9-8 Close of Service: The Nuts and Bolts

Hard at work…drawing stick figures.
 So, the nuts and bolts first. Close of Service is the last official Peace Corps training we attend. It covers things like resume writing, interview skills, reverse culture shock and choosing a future path. It has been the most helpful and interesting of our In-Service Trainings.
It is not a PC training without an icebreaker

Day one was all about sharing our feelings. I know I am a crunchy hippy, that doesn’t mean I like to share my feelings. I’m not big on emotions and such. We spent that first day reflecting back on two years of service. There were some poignant moments. We made lists of things like what we weren’t going to miss (banana laplap, roosters at 3 am, kiaman taem), sensory moments we’d never forget (the smell of laplap leaves hitting hot stones, roosters at 3 am, the sound of the ocean), and things we’d learned about human nature (schaudenfreudan is funny everywhere, we are all afraid of looking stupid). We moved on to discussing what we can do to deal with the inevitable reverse culture shock. Everything from speaking in a school when our friends and family and sick of listening to us talk about it, to going for professional counseling came up. There is a huge network of people and as many ways of dealing with the transition.

Day two was a bit more practical. Our safety and security officer spoke to us about the importance of maintaining vigilance in these last few months and how difficult it will be to get rid of belongings without offending anyone. I agree with that. I’m sure I’ll piss people off, but that is there perogative. They get to get mad, I get to leave. We all have the things we have to do.
Fancy fishes!  They were pancakes and very tasty.

We spent a lot of time on medical stuff, too. Peace Corps does their damndest to take care of us, which is awesome. They do a good job of it, too. After Peace Corps, we have insurance options and plans to choose from. I presume none of them involve a 24/7 on-call staff person and free medical advice/consultation/prescriptions and everything else. That really is too bad. Still, we need to go over what things we can claim under what and what things fall under insurance. That took a few hours.

Today, we spent the morning going over resumes and talking about cover letters and interview skills. We got lucky. The Deputy Chief of Mission of the Papau New Guinea embassy is in town. He came by and spoke to us about how the Foreign Service works. He was informative. I had a nice chat with his husband as well, especially since we’d had kava with them on Wednesday. (I lead a very odd life these days.) He re-sparked my interest in the Foreign Service so we’ll see about the exam or what exactly that means.
The IT Crowd, PC Vanuatu style

This afternoon, we spent more time sharing our feelings. Really, this afternoon was a chance to talk about highlights of our service. It was inspiring to hear some of the other stories. There were some I’d heard before, but a lot of the stories were successes I hadn’t heard of. The chance to celebrate our minor successes was good.

Tonight was a different sort of celebration. Tonight was the goodbyes. While, really tomorrow is the good byes. Tonight was karaoke on a boat while we cruised around the lagoon. Tomorrow is a Fijian pig roast. Then it is back to the islands briefly. Most people are leaving in early October, before Jason and I move to Vila. I am sad about this. I will discuss feelings in a different post.

5-23 We are Extending

So, the big news of this visit to Vila.

We’re extending our contracts in Vanuatu. We’ve applied for a year extension to work in Vila. The details are still being worked out, but here is what we know:
Jason will be working at the Vanuatu Institute of Technology (VIT). He’ll be working with their IT department to implement their server, clean up the network, re-wire the campus, train the lower level techs up to a higher level and do some server maintenance and upgrades. This is way more up his alley than what he has been doing. He’ll have fancy toys and networks to play with as well as other people already interested and working in networking. He is already getting excited for it, though he has a few more months of teaching kids to double click first.
If all goes well, I will be working at Wan Smol Bag, which is a social justice theater, STI clinic and youth center. Officially, I’ll be under the peer educator program in the STI clinic, because that is how I can fit into the framework for Peace Corps. If I get my way, I will be able to do some work with the peer educators, some work with the youth center sports program and maybe a bit of theater or cooking classes. Really, I’m excited for the chance to see how this organization runs. They are doing a lot of what I want to do around social justice and social messaging.
We will likely be moving into Vila in October/November. We’ll take a month or so to get our feet on the ground here and feel out our jobs as well as help train the new group of PCVs. As extendees, we get a Peace Corps paid trip home for a month, which we’ll try to time to happen over Christmas. That’s right, Christmas and New Years will be Stateside and then back to Vanuatu in January for another year.
A lot of things have played into this decision. A few factors include: no pressing reason to go home, though we have lovely and wonderful friends that we miss, we know all of you will still be there in a year. We have no job prospects and I still don’t know what I want to do for school or not after this. Jason has put off school this long, one more year won’t matter that much more. Most importantly, we don’t feel like we’ve gotten what we want out of this experience. It has been a great experience, but there is still something missing. I hope that part of what has been missing will be fulfilled for Jason by working with people who already know something about computers and fulfilled for me by working in the arts.
We will be back in the US for a little over a month and we want to coordinate to see as many people as possible in that time. If you live somewhere by our extended families, we should try to do lunch at least. If you live further away, consider a trip to lovely Minnesota for a white Christmas. We want to see you!
All of these plans are pretty conditional right now. We are waiting to hear more details from Wan Smol Bag and VIT about start times and job descriptions. We are waiting to hear from Peace Corps about training the new group and moving into Vila. We are waiting to hear from our project managers to see if they will grant our extensions. We are waiting on a lot of things. When we have better details, we’ll let you all know.

2-2 Have a good February!

In about 6 hours, my plane is scheduled to take off for Pentecost. The chances of that actually happening at that time are about 50-50 but whether or not it leaves then, I will still be beyond the access of the internet.

Which means, it is back to snail mail for me! If you want a letter, I need your address. If you’ve gotten a letter from me, I have your address. If you’ve sent me a letter, I have your address and your letter is somewhere in the mail. These things take a few weeks. The lady at the post office told my the Christmas presents I mailed today will probably get there before the end of March…

The rules for sending things have changed again, but at least they are simpler. Now, they want us to have everything sent straight to our sites. All packages, letters, boxes, parcels, and miscellaneous mail should come directly to our site. That would be: Us, PCV, Vansemakul Aid Post, Melsisi Post Office, Central Pentecost Island, Vanuatu.

If you have questions, try to contact our parents. They have asked enough questions to cover every possible circumstance.

We miss you all. We’ll re-appear on the internet in March.

Up, Up and Away!

We have arrived on LA. Tomorrow we have “orientation” for 8 hours. It sounds like it will be “welcome to the PC, don’t mess up.” At 9:30 tomorrow night, we catch a plane to Aukland, New Zealand. We have a short layover in Aukland and then we are on to Port Vila Vanuatu.

The schedule we have for the next few months goes something like this. Sunday through Friday we will be at the training center 20 minutes outside Port Vila. We will be doing the “how to survive” portion of training. I think it is funny that this information is given to us when we are totally sleep deprived and jet-lagged. Anyway, that is the health, safety/security and language and cultural basics. On Friday afternoon, we will go in small groups to a community-based training site on the north coast of Efate, the island with Port Vila. Our literature specifically states that couples will train together, which is one relief. We will be in these villages/communities/huts-on-the-beach for 6 weeks. This time will include language lessons, but the expectation is that the best way to learn a language is through immersion. I agree, but that doesn’t make it less scary.

Sometime after those 6 weeks are up, we will be given our assignments and sent off to do them. Presumably, we’ll be sworn in as volunteers first. We won’t really know what our assignments are, where we are going or what kind of conditions to expect until we get there.

On less factual notes, these last few days have been chaos. We returned from the east coast late on Monday and spent the night at my dad’s. We dropped him off at the airport sometime before any sane person is awake and then continued on to my mother’s where we took a nap. Tuesday we spent the entire day shopping. We tripped the fraud detector on my card. I actually had to call the bank while in line at Target to allow them to run my card. We had dinner with Jason’s parents on Tuesday night and then went back to my mom’s to start packing. We spent Wednesday packing and sorting. Several friends stopped by which was wonderful for my mental state but not for my productivity. This morning, we finished stuffing things in bags and ran the very last minutes errands that needed doing. We and our bags made it to the airport underweight, underslept and with time to spare.

These last few days, and the east coast trip, have been so hectic I haven’t gotten a chance to really think about the fact that we, that I, am leaving the country. For real leaving the country. This is not a one month or four month trip. This is for real, I’m moving out of the US and expect to be living somewhere else long enough to have to pay taxes there. (If Vanuatu has an applicable taxation system.) Turns out, its a big deal and scary and exciting and sad and whole lot of other things.

Leaving friends is always hard because I never know if the older me will still be friends with the older them. Apparently I haven’t yet learned from experience that the really important ones just keep coming back and I shouldn’t bother to worry. Leaving family is hard in a different way. I’m close to both my parents, I’m used to talking to them several times a week. I won’t be able to call to ask advice, to complain about Jason not sweeping the floor or to beg for help with my broken car. The change is scary, because change always is.

Today it has sunk in a bit more that I’m leaving and I am worried and scared. But there is the little un-silenceable voice in the back of my head that keeps yelling “adventure.” With a voice like that, how bad can it be?