The Importance of Patience

Yesterday I had my interview with the Atlanta regional office of the Peace Corps. Just as I had suspected, the closer I got the more nervous I became. In part this was because I left for the five mile drive nearly two hours early and walked into the building about ten minutes late. I had prepared to get there in plenty of time to make sure I knew where I was going and to sit for a while so I could clear my head and get some of my responses ready. This obviously did not happen.

Throughout the application process my recruiter and others who were further along in the process have told me that "patience is the key". While I was sitting and waiting for the other vehicles to remove themselves from the logjam we were in I began to wonder if those who had talked to me about patience knew I would be stuck in this annoying traffic situation. I was on the verge of being insulted because none of them dropped even the slightest clue about this. I must have been delusional because of my utter disbelief about measuring my progress by inches, feet, and car lengths rather than blocks, streets, and miles. I began laughing as I came to my senses and realized that no practical joke had been pulled on me.

When I got there after the metal detector, inspection, and profuse apologizing I went in for my interview. We went over my application and I was asked several more questions. I felt like it all went smoothly except for a missing piece of paperwork. The whole interview lasted about half as long as my trip to the office had (unless you count the trip to Atlanta into my travel time). As soon as that last bit of paperwork gets processed I can be nominated (which will hopefully happen by the end of the month, keep your fingers crossed for me).

At this point I am fairly certain of a few things:
1)I will be leaving in what the Peace Corps call Q3 (April, May, June).
2)My primary task will be youth development.
3)I'll be going to Sub-Saharan Africa.

I am stoked about all three of these things. I know that the time span I might leave is pretty lengthy, it is the duration of almost an entire season. I could just say that I'll be leaving during the spring of 2007.

For those of you who are not all that familiar with the geography of Africa I'll do my best to explain Sub-Saharan Africa. If Africa were a three-scoop ice cream cone (and, it's not) everything below the top scoop would be Sub-Saharan Africa. It encompasses the majority of the continent of Africa. This means that I will probably be learning French along with a few native languages (all of which I am very excited about).