My First Blog!!!

Hi there, not sure how many people are going to be reading this from the start...hopefully all my friends will when I finally leave the country in order to keep tabs on me. That said, this is my first blog! I figured that now that I am officially invited, accepted, and confirmed for the Peace Corps I might as well start one and begin chronicling the experience as I prepare for my departure.

Just to state it so everyone knows what/when/where I’m going/doing I’ll copy a bit of what I’ve found in my Invitation Kit.
My Assignment
Country: Senegal
Program: Preventive Health and Environmental Education
Job Title (yes the Peace Corps is a job!): Preventive Health Educator
Dates of Service: April 2010-April 2012
So I’ll try to the best of my understanding explain when I’m leaving and how the time frame works with Orientation and Pre-service training. I’ll be meeting in a US city for a 2 day orientation (should be Philadelphia) starting on March 10th 2010, then when that’s done we’ll fly to Senegal where my group (not sure how many people will be in it, as of today there are 5 other people who’ve joined our PC Senegal March 2010 facebook group) will have approx. 3 months of Pre-service Training (i.e. intensive language training in French, some local language, and some training for our assignment). After that if we do well we will be sworn in as official Peace Corps Volunteers (so that’s still pretty far away). Then, as I understand, we’ll get our village/town assignments based on our achievement level in the Pre-service training and we’ll disperse from there; SO…I don’t actually know exactly where I’ll be living for the remaining 24months yet, but it’ll be in Senegal!

That’s pretty much all I can say for an opening post. I’ll get back soon with some extra goodies on my Invitation packet which is chuck full of long forms to be filled out and sent back. Just finally happy the wait for my invitation is OVER!