The New Waiting Game

Well, I have now talked to placement. They are looking for positions for me in the April to June range. However, I am being rather picky this time around and only want them to look at positions in my field - Water and Sanitation - rather than for all fields I am qualified for. Because of this, I may have to wait until July to September for a placement. I would prefer to wait and have a placement I am really passionate about and serve for 2 years than take the first thing available with the knowledge that I don't think I will be happy with it. I may be sent to a region other than Central or South America now. I am really sad about that, since I have been working hard on my Spanish and was really looking forward to gaining fluency in Spanish. I should be learning more in the next 2-4 weeks, so hopefully I will get some good news.

The news has come out that they will be pulling Honduras volunteers out and on administrative leave while they assess the country. El Salvador and Guatemala will leave their volunteers in but still monitor the situation. The fact that they have actually pulled out the volunteers shows how bad the situation really has gotten. I hope that Honduras can be a place that will become stable again - I would love to visit after all the research I have done.

I am finally getting to the point that I am accepting this and moving forward. I was really stressed and upset for several days to the point of barely sleeping, but now that I at least have a timeline, I am calming down and starting to plan my life for the next few months. Luckily, my work is really flexible, and they agreed to keep me on for a few more months, even though I had technically put in my last day for December 21st. I can make some more money before I leave and use that for a few more trips. I'm still going to go up to NYC to see friends and family in January, and I am going to try to plan more small trips to get me out of Gainesville and doing stuff. I may try to plan a trip to Europe, but that really depends on what month I leave for Peace Corps and how much money I have saved up.

While this puts a bit of a damper on the holiday season (especially since I know most of my presents are things to take with me for the Peace Corps), I'm trying to make the best of it. My family has been very supportive throughout this entire process and are very patient in listening to my obsessive wondering about what will happen next.

Happy holidays everyone, and let's hope the New Year brings great things for us all.