Hey folks if your looking for my blog I've updated my address to http://820days.blogspot.com/ follow me as I embark on a new adventure to Cameroon

One question that I hear all the time about Peace Corps service is "What is the timeline like?" To answer this question I am going to outline my Peace Corps journey to present. It been a long journey and some of the dates are approximations:

November 1, 2008. I submitted my completed Peace Corps application

November 24, 2008. I interviewed with my placement officer in New York City after a long trek from Canton, NY

November 25, 2008. At 8am the day after my interview I received a call from my recruiter saying that he would like to nominate me for a secondary science teaching program leaving in July of 2009 in francophone Africa. Excited, I agreed that this sounded like a fit for me.

December 2008. I completed my medical and dental exams. I got my dental clearance within a week of submitting it. Medical clearance would come later in March of 2010 after some confusion with my doctor's signature and more pap smears than I would like to admit.

April 2009. I was contacted by my placement officer to conduct a phone interview.

May 31, 2009. I received an invitation to serve as a Physics teacher in Guinea, West Africa.

July 5 2009. I arrived in Philly for staging.

July 8th. Finally after 9 months in the application process. I arrived in Guinea for Pre Service Training.

As fate would have it, my waltz with Peace Corps bureaucracy was not over:

September 25, 2009 I swore in as a Peace Corps volunteer. On September 27th we left Conakry for our sites and then after less than one week as volunteers we were evacuated to Mali.

October 25, 2009 with little improvement in Guinea the program was suspended. My official COS date was exactly one month after my swearing in date.

November 2, 2009 exactly one year and a day after I applied to the Peace Corps I found my self back in the U.S. Ready to start the process over.

My second round of applications was much quicker. I already had medical clearance and my application was on file in Washington. I filled out my re-enrollment paperwork before I COSed. There was a bit of delay getting my paperwork back from Guinea apparently having an unstable government and limited staff in the country will do that.

December 16, 2009 I received an invitation to serve as an education volunteer in Cameroon. Staging is scheduled for June 2nd 2010. That's 19 months from my first application to a new assignment.

Well, as it turns out I am not very good at keeping my blog up to date (suprised?). The lack internet in Guinea made it difficult and then once I finally had internet so much happened all at once that I didn't know where to start.

To sum up my experience in Guinea, I went, it was awesome, I got evacuated and now I am at home.

But, I am getting a second chance to do things right. Yesterday, as a belated birthday gift from the United States government, I got an invitation to serve in Cameroon! I am slated to leave June 2nd. So now its mostly a waiting game but perhaps there will be some adventures worth writing about along the way.

I will keep you all posted on my progress between now and then. Hopefully I won't bore you to death.

So I arrived in Guinea late last night after a day and a half of travelling. The flight was uneventful except for a minor skirmish leaving senegal. Apparently some one slapped someone else's sister...the details were vague but the pilot threatened to turn the plane around.

Once we got into Guinea it was a lot of craziness. When we got off the plane, it was about 85 degrees and raining. We were met by a representative from Peace Corps who took all our passports. We then had to wait in customs for about an hour trying to get through a line that wasn't moving. Filling out the immegration card was a challenge in itself since we didn't have an address or contact information. A Guinean man filled it out for me. He wanted a "petit cadeau" or a tip but I didn't have any money.

Once we finally got through customs we were greeted by the training class ahead of us it was really nice. Everyone was really excited to see us. We collected our bags and made our way to the compound. Leaving the parking lot we were hit by another car, no one seemed alarmed though. There aren't alot of traffic laws here so we just kept driving (we weren't moving very fast).

Today was our first full day in Guinea. Its really a beautiful place if you don't look too closely. There's no garbage disposal system so the streets tend to be dirty but I've been told that Conakry is not like the rest of the country.

We spent most of the day in training classes and doing admin sort of stuff, but the highlight was going to the market. I've never seen anything like it. Its sort of a maze of attached buildings that are separated by VERY narrow allys. The market was full of life, we saw everything from Obama flip-flops to random goats and chickens roaming the streets. I'm not sure what I expected Guinea to be like but it certainly challenged my expectations.

That's all for now...if you want to know what the peace corps headquarters is like YouTube "Peace Corps Cribs Conakry" I haven't seen it but I hear its funny.

Jeneca

Hello friends and family,

I am finally, after 9 months of waiting, about to embark on the adventure of a lifetime. I left Seattle July 5th and am currently in Philly waiting to leave for Guinea. Today was mostly training. The "how not to make a complete fool of yourself sort," but tomorrow is the real deal.

For those of you who don't already know, I am going to Guinea with the Peace Corps. I will be in the country for 27 months (3 months of training and 2 years of service). At this point, I don't have a lot of details about what this experience will be like.

Already, I have met a lot of interesting people with diverse backgrounds. There are 17 volunteers in my training class. All of us are teachers of some sort. I am teaching physics, but there are also math, English and chemistry teachers. I think that the one thing that we all have in common is that we don't really know what to expect once we get to Guinea.

I don't have a lot of time to write tonight because I have to be up bright and early to get my vaccinations. In a tragic turn of events I wasn't able to track down my immunization records, so at this point it looks like I will be getting A LOT of shots tomorrow.

Right now the things I am most nervous about are:

1) being able to carry all of my luggage in the airport

2) getting a ridiculous number of shots

2) figuring out how on earth to teach physics

3) adapting to speaking French.

I will keep you all updated on my progress and the details of my daily life. I am as curious as you all are to learn what like in Guinea will be like.

If you have any questions or would like to know something specific feel free to post it here I will try to make this blog as interesting and informative as I can.

Jeneca