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).