Paperwork! Polio! Progress!

Things are moving along! I got my polio shot on Tuesday (fuuuuuun stuff!) and faxed the records in right away. The next morning, I got an e-mail saying they had received my fax and that the papers had been added to my file. A couple days later, my on-line account was updated to where the medical section says: "A decision has been reached regarding your medical review. Please look for a letter in the mail." It's odd how everything else was so slow, but this is going super fast.

It sounds so ominous, and for a while I had myself convinced that their message was so vague and non-committal because they had decided that I was not fit to serve and I would receive a sad, small envelope in the mail. But I looked up that exact quote ("A decision has been reached...blah blah") And I found that everyone gets that. Since I don't actually have any health problems except my allergies, I think I'll be OK.

The hard part comes next. Placement. With the downturn of the economy, they have a lot more applicants than they do spaces, along with a smaller budget. Even though all of us have been nominated, not all of us will be placed. I am a fairly competitive applicant, since I have both English teaching experience, college training in ESL, and experience abroad, but I don't know if my hiatus from application or the fact that (due to misunderstanding) it took me a long time to get my medical paperwork in are going to count against me. I hope not, but I guess we'll see. I'm not so naive as to think that everything will be perfect. Yes, I want to be placed in Mozambique or another Portuguese speaking country (like... well, really only Mozambique seeing as they don't have programs in any other Portuguese-speaking countries) but it's very likely that they could place me elsewhere -- maybe not even in Africa, which would mean I'd have to think up a new blog name. Rumor has it they ask for an updated resume after medical clearance, so hopefully my year of working at a school (and my fantastic letters of recommendation from there) will give me even more of an edge. There's no use in dwelling on it now, since there's absolutely nothing I can do except wait.

And so I wait.