So the postal system and I have had a bit of a love hate relationship lately. I searched the mail box every afternoon for months, generally finding nothing of use. My assignment finally came though - excellent! I’m done with mail concerns, right? Nope. I just got home from the UPS store and I feel slightly nauseous :-P I mailed my government passport application, my visa application and my current personal passport all at the same time. . . . The UPS guy actually had to pull it out of my hand. Oh man. Thank goodness for tracking numbers.
Friday, February 25, 2011
Wednesday, February 16, 2011
Ladies and Gentlemen, lend me your ears....
And the results are in! I finally got my Peace Corps assignment…… I’m moving to Peru this June. Hurray! I’m going to be a Youth Development Facilitator Volunteer. Don’t worry; I’ll come up with a way to shorten that soon :-P I’ll be leaving June 9th to go to orientation and then my whole class arrives in Lima on June 13th. We’ll all stay in Lima for ten weeks of training before we all get our assignments.
I’m so excited; I can’t sit still :-)
Sunday, February 13, 2011
Please, Mr. Post Man
After my initial interview for the Peace Corps I was nominated to work somewhere in Central or South America with a projected leave date in February 2011. Well, as we’ve already discussed that is no longer the plan. I received a phone call, on my birthday no less, telling me that I had more waiting to do and the earliest I might leave is April. To make matters worse I had already quit my job. Christmas and my sister’s wedding were coming up; too much time to ask off from a job we all thought I was leaving in February. Not an ideal situation. I could’ve found another job in Athens and my parents were fine with me continuing to live with them, but I had already wrapped my head around leaving……so leave I did. Claire offered me her living room for the time being and as much as I loathed the idea of waiting tables again, at least it would be in a new town. So I moved to Tampa.
I finally got all the way to Tampa last Thursday. I spent the day organizing all of my belongings and turning half of Claire’s living room into a bedroom; I even built a closet. I updated my resume in preparation to go job hunting. Claire and I started making plans for me to meet all of her friends…..all the makings of a new life in Tampa. You ready for the punch line? After returning from the gym on Saturday morning (that’s right, not even two whole days later) I found an email informing me that my peace corps assignment had been mailed to me Friday morning. That’s right….I packed up my stuff, crammed it into my car and drove all the way to Florida only to find out that the exact thing I’d been waiting for was currently winging its way through the mail to my home - in Athens.
Its Sunday today, the mail doesn’t run on Sundays.
I finally got all the way to Tampa last Thursday. I spent the day organizing all of my belongings and turning half of Claire’s living room into a bedroom; I even built a closet. I updated my resume in preparation to go job hunting. Claire and I started making plans for me to meet all of her friends…..all the makings of a new life in Tampa. You ready for the punch line? After returning from the gym on Saturday morning (that’s right, not even two whole days later) I found an email informing me that my peace corps assignment had been mailed to me Friday morning. That’s right….I packed up my stuff, crammed it into my car and drove all the way to Florida only to find out that the exact thing I’d been waiting for was currently winging its way through the mail to my home - in Athens.
Its Sunday today, the mail doesn’t run on Sundays.
Friday, February 11, 2011
Not your ordinary lawn art
I just got home from seeing Gnomio and Juliet …… and it reminded me that it’s about time to introduce a key character in this adventure I’m calling my life - his name is Cedric. Is he my boyfriend? brother? best friend? Nope…..he’s a garden gnome. A two-and-a-half-inch tall garden gnome, to be exact, that came into my life via my Christmas stocking. No, no…I know what you’re thinking; leave Saint Nick out of this. In my family Christmas stockings are the territory of my parents, more particularly my mother. It was December 2006 and there was little Cedric with his passport, all ready to head off to study abroad with me in England.
It took about one night of group drunkenness to decide that Cedric was going to be our mascot and roughly another two nights to create him a Facebook account. (look him up by the way….Cedric T. loves making friends) The upshot is, Cedric went everywhere we did. He lived in my purse and came out for a photo shoot whenever we felt the need for a little whimsy. When he isn’t out traveling, Cedric lives in a pint glass with his friend Smurfette and a few pebbles from the Brighton beach.
Cedric’s biggest adventure to date is being left in the Imaginarium, a children’s museum in Anchorage, Alaska. There was an attempt at a stop animation video that resulted in Cedric being tossed back into a box of toys with everything else. …oops! I didn’t realize my mistake until I was all the way back in Georgia….bigger oops! So I did what any 23-year-old girl who’s lost her toy gnome would do….I called the museum and lied through my teeth. Told some story about a cousin with a Flat Stanley project, using my near panic to believably feign concern over my “cousin”….. I really cashed in some karma points with that one. It took about a month, but Cedric was safely returned.
In short, Cedric T. Gnome is a two-and-a-half-inch, pointy-hat-wearing trip down memory lane. Every time I pick him up I am reminded of one of my excellent adventures. So keep an eye out for the little gnome that roams…..not just in my blog either. And when you see Cedric give me a hug, because I sure will be happy to see you.
It took about one night of group drunkenness to decide that Cedric was going to be our mascot and roughly another two nights to create him a Facebook account. (look him up by the way….Cedric T. loves making friends) The upshot is, Cedric went everywhere we did. He lived in my purse and came out for a photo shoot whenever we felt the need for a little whimsy. When he isn’t out traveling, Cedric lives in a pint glass with his friend Smurfette and a few pebbles from the Brighton beach.
Cedric’s biggest adventure to date is being left in the Imaginarium, a children’s museum in Anchorage, Alaska. There was an attempt at a stop animation video that resulted in Cedric being tossed back into a box of toys with everything else. …oops! I didn’t realize my mistake until I was all the way back in Georgia….bigger oops! So I did what any 23-year-old girl who’s lost her toy gnome would do….I called the museum and lied through my teeth. Told some story about a cousin with a Flat Stanley project, using my near panic to believably feign concern over my “cousin”….. I really cashed in some karma points with that one. It took about a month, but Cedric was safely returned.
In short, Cedric T. Gnome is a two-and-a-half-inch, pointy-hat-wearing trip down memory lane. Every time I pick him up I am reminded of one of my excellent adventures. So keep an eye out for the little gnome that roams…..not just in my blog either. And when you see Cedric give me a hug, because I sure will be happy to see you.
Wednesday, February 9, 2011
The Hartsfield Influence
At the airport I think they call it a holding pattern. All the planes full of people and their stuff just waiting. The seat belts are fastened and all the other flight attendants' rules are followed too…..but still just waiting. There is a schedule somewhere dictating when each plane is leaving, but really that could change at any point. Maybe a windshield wiper broke or maybe it's snowing in Chicago…..doesn’t matter. The time table changes and the planes wait.
que opening sequence……..no really, it's true. Welcome to my life. Not the beginning. Certainly not the end. Just a stop somewhere a long the line. Oh and that’s me with my nose pressed against the terminal window watching the planes. See I don’t even know which one I’m getting on yet. I got pushed so far back into the holding pattern I’m still just waiting for my new gate assignment. ….. my goal is to be a Peace Corp Volunteer. The good news is that it turns out that the Peace Corp wants me to be one too. All on the same page right? Almost. The original plan was for me to leave in February 2011; that is no longer the plan. So now I wait. I qualified and I’m in, they just don’t know where to put me. So now I wait.
Ladies and gentlemen, this is your captain speaking. We apologize for the delay in our departure. We hope to get you into the air shortly, though the definition of shortly is still under some discussion. So, in the mean time, we have been advised to just make it up as we go along………..please note that the fasten seatbelt sign will remain on - this may be a bumpy ride.
que opening sequence……..no really, it's true. Welcome to my life. Not the beginning. Certainly not the end. Just a stop somewhere a long the line. Oh and that’s me with my nose pressed against the terminal window watching the planes. See I don’t even know which one I’m getting on yet. I got pushed so far back into the holding pattern I’m still just waiting for my new gate assignment. ….. my goal is to be a Peace Corp Volunteer. The good news is that it turns out that the Peace Corp wants me to be one too. All on the same page right? Almost. The original plan was for me to leave in February 2011; that is no longer the plan. So now I wait. I qualified and I’m in, they just don’t know where to put me. So now I wait.
Ladies and gentlemen, this is your captain speaking. We apologize for the delay in our departure. We hope to get you into the air shortly, though the definition of shortly is still under some discussion. So, in the mean time, we have been advised to just make it up as we go along………..please note that the fasten seatbelt sign will remain on - this may be a bumpy ride.
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