This Past Week

I spent all last week wrestling with obtaining my visa and passport in between Christmas shopping, work, and several other committments. On Tuesday I went to Wal-Mart to get four 2x2 pictures taken for both the visa and passport. I had to leave work early on Thursday to get to the post office by 4pm. I met with the lady at the passport office and luckily I had everything in order. The application was rather confusing as there are different types of applications and some of the questions were vague. She gave it the stamp and sent it on its way. I only had to pay $30 since this is a government no-fee passport. Supposedly that $30 gets reimbursed to me at my staging event. On Friday, I read through the instructions again, I found out that I was supposed to get the forms back from her after she stamped it so I can mail it out with my visa paperwork in the special envelope that was mailed to me. Okay, so I missed that part of the directions. I called the passport office on Monday praying that she hadn't mailed it out yet, but she did (as I figured). I called Sato Travel (the Peace Corps' travel service) and asked them how bad I screwed this all up. Believe it or not, they said it really wasn't that big of a deal as long as she mailed it to the right office in Washington D.C. I guess we'll find out.
I finished up the visa application on Friday and as I was ready to mail that out, I read that I need to seal it up in an envelope before putting it in the FedEx envelope provided to me. Soooo, after work today I had to go to Target to buy a large envelope. By the time I was done, the FedEx place was closed so now I need to try this again tomorrow. I hope it's all taken care of from here on out. I will receive the visa and passport when I arrive at my staging event (orientation) most likely in Chicago or Washington D.C.

After work today I spent a couple hours putting together documents I was supposed to have emailed out last week. I needed to email a new resume detailing every job I have ever had, all training, language experience, college courses and extra-curicular activities, volunteer experience and personal hobbies. When I was done, it came out about 6 pages long. I also had to draft up an aspiration statement which outlined what I can bring to this assignment, what I want to get out of it and how I plan on adapting to the new culture and host business. These documents get sent to the representatives in Ukraine to help them figure out where to place me and to give my future host business a "heads-up" on my background. Once I emailed those out, I had to send a survey to a few reps in Ukraine which outlined my preferred learning style when I get to Ukraine for language training.

Now that I have emailed all of that out, I feel a little load off of my shoulders. The next thing I need to tackle is some beginning language lessons that are ready for me on the internet. I imagine it will be similar to an online college course with some audio clips in Ukrainian and Russian.

LET ME TAKE THIS TIME TO WISH ALL OF YOU A VERY MERRY CHRISTMAS SINCE I AM NOT SENDING OUT CARDS THIS YEAR. HAVE A GREAT HOLIDAY WEEKEND!

GO BEARS!!!