the best laid plans of mice and men

Welcome to my first tsunami dog blog post. This will, for the most part, be a blog about my experiences preparing for and serving in the Peace Corps. I still have a few more months until I actually leave (March 14), but want to get into the habit of blogging again. Also, I’m planning a backpacking trip to Southeast Asia for December and January which will provide me with some good blogging practice.

So, as most of you know, I’m going to be a Peace Corps Volunteer in the African nation of Namibia. If you’d like to learn a bit about Namibia, you’re in luck. Matt Lauer just did an episode of “Where In World is Matt Lauer?” on Namibia. There are 7 videos with an irritating commercial at the beginning of each, but totally worth it. You can find them here;

http://allday.today.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/11/07/8678801-where-in-the-world-is-matt-the-skeleton-coast-in-africa?chromedomain=overheadbin

I’ll be a Health Extension Volunteer working on various community health and HIVAIDS initiatives. I don’t have much else to share about my specific role or location in Namibia yet. From what I can gather, you really don’t find out much until you’re in pre-service training. So, for now, I’ll just tell you about my application process and some other plans I have to fill the time between now and my departure.

Between the application process and preparing for Peace Corps service, I was quite busy for much of the last year (well, up until May, but more on that in a bit). The application and interview process is very involved (endless forms, applications, interviews, essays, references, doctors, dentists, x-rays, eye exams, blood tests, and a lot of shots). I sold my house. I also sold or gave away pretty much everything I owned. I made arrangements for my dog, Gomez, to be cared for. I organized all my finances and other such considerations. I got lucky and sold my house at the precise moment I wanted to (just after finishing my MBA and before the beginning of the summer). And, finally, I moved into a rental house in Watkins Glen for what I thought were going to be my last three months in the states prior to shipping off in September.

But, the best laid plans of mice and men often go astray. Two weeks into my summer at Seneca Lake, I received a notice from Peace Corps that my departure was delayed indefinitely. They even left open the possibility that I may not be placed at all. Now, I had already sold my home. All my “stuff” was not my stuff anymore. But, Peace Corps was dealing with the same budget issues that many other federal agencies were. So, it was just a bad situation that nobody wanted to be in. I just had to be patient and hope for the best.

This state of uncertainty went on until late August when I finally received my official invitation to serve in Namibia starting on March 14^th. My lease in Watkins was finished at the end of August. Luckily, I have plenty of family who were willing to take me in. So, I’ve spent the last three months bouncing around Virginia, West Virginia, and Pennsylvania with siblings and my parents and weekends on friends’ couches and the like.

The delay also opened up some other interesting possibilities. Since there was really nothing stopping me from taking a few extra months and doing some personal travel, why not? A close friend of mine, Ellen, had taken a trip to Southeast Asia years ago. She loved the experience and had great stories from her trip. I never thought I’d be in a position to take a few months off of work to do a similar trip. Yet, here I was, in that exact position.

So, in two weeks, on December 6^th, I ship off to Bangkok. I’ll spend 7 weeks backpacking through Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam, Laos, and Burma. If you want to be notified when I update this blog, just add your email address in the box over there on the right side of your screen, or you can click "follow" at the top of your screen, or you can subscribe to this page if you’re hip to that whole thing, or you can do it the old fashion way and just check back now and then. I’ll do my best to post a few times a month. Depending on where in Namibia I end up, the possibilities of frequent posts could go from totally feasible to completely impossible. I guess we’ll all find out. Thanks for reading.

-jim