from my original placements, and a cultural region that I know NOTHING about. And that I must say is probably the most exciting thing about this new placement. I know that I will be going to a majority Muslim country full of beautiful countrysides and lots of llamas and I honestly couldn’t be more happy about it! I could however deal without the cold winters.
So now back to those questions!
1) Where are you going? Central Asia… probably somewhere like Turkmenistan, Azerbaijan, or Kazakhstan (yes where Borat is from). I’ll know for sure on Monday.
2) When are you leaving? Probably late September
3) What will you be doing? Teaching English to high school students, assisting in an after school program or doing some other form of community development, probably learning Russian, experiencing another culture, and just generally showing love and compassion to the people around me.
So there you have it! I’m basically excited and nervous all at the same time, but most of all I am just overjoyed that I am finally moving somewhere in this process. Overall, I have a VERY exciting journey ahead of me and can’t wait to share it all with you!
