Application Timeline

This post is more of a "standard Peace Corps blog" posts. A lot of people are surprised to hear that we've taken almost a year to complete the process. Ours is a bit unique as the Peace Corps upgraded many of their systems and we were among the first to try them out. Here are some of the major milestones along the way:

• 1/31/12-Created an account to apply.At this point, we were just exploring the process and didn't fill in much of the application.
• 7/12/12-Received an e-mail indicating our application would be deleted if we did not submit it before the 27th. Normally applications can sit for a year before being deleted, but the Peace Corps had a system upgrade scheduled. By this point we had most of the easy boxes filled out, we were just dragging our feet on the essay and resume sections.
• 7/26/12-Submitted our applications. Exactly 1 day early.
• 8/13/12-We were contacted by the Peace Corps requesting some additional information: marriage certificate, transcripts, a couple's questionnaire, and a few outstanding references.
• 8/15/12-Received login information to the "Medical Portal". We had to fill out a brief survey here. Later this website will be where we upload all of our medical forms.
• 9/12/12-After digging in their spam e-mails, the Peace Corps found the few missing references that had been sent in. We were now cleared for the interview.
• 9/24/12-A recruiter from PSU (Portland State University) contacted us to schedule an interview for October 3rd.
• 10/3/12-Interview day. First we interviewed separately, then finally together. Heather expressed a little nervousness so the recruiter asked to scheduled a follow-up phone interview.
• 10/18/12-After discussing things again, Heather felt much more comfortable for our phone interview. We were cleared to go on.
• 11/5/12-Officially nominated. The descriptions for both Heather and I indicated we would be in "Secondary Education-Math and Science" with a tentative departure in June (pretty close to what we are doing!).
• 11/12/12-Sometime around here Heather received her Legal kit and returned it within a week.
• 11/30/12-We contact the Peace Corps legal department about Jason's missing legal packet. We found out they sent it to the wrong address. They send us a new one to the correct address.
• 12/26/12-Legal kit returned. Over Christmas break we figure out what happened to the original packet. I (Jason) had applied once before, and the Peace Corps had sent the legal kit to the address that I had applied with in 2008. My mom had just sold this house, but my brother had put in a "mail forward" notice for anything with his name, Blake, on it. So the USPS in their best efforts, took the packet addressed to Jason, slapped a new label with Blake on it, and sent it to my mom's new house. You can imagine her confusion now wondering if both her boys were going to the Peace Corps. Once we opened the packet, everything was addressed to Jason, so that quickly cleared things up.
• 1/26/13-First contact from the placement office. They asked us to fill out a questionnaire for GIS (Geographic Information Systems). This confused us quite a lot, but we filled the form out anyway. We were willing to try the position, but didn't feel like it was a good fit, especially for Heather.
• 2/26/13-We hadn't heard from the Peace Corps in over a month, so we contacted the placement officer who gave use the Mexico questionnaire. We were informed that we were no longer being considered for the Mexico program.
• 3/1/13-Invitation Received! We got all of our information electronically, so we didn't get the exciting "blue envelope" that everyone talked about. We weren't expecting it to happen that fast after the process with Mexico. Our departure date was set for July 8 with the note that it may change by a few days.
• 3/3/13-We took the weekend to consider it and talk about it. We decided to accept and started informing our families (and our employers).
• 3/6/13-A bunch of new forms to read and e-mails start showing up. This includes our login information to the "New Volunteer Portal" and more medical forms start popping up in that portal as well.
• 4/22/13-Medical forms completed. This includes a physical exam, dental exam, optometrist exam, and lab blood work.
• 4/30/13-Heather's last day working.
• 5/17/13-Jason's last day working
• 5/22/13-Staging date changed! The Peace Corps bumped up our departure date from July 8th, to July 3rd. We were a little disappointed because it cut out quite a bit of time to see Heather's family, but we accepted it in stride.
• 5/31/13-We leave Oregon to move our stuff to Nebraska. This starts our tour to see family one last time before we depart.
• 7/2/13-Leave for staging! We start staging in Philadelphia on the 3rd at noon. We are hoping to squeeze into a movie theater to see Despicable Me 2 before we depart.
• 7/4/13-Leave for Tanzania! We will ride a bus at 2:30 AM to JFK in New York where we will fly to Dar es Salaam via Johannesburg, South Africa.

He let the cat out of the bag

Dear Tanzania,

You sure do know how to keep us on our toes.  We will see you 5 days sooner than had originally been scheduled!  July 3^rd will be here before we know it!

I write this post from our first stop on our epic moving truck (to Nebraska), train (to Chicago), and plane (to California) travel adventure.  Jason and I packed up and moved all of our belongings, and our cat, to Jason’s mom’s home in Nebraska.  Our move from Oregon went smoothly and traveling with a cat in a moving truck was not as bad as we were expecting, except for one incident.  Jason let the cat out of the bag at our first rest stop in Oregon.  And she ran away.  Into a thicket.  And she would not come out.  We spent over an hour calling and searching for our frightened feline.  In the end, the sound of her food being poured into her food dish brought her out from her hiding place.  Thank the good Lord our cat is a connoisseur of kitty kibble!

Grace the Cat all ready to move to Nebraska!  Note: this is not how she traveled

Heather, Grace the Cat, and Jason all cozy in the moving truck