I've been INVITED!!!!

I’ve been invited!  I will blog again when I have the invitation in my hand, which is hopefully today or tomorrow, but wanted to put something up here. 

On April 6, I realized that it had been a month since I had been told that my file would be preliminarily reviewed and so I emailed my placement assistant to inquire about the status.  This is what I received in return:

Serah,

I hope that this finds you well.  I would like to inform you that your file has gone through our preliminary review and is complete.  I will now pass it on to a Placement Specialist for further review to best match your skill set to an available program departing in the coming months.  You can expect to hear from her in approximately 4-6 weeks regarding possible placement options that best match your skill set.  I encourage you (as I do all of our applicants) to take this time to continue to gain additional professional/volunteer experience relevant to the program in which you were nominated to.  This will allow you to stand out as an applicant and also make you a stronger resource in a future host community.

I was feeling really distraught about the email, because I had been thinking that this email would be the one that told me where they were considering placing me and instead I was facing another month and half of the unknown.  I assumed that this meant that it would be five months at least before I would be leaving and had to create a new plan.

So, I started looking for other jobs.  The next day, I set up an interview (thanks to the help of my Mother’s extensive net of local contacts) for a summer job, and resigned myself to more waiting.

Then, later that afternoon on the 7^th, I got a phone call from a 202 area-code and I didn’t recognize it so I didn’t pick up.  I listened to the message when it finally registered in my brain that it was a D.C. area code and it was a Placement Officer asking me to call her back that day.  I called back immediately and she apologized for the short notice and then asked if we could talk for a little bit.  My heart was pounding out of my chest, but I didn’t want to dare to hope. 

She asked me a number of questions similar to those I was asked in my initial interview. She was mostly just checking-in with me about the challenges of being a volunteer and my expectations of my Peace Corps service.  Then she asked me about geographical flexibility and any preferences I had, and then when I was prepared to leave.  I explained that I knew I wasn’t supposed to make any major life changes until I had my invitation, but that I’d had to, and so I was simply waiting for my invitation to leave.  She said “Well, I’m very glad to hear that, because congratulations, we would like to invite you to serve in Africa leaving on May 31^st in non-profit advising!”.  I immediately started bawling and when I asked her if people regularly cried on the phone with her, she responded that they did and that sometimes they screamed.  I literally cried through the rest of the conversation, but she had a great sense of humor about it. 

I checked the wiki almost immediately and learned that there were two programs leaving on May 31, both of which had non-profit advising programs.  Lesotho and Mozambique.  I’d initially thought that Mozambique had a French-speaking requirement, so was convinced it was Lesotho.  A friend corrected me though and I realized that it is a primarily Portuguese. 

I’m crossing my fingers for Mozambique, but either way I am absolutely THRILLED!  I will update more as soon as I have my invitation.

Here’s to all those applicants out there hoping every day for their placement.  There is HOPE!  And it doesn’t always work the way that they say it will, so stay in touch and stay positive!