Current Timeline

Okay so if you are interested this is our tentative timeline from today until we depart...keep in mind everything is subject to change.

-Today-Dec. 26: Christmas in Missoula
-Dec 27-Jan 3 or 4: New Years in Absarokee
-Jan 5-11: Work in Missoula.
-Jan 11-18 : Visit family and friends in Montesano/White Pass/Wenatchee.
-Jan 19-31: Sub in Missoula and begin to pack up apartment.
-Feb 1-Feb 3: Foresters' Ball Construction
-Feb 4: Going away party in Missoula from 3pm-whenever, then Foresters' Ball from 8pm-?
-Feb 5: Recover and watch the Superbowl
-Feb 6-10: Completely move out of, clean, and check out of our apartment.
-Feb 11: Drive to Columbus/Absarokee
-Feb 12-March 12: Sub in local schools to make some last minute $$$, visit family and friends, pack, etc...
-March 13: Fly out of Billings to Miami
-March 14: Fly from Miami to Kingston, Jamaica

So there you have it....not nearly as much time as it seems when you put it in a timeline...

Where to begin....

Well if you haven’t heard, Tom and I are headed to Jamaica on March 13, 2011 with the Peace Corps.  Getting to within 3 months of our departure was a multi-year trip down a very bumpy road. We first decided to apply back in the fall of 2008 and had pretty much completed our entire application save for the essays by January of 2009. Procrastinators as we are and possibly somewhat hopeful that Tom would be able to find a nice full time job somewhere in the Pacific Northwest, we didn’t actually finish the essays and click submit until Wednesday, September 23, 2009. Happy Birthday to me!

After that things sped up pretty quick. In December 2009 we had in person interviews with Amy Quandt, the PC rep. at the University of Montana and now a friend of ours. We were then nominated in March of 2010 for a program in the “N. Africa/Middle East” region, with the country most likely being Morocco. We determined this after our recruiter out of Seattle said Morocco or Jordan but then told us to brush up on our French (ergo Morocco).  The only glitch was that it wouldn’t leave until March of 2011. Next we had all the respective “clearances” to obtain before we could be invited to serve.

After a Peace Corps applicant becomes a nominee they must achieve medical, dental, optical and legal clearance to be invited to serve. This is where things got tricky. We received our medical/dental packets while over in my hometown of Montesano, WA helping my father clean out my family home so it could be put on the market for sale. We thought about trying to get everything taken care of while out on the coast but none of the doctors in Grays Harbor had appointments for new patients until after we were planning on returning to Missoula, MT in May of 2010. Therefore we just put the packets on the back burner till we got back to Missoula.

Once we got back to Montana getting those packets filled out and sent back in was our top priority. Unfortunately the cost of everything began to add up quick. I’m not going to go into detail about it here because I’ve discussed it so many times now that I really hate talking about it. But anyways, 8 months and $2500 later we finally achieved medical clearance in December 2010 but the placement office in Morocco didn’t feel that they could sustain my “reactive airway disease” (yeah, that’s a whole other story I’m also tired of discussing). So with Morocco off the table our recruiter started looking for other options, finally in March of 2011 we were medically cleared to serve in the Caribbean departing March of 2012.

Again another year we were going to have to wait. At this point Tom had about had it! But I talked him out of bagging the whole idea all together….he didn’t really want to quit but you have to consider the state of limbo we’ve been in since March of 2010.

So from March to July 2011 we worked in Missoula while praying it would all work out but still keeping our eyes open for full time work in case some other glitch might pop up and keep us from serving altogether.  But then one day in late July after driving my mom down the Alcan highway from Alaska to Hoquiam the beloved blue envelope was wrapped up tight and waiting for us at Tom’s grandparents.  I’ve never been so excited to open a piece of mail in my entire life.

Fast forward to now and we are just enjoying our time before we head off to Jamaica. It gets nerve racking trying to deduce what to pack, what to pack it in, how to go about seeing all the people we’d like to before we go, etc., etc., etc. We did just have to go through the whole dental rigmarole again because if your dental clearance is over a year old (which ours was) you have to do it again. So that is a bit scary but nothing has really changed so we’re hoping we’ll be cleared again easy peasy.

It’s all so surreal. Sometimes when hanging out, just the two of us, one of us will stop and look at the other until they’ve got their attention and say, “Hey, we’re going to Jamaica.” and the other is like, “I know, right.” Life is pretty amazing right now. Pretty darn amazing!

~Chelsea