Preparing to Prepare

Now that I have sent emails to people updating them on our Peace Corps placement (Senegal, March 2012) and including a link to this blog, I figure I should at least have one post.

We leave for staging in less than four months now.  That seems like a really long time still, but considering that we've been in the Peace Corps application process for over two years now, I know it's going to fly by.  It's interesting to consider, however, that four months is the longest I've ever spent abroad before.  And now that's nothing compared to the 27 months we'll be in Senegal.  That's one of the reasons I wanted to do something like Peace Corps in the first place. I did two semesters abroad while at PLU, and I felt like I was just starting to feel a place as the semester was ending. I thought of things in terms of how I would tell the story when I returned home.  I wanted an experience with enough time to really feel that my site was my home.

So now we prepare to prepare.  There are still monuntains of paperwork in our house.  We found out our placement seven months prior to our departure, so it didn't seem urgent, and still doesn't, but it will be such a relief to just get it done.

The Alliance Francaise has weekly meetings, and I really need to start going.  My French vocabulary isn't what it once was.  Pat has been reading Harry Potter in French, so when we discover the Senegalese version of Hogwarts, we'll be prepared.

I'm dreading goodbyes and lamenting the occasions I already know I'll miss.

I'm excited to do the kind of work that my degree focused on.  I'm excited to be totally confused about a culture when I arrive and then figure things out and feel like I'm on the inside (I realized that I love this process while living in New Orleans).

I'm trying to find a balance between preparing for life in Senegal and living my life here. 

I informed everyone at a staff meeting that my official last day of work at AHEC will be February 17.  With vacation time in between, that's only three months left of work.  Before this job, three months was about the longest I worked anywhere full time, so it's amazing how short that seems now.

We're trying to sell our car, but we first have to fix the speedometer (that went out somewhere in Mississippi when we were driving north from New Orleans almost a year and a half ago--talk about procrastination!)  I'm also hoping that the rotten egg smell from quiche batter spilled in June will go away magically, since we've tried everything under the sun to get rid of it.

It's becoming winter, and I was told by a friend who did Peace Corps in Mali to savor the winter since the constant heat of West Africa gets monotonous.  She isn't from Montana though.