No more RIM, hello Togo!

So, as some of you may know, last Wednesday the Peace Corps called to inform me that our training class for Mauritania had been canceled. They said that they were still not able to obtain the visas, and they were not optimistic that they would be able to get them any time soon. So, rather than have us wait until August and then cancel, they went ahead and canceled us so that there would be a better chance of reassigning all of us to different projects. I was a little sad, but I know that it is out of my control, and I was happy that the Peace Corps made this decision so that I could get placed in a more stable program.

After this conversation, I called my new placement officer to find out what the odds were of me getting reassigned soon, and she said that she would probably know something in the next few days. She also asked if I was flexible about where in the world I was going and about my job description and I said yes.

So fast forward to Friday. I get an email with my new placement and it's in TOGO! I will also no longer be a Health volunteer, instead I will be a Girls Education and Empowerment volunteer which I am so excited about. My new departure date is scheduled for September 16 (give or take a day or so). I will still be speaking French and probably another local language there, so I am continuing to practice that.

I am really excited about my new placement, as I feel like the job is a great fit for me and I have heard great things about the Togolese people and the country. This new placement makes me feel like all of this waiting and problems with Mauritania was for a reason, and patience pays off. I will be making a new blog, as this one is obviously not relevant anymore. When I make that in the next couple of days, I will post the link on here for the two of you who are reading this :)

Slight change of plans...

So yesterday, I got a call from someone in the Peace Corps office with some bad news. Due to unknown reasons, the Mauritanian government is not processing American visas at the moment and therefore, our departure has been delayed until August 10...hopefully. They are not really sure why the visas are not being processed, but the bottom line is that it's out of my hands so I'm trying to make the best of it. Mauritania is also scheduled to have elections in July, so they figured we should probably go after the elections are over and things have settled down a bit.

I can't say that the news didn't shake me up a little bit. It's been hard saying goodbye to everyone, and now it seems that I will get the great joy of doing that all over again in two months! Oh well. At least now I may get to go to Machu Picchu with my family in July which would be AWESEOME! Other than that, I am now staring two months of free time in the face, so if anyone has any good suggestions about how to spend this time just let me know!

A week and a half!

So, I just set this blog up as a way of keeping up with friends and family while I am in Mauritania for two years. I will try to post stories and happenings in my every day life while in the Peace Corps. On June 15 I will fly to Philadelphia to meet up with the rest of the new Mauritania volunteers. Then, June 17th we all fly to JFK, then to Dakar, Senegal (I think this should be about a 9 hour flight) and then we will make our way to Nouakchott, Mauritania. I still cannot believe I am actually leaving so soon. After such a long application process, this time really seemed like it was never going to come! I'm excited/nervous/scared/hopeful/(fill in whatever other adjective you think I may be feeling because I probably feel that too).

In these last couple of weeks, I am just trying to finish packing, and spend as much time with friends and family as possible. Please feel free to write me, email me, call me (hopefully I will have a working cell phone soon enough), or send me packages :) while I'm gone!

Okay I think that's enough for now. Hopefully I will be able to post some more interesting information once I get there!