I have been working to update my blog as we near our departure to Kosovo. It is no longer called Blue Sky Days, as that was the title when we thought we would be going to Mongolia last June. As we found out 72 hours before we were to leave for our staging event in Philadelphia, that we were not cleared to go; I have been holding off making the changes until we were certain that we were leaving for Kosovo. Now, that we are less than 24 hours away from staging in Arlington, Virginia; it feels like it is time to make the changes. The URL for the blog still includes blue sky country 257, because on average that is the number of sunny, blue sky days in Mongolia per year and we have already shared that URL with so many friends and family. Besides, the preparation for Mongolia was part of the journey that has lead to our departure to Kosovo. And it has been a bit of a long journey.,,
I looked up the meaning of the word Kosovo and a number of sites (including the CIA Factbook) suggests that kos is Serbian for blackbird and that the word "kosovo" refers to the fields of blackbirds found there. I don't know if that is true, but I like "fields of blackbirds" or "blackbird fields" as a title for the blog.
Our journey to Peace Corps, most likely started back in 2003. That is when our family agreed to be the host family to a Rotary Youth Exchange student from Poland. Dorota immediately became a part of our family and we still keep in touch with her and her family today. By the time, we agreed to host the second Rotary Youth Exchange student, the Middleton Sunrise Rotary Club (the club that sponsored the students) asked my husband and I to join the club, and we did. As Rotary members, we began to live the motto "service above self" as we involved ourselves in club service projects and continued to host additional Rotary Youth Exchange students. We also hosted many other short term exchange students through a variety of different programs. We always felt we gained more from them, than what we gave by hosting them.
We liked the goal of Rotary Youth Exchange the primary goal of which is to provide young people with the opportunities to experience cultural exchange and to develop as leaders who promote peace and justice around the world (from Rotary International). We always felt that more young people should have the opportunity to exchange as exchanging leads to greater understanding of people from other countries and cultures.
It was through Rotary the seed was planted that eventually led to applying to the Peace Corps. My husband and I had later joined different clubs. He came home after one of his club meetings talking about how we could join the Peace Corps after we retired. The speaker at the meeting was a former Peace Corps Volunteer. I was not close to retirement yet and was not really interested at the time. That seed laid dormant until Fall of 2020, when I decided I would retire at the end of the school year in June of 2021. My husband and I talked about what we could do next and we both agreed we would like to try the Peace Corps. The goals of the Peace Corps to promote understanding between people of different countries and cultures were definitely in line with our beliefs.
In late February of 2021, we received a e-mail that we were being considered for Albania. In March interviewed to be assigned to Albania. However; we were still in the midst of CoVid and groups were not yet being sent out to Albania. We periodically got e-mails letting us know that our applications were still active, but it was taking longer than originally anticipated. As I am a retired teacher, my first year of retirement started in June of 2021 and when we still did not have an invite by May of 2022; we decided to try something different in the interim. We applied to be campground host at Chiricahua National Monument in southeast Arizona. Within a week of applying, we were accepted as hosts, bought a camper to live in, and a truck to pull it with. Chiricahua is a lesser known park of great beauty. It is a volcanic sky island in Chiricahua Mountains with spectacular rock columns created from the various volcanic eruptions and later erosion. It is a fairly remote, small park with a single ~ 8 mile road up to the highest point and the best hiking trails. We loved our roles as campground hosts and the four months we lived there. We quickly became a part of the community of park staff, volunteers, and visiting guests.
We left Wisconsin, for Chiricahua, in mid August 2022. We were to arrive in Chiricahua on September 1st and we wanted to drive first to visit our son, who is a PhD student at Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff, Arizona. On August 30, while still visiting our son, we received our invite to Peace Corps Mongolia leaving June 2023. This worked for us, as it gave us time to complete our volunteer work in Chiricahua (four months) and also time to complete our clearances before leaving. We had all our clearances for Mongolia by the end of April 2023. This was no small feat. Unfortunately, due to a medical issue in late May, we did not end up going to Mongolia.
We received our invite to Kosovo in September 2023 and now finally, in three days we will be heading Pristina, Kosovo. It feels almost a full circle moment as we originally interviewed to go to Albania and now we are starting to learn Albanian as that is the most common language in Kosovo. It has been a bit of a mental journey to go from thinking we are going to Mongolia to be going now to Kosovo; but I feel ready. Tomorrow, we start the actual journey to our Peace Corps adventure.
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