Expect the Unexpected...

Everything has been going pretty smoothly as we prepare for our departure to Mongolia.  We have had our family visits and we have said goodbye to many of our Madison friends.  However; there will always be unexpected events and yesterday a new wrinkle presented itself. 

Sunday afternoon Thom started feeling achy and tired.  After a rough night, he slept until after lunch.  He had extremely intense pain in his abdomen and decided to call his doctor's office.  They suggested he go to urgent care.  After seeing a doctor there, they suggested he head to St. Mary's for a CT scan for appendicitis.  The scan came back positive and at midnight last night he had a very enlarged appendix removed.

The surgery went well and I brought him home from the hospital by 9:40 this morning.  He is to take it easy today and then start back to walking tomorrow.

This puts a new wrinkle in our travel plans as he will not be able to lift anything over 20 lbs.  So taking the planned backpack is not going to happen.  We will have to get some new easy to roll luggage.  There will be a question mark on his travel until he gets the ok from the surgeon in 10 days.

We are hopeful that we will leave as expected. 

What I Think I Know...

Image by jacqueline macou from Pixabay 

We met up with members of our Rotary clubs at the Union Terrace on Wednesday night.  There were are a lot of questions about our Peace Corps Service.  These are the things I know or think I know:

• We will be leaving Madison early morning on June 2nd to Philadelphia.  There we will have an evening and morning (June 3) orientation with our M32 cohort led by Peace Corps staff.  We will board a bus in the late afternoon to go to JFK to catch our flight to Seoul, South Korea and then on to Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia.  This we know as we have received our tickets and itinerary.
• In Mongolia, we will be serving in the English Education and Community Development. All of our M32 cohort will be serving in this sector.  We don't know what this will be like as each volunteers position is different.  More to come on this.
• When we arrive in Mongolia, we will spend a week in a hotel where we will have additional orientation and training.
• At the end of that week, we start our official 11 weeks of training which includes a language course which we will be tested on at the end of that period.  After passing the tests, we are sworn in as Peace Corps Volunteers and we start our official 2 years of service.
• All members of our cohort will be assigned to secondary schools (high schools).  The secondary school sites have been selected, but we will not know our assignment until closer to our completion of training.  They staff will get to know us better and match us to our sites.
• For the first 11 weeks, we will be living with host families in order to immerse in the language and culture.  Thom and I will not be together as they don't want us speaking English to each other.  We will meet our host families at the end of our orientation week.
• All of our cohort will be living in apartments near urban centers.  Pre-covid, volunteers did live with host families during their service and some actually lived in Mongolia Gers (think yurts, but slightly different design).  Volunteers were placed in rural locations, but Peace Corps Mongolia has chosen to take a more conservative view of coming back off of Covid.
• We will be able to take two 50 pound suitcases and our carry-on with us.  We will be given a stipend to help with moving into our apartments.  
• Peace Corps volunteers do receive a stipend while serving to help with expenses.

This is just a little bit of what I think I know so far.  

Now It's Real...

I have just received the final medical clearance from Peace Corps Mongolia.  This clearance was as a result of a vitreous tear in the right eye back in 2009 and the vitreous degeneration in both eyes.  It required an ophthalmologist visit and eye scans.  It took about 5 weeks to get the appointment and additional week to get the records from the records department at my health care provider.  Basically, my eye condition is normal given my age and the degree of near-sightedness that I have.  

As of right now, we will leave Madison on June 2nd to fly to Philadelphia for staging.  We will meet the rest of our Mongolia group and have a pre-flight orientation.  We will be bussed to JFK to catch our flight to Seoul, South Korea and then onto Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia.

We are busy with packing the house up and seeing family and friends.  Our daughter, Kim, and her partner, James, will be moving in while we are gone.  She just sold her condo and will close on June 8th.  We are doing some rearranging and storing our things to make room for their things.

Our son, Matt, arrived on May 9th for a week long visit and a friend from our stay at Chiricahua also arrived on the 9th.  Matt has not been back to Madison since he left for Flagstaff five years ago to get his masters degree.  He is now three years into his PhD.  and should be finishing up about the time we get back from Mongolia. 

Candace was a park ranger at Chiricahua in a 1-year position.  She is moving on to a new job as an acupuncturist for a VA hospital in Detroit.  She stopped for a visit on her way as her apartment is not quite ready.

We just got back on the 8th from a 9 day visit to northern Ohio to visit Thom's family and to northern Kentucky to visit my niece and her family.  Her daughter, Maggie, was baptized on Sunday and Kim is one of Maggie's sponsors (godparent).