Less than one month!

In about 26 days I will finally begin my new adventure! Of course it still doesn't feel real. I've been waiting what seems like forever.

So I just want to do a short recap of my Peace Corps journey thus far...

I went to my first Peace Corps recruiting meeting my junior year of college and almost immediately fell in love with the idea. I wanted this so bad that it took more than a month or so to put together my application. My worries and hopes were limitless. I knew it was a hard time to apply. The economy sucks, so more applicants and less money for new programs to open. I was afraid my odds of getting in weren't good.

I turned my application in, January 09. Within two weeks I was contacted for my interview! Which went well, because for me there really wasn't anything I wouldn't do to have this experience and I was ready for it.

I was nominated in mid February! I remember just leaving volunteering at Carle and I had a missed call from lady in charge of the Chicago office. I immediately called her back for what I thought was a follow up interview. She let me know right away that she was nominating me and that she found a few programs I qualified for. Needless to say it took everything in me to not run around the hospital screaming and yelling and jumping for joy. After our phone conversation, I became nominated for a health program in North African/Middle East region and it was scheduled open around February/March 2010. Long wait... but at the time I thought no problem, plenty of time to practice language and save up for traveling.

After that I went through all the fun medical appointments, tests, finger printing, blah blah. I finished all of it in almost exactly a month. Then off my tests and medical info went to D.C..

At the end of March, I started waiting..... and I've been doing a lot of that ever since.

It wasn't until August that I found out I was medically cleared. Then about two months later, I received an email from my placement officer and who would decide if I was really qualified for the program I was nominated for almost 10 months earlier.

I thought this email meant that my file was being reviewed and within a few weeks I'd know if I had been invited to volunteer or not. I was wrong.... it took almost two more months after that first email to receive my invite, but believe me, I was ecstatic.

It's been a year and a month since I first applied to the Peace Corps and now I'm almost at the end of this part of the journey. Soon the new and most exciting part begins. Service! I've put my life on hold for almost a year. Most of the time spending it in a limbo of not knowing if I would be invited to leave or not.

I just can not wait to leave. There are plenty of people and things I will miss, but I feel like this opportunity in Morocco is the beginning of the amazing path I want my life to take. I can't even imagine how it will change me or my goals in life. I just know that I want to do the most I can with my life and unfortunately I've felt lost for a while now. I think this will be the experience I need to push myself and really start to live up to my own expectations. So any family/friends/strangers who end up reading this blog, I hope you will enjoy following my stories and keep in touch. Who knows where this adventure will lead me...