the long awaited assignment...

and, so it begins! I'm stealing the idea of keeping a blog about my experiences in Africa from a friend of mine who is currently serving in the Peace Corps in Kenya. The general idea is for this blog to provide me, and you, with a way to keep all the changes in my life straight. Furthermore, I'm hoping this blog can serve as a link between myself and my family and friends. :)

It's fitting that the first entry is about our long awaited assignment. We waited exactly 11 months from first applying to receive our assignment. To be honest, the wait wasn't too difficult as we had school to occupy our minds. However, the last month was quite stressful as we'd graduated and felt as though our lives were literally on hold while we sat by and waited...

Last Wednesday (May 30) we finally received word from the Peace Corps telling us the country they'd wanted to send us to needed further information about our teaching experience before accepting us for a July departure. Nervously we filled out a more detailed application...again. We were told they'd send the application to the country rep and then let us know asap about whether or not we'd be leaving in July as planned. So again, we waited...but not very long! Friday morning Jason received an email saying we'd been placed, in South Africa!

He immediately called me and my initial reaction was..."oh"...I wasn't necessarily excited but I wasn't disappointed per se. See, we'd really been hoping for a francophone country as we felt French would make us more marketable in the international arena. As South Africans speak nearly every language BUT French we were initially disappointed. But then we read about our exact assignment. It had been 'upgraded' so to speak. Initially we were invited to teach English. Now we're literally going to be serving as trainers for South African teachers in rural schools that had been neglected by apartheid. We'll each be responsible for three schools and will be serving as development directors for the school by providing training to the staff and faculty. Our list of duties are long and, I'm sure, subject to change :) and as such I wont take too much time describing them yet.

So, we have exactly 40 days until departure and so much to do! We're working like crazy about our various jobs to save up as much money as possible. I'm studying to take the LSAT (next Monday June 11) and the GRE (two weeks later) as well as trying to organize the mess that we call our apartment so we can move! Add to that a strong desire to spend as much time with our families as possible and you get a very busy schedule!

Well, as things progress I'll update this blog and, once in country, I'll post periodic updates about our current adventures :).