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Another Beach Corps signing in (EC80). I am in the tiny island of St. Kitts (and Nevis), and I love it so far. Hi EC buddies! Do any other volunteers serve in countries where PC does not provide bikes for them? Here in the Eastern Caribbean, they will not provide bikes for us which ticks some of us off since it would save us a lot of money in bus fares to make it to our projects. About the pessimistic views often seen on the internet, I can definitely see where those views come from, especially regarding primary assignments. Sometimes work is really slow and I feel pretty useless with very little to do. But it helps me to remember goals 2 and 3. Knowing that every time I hang out and talk with locals is reassuring because I am not doing "nothing". Even walking down to the local rum shop and drinking a beer and eating chicken with locals is technically doing PC work. Winna posted:Any of you guys currently in wanna share your living spaces with us? I'm curious how you guys live. My apartment may not be the best example for "typical" Peace Corps housing, but St. Kitts has relatively high standards of living compared with most countries with volunteers. My apartment is probably over 1000 sq. ft., I have wifi, cable with 40+ channels (paid for by my landlord), a hot shower, a huge kitchen with two ovens, and the ocean in my backyard. I don't say that to brag, but most volunteers on my island have many of those amenities, while other islands in the Eastern Caribbean may have very few of those. I don't have any pictures inside my apartment for now, but here is what it looks like from the outside. I live in the bottom. https://wi.somethingawful.com/6d/6d465c6ada844a41d6d28f013231a302a751238c.jpg My backyard https://wi.somethingawful.com/a2/a2e33fb56a5fd278383a70af655d5cc42a040a09.jpg https://wi.somethingawful.com/45/457b22028ec5f6e218a6763fc137783915a07c32.jpg From the front. https://wi.somethingawful.com/7f/7f36f6e483adfae145dfdda6e2a0f66c6e081ae6.jpg It's not a bad place to live. Also, my blog is here: http://kittsmet.blogspot.com/
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Jan 14, 2010 22:51
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Winna posted:Your blog makes it pretty apparent you standards of living are much much higher than other locations. Also, you seem to be surrounded my lots & lots of westerners. There are definitely some very poor people in the area, some of the kids I work with and live a few houses away do not have a shower in their house and have to use a public "bath house", and some people down the road live in 10' x 10' shacks made from tin roof sheets. But there are also huge mansions on other parts of the island. Peace Corps really does make sure we live at the same economic level as the average local though. Because the standards of living are higher for us, we sometimes get the feeling that other volunteers in "typical" peace corps settings look down on us because we don't have the struggles that they do. We just struggle in different ways. The standard of living here is kind of high, but we aren't able to indulge in a lot of it because of our low living allowance. Thousands of tourists come through every week from cruise ships, and they have money to spend which makes a lot of prices higher than we can afford. Practically everyone on the island has cars except for us, which makes getting places difficult. There are countless things like this which creates our "hardships". A lot of my social time is spent with other volunteers, which of course is not always a good thing. I've had a difficult time making friends with locals, as have other volunteers in my group. Many of the volunteers that have been here over a year now still have very few close local friends. I'm working on it though, and am slowly making friends. Our island is so small that I could get to any other volunteers house within 45 minutes, and some of them within 15. This is great for a support system, but bad for integrating.
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Jan 14, 2010 23:42
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melaneyelia posted:Is yours the house Margo says has the best view in the EC? Another PCV a few towns away from me has "the second best view." I'm in St. Lucia (I was part of the welcoming group back in August or whenever). You were at the airport when we were picked up? I might have met you. Wild. Will you be helping with the new group of volunteers in February? How do you feel about so many of them being 50+? I almost feel bad for the one that is under 50. My island is currently getting ready for elections on Monday. The campaigning is really starting to get annoying, as they've stepped it up several notches since the new year. On the positive side, the party that is in power has hosted several free concerts the past month, ranging from Serani, to Wyclef Jean. We were able to sneak backstage for each concert. Definitely not an experience I was expecting for Peace Corps. I've heard that locals think the elections will turn violent, which means there is a chance we'll have to go to our safe houses until it calms down, and I suppose if it gets violent enough that they'll have to evacuate us. I'm not expecting that to happen though. I hate these elections.
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Jan 24, 2010 15:40
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Winna posted:So I've got everything in and I'm just now waiting for my invitation. I'm kind of nervous as in the email acknowledging my placement process it says that there are typically 2 nominees competing for every invitation. So what are the chances that i That happened to me. I was originally nominated to leave in January 2009, but December 2008 I got a call from my placement officer explaining that my nomination was pushed back until August 2009 (when I actually did leave). I think the other person who shared my original nomination was just offered a spot before I did. I was initially pretty upset with it because it meant I had to find another job to last through the summer as well as some other annoying things. Thankfully it's not "try again." it's "please wait longer." So yes, it does happen. Just don't give up when it happens to you. The placement officer literally told me my options were to wait it out until August, or else drop out. I'm glad I chose to stay in.
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Feb 25, 2010 04:12
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Stoner Boner posted:This makes me happy. I was at dinner with my mom the other night and she said, "Is there a plan B?" I sat there for a while and was like....poo poo, no? Now I realize I can just keep working until I leave. But she said she gave me a great recommendation, so hopefully I won't have to. Kind of. The Eastern Caribbean is a Peace Corps region, but it's also a Peace Corps "country", where we have one director for all the islands. I'm in the group "EC 80", and there are other people in same group EC80 who are on a different island than I am. The way it currently works is that they rotate groups between islands, so EC 80 went to St. Kitts & Nevis and St. Vincent, where the newest group that came in February went to St. Lucia and some other islands. If I would have had a placement for my original nomination, I would have been in group EC79, and would not have been in St. Kitts. I would have still been in the Eastern Caribbean though, which as I said earlier is considered a country to the Peace Corps. Melaneyelia- how is the drought treating you in St. Lucia? I've heard that they had to ship in bottles of water for everyone there, and that you're going without water in the houses currently? That's rough. It's only rained maybe one day this year so far here, but we haven't run out of water yet. We did get that water safety issues email today. I suppose I should start boiling.
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Mar 3, 2010 15:29
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Well, I just had my first real Peace Corps hospital experience. I was at the beach tonight getting ready to work on a Sea Turtle monitoring project, and I got bitten by a mystery insect. To make the story short, my reaction to it was so bad that I pretty much collapsed on the beach and had to spend a few hours in the hospital hooked up to an IV and oxygen. What a night.
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Apr 2, 2010 06:02
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Today has been a nightmare for me. I still feel like it's all a bad dream. Go back a page and you'll find my post about having to go to the hospital because of the fire ant stings. This morning I receive a call from my PCMO, and she wanted me to come to the office to talk to me. I get to her office, and she reads me an email to her from D.C. Because I had such a bad reaction to the fire ant stings, I was informed that I was being medically separated. I was in complete shock, and had no clue what to say or think. Unfortunately because the orders came from D.C., there is nothing my medical officer could do about it. I talked to her about the potential of transferring to a new post where there isn't a risk of allergies, so she talked to someone about that. Feeling incredibly bummed out and depressed about the situation, the day became lovely pretty fast. I got a call later in the day from my PCMO saying that things have changed a little, and they are sending me to D.C. to get tests done for the allergy. Depending on the results, from there they will be able to either a) send me back to my post. b) find a new post for me. or c) send me back home. This has been a very unpleasant experience, and I am really hoping that I'll be able to come back to my current post. Leaving my peace corps family here so suddenly seems like more than I can handle at the moment.
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Apr 15, 2010 04:08
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I am officially a medevac now. I have roommates who have been here for four weeks so far, so I guess I could be here for a while. I made it to D.C. last night, and have until Monday to relax. I really hate having to be here, but it is like getting a free vacation to the U.S. Rush Limbaugh #1! posted:Recruiters should talk up the sadly overlooked weight-loss benefits of Peace Corps service. Yes they should. Last June I weighed 170lbs. I left for service in late August. Two days ago I weighed 140, and I'm really don't even want to lose weight.
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Apr 17, 2010 15:53
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I've got to say, being on MedEvac really sucks. I've been on MedEvac for one month now, and D.C. has gotten really boring. Thankfully they let me take a week between appointments and go back home with my family. I still have no clue if I'll be able to go back to my post, but things are possibly looking good for the potential of going to a new post. I'm just not too excited about having to go through training and first six months again if I am sent somewhere new. Man, I miss my host country.
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May 17, 2010 22:42
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Omits-Bagels posted:What do you do all day? Are you free to do whatever you want? Pretty much whatever I want. I could go an entire week without checking in with the office, and I might only check in to get more money. I spent the first two weeks seeing all the free museums and visiting monuments. Met some friends of other volunteers who live in the area, and visited with some extended family. They give us $32USD per day, which is great. Things don't exactly happen quickly though (and it's not really the Peace Corps fault). In the month I've been here I have only had 3 doctors appointments. I think my health coordinator is just as frustrated as I am that it's taking so long, as the last of my 45 days are coming in in a couple weeks. I was also able to go home for 9 days in between appointments, which was fantastic since it's basically a free vacation. I have been able to save up a lot of money though, so if I end up going back to my host country I'm going to be rich. pat_b posted:So what exactly happens after medical? I've read on the PC site about a placement officer doing a competitive review but I can't find any descriptions on what exactly that is. I'm sending in my medical tomorrow and since my nominated departure date isn't til February I don't expect to hear anything for a long time, but does anything special happen in between medical approval and invitation? For me, between medical approval and invitation, I was asked to get more volunteer hours in for youth development. As soon as I proved to them I was serious about this by actually getting hired for the spot I was volunteering with, they sent me an invitation.
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May 18, 2010 03:40
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Fart Car '97 posted:I haven't posted in this thread yet but I just got job assigned to Mali/Environmental Agriculture this morning. I'm shipping out July 1st. Congrats on the invitation! I found the best way to learn about the country is by checking up on blogs of other volunteers... even emailing them to learn more about that country. http://peacecorpsjournals.com/ I found out today that I am officially being medically separated. I will be eligible for re-enrollment in three months though. Supposedly I won't have to start my service over from the beginning, but we'll see. On the plus side, I might be able to request a specific country. Is anyone serving in an awesome country that I should come to?
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May 18, 2010 20:28
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Has anyone else dealt with being medically separated? After being officially separated on Friday, I just returned home a few hours ago. I'm dealing with a lot of stress from medsep alone. To make things worse, I just found out that peace corps only pays to ship ONE box of my belongings back, weighing less than 100 pounds. What is going to happen to the rest of my stuff? I don't know. I have a guitar and camera equipment just sitting down in the office, along with clothing and a few other personal belongings. When I left for my host country, we were allowed to bring 130 pounds worth of baggage. When I was medically evacuated, I only brought enough clothes to last a week... had I known I would not be returning I would have brought more things with me. I am afraid they're going to ship everything back to me and then take the fee out of my re-adjustment allowance (of which they are already taking $400 USD for a table that broke from regular use in my apartment). What the hell do I do?
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May 23, 2010 19:22
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Has anyone ever re-enrolled? I was medically separated this past May, and have had the summer to reflect on my experiences. I've decided that my Peace Corps experience is not yet over and I would like to do it again. However I have no clue how to start the re-enrollment process. Anyone with experience in this?
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Aug 4, 2010 00:21
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I've never met a volunteer that did not have a college degree. Kind of cool to know that they are out there. I started the process of re-enrolling today. They set me up with a placement officer, but apparently he's in training for the next two weeks... so they gave me some homework of getting recommendations and writing essays. It feels great to know that my PC experience isn't over yet.
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Aug 24, 2010 01:10
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melaneyelia posted:OK, you can download my DOS here. After thinking about it, I do agree it sounds negative, but it was my experience. I mean, this is the main reason why I'm stressed out all the time and have headaches and everything. I just read through your DOS out of curiosity. You say it sounds negative, but that truly seems to be the experience a lot of people in the EC have. Talking with other EC78ers in Youth Development, there is the feeling of failure and that they haven't done very much. EC80 feels the same way, even though they've only been there one year now. So I would guess that the "negatives" you have listed are very typical throughout the EC.
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Aug 25, 2010 21:32
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