Oh Bountiful Day...

Actually it has been a pretty amazing week! Regardless yesterday deserves special notice. Sure, it was my last day of work (Katie's was on Tuesday), I had a nice going away lunch at Chevy's, and an excellent celebration dinner with Larry and Dana at a Korean BBQ...but the real news of the day was that both Katie and I are MEDICALLY CLEARED FOR PEACE CORPS SERVICE!That's a big deal because it's the last big hurdle and the burden lies with the PC now, not so much on us.

In order to really understand why this is a big deal, you'd all have to go read an on-line PC forum (Yahoo Groups), or google a few PC blogs and see how many times the medical clearence process becomes a complete nightmare for so many potential volunteers. It can be very frustrating and drag out over a long period.

Our story becomes a bit better by telling you that I actually called our medical screening assistant yesterday morning, just to follow up and ask if there were any questions. We talked for a while and he said that since we weren't leaving till September (news!), they probably wouldn't get to it for a few months...or it could be tomorrow, hard to say. He was very nice and took down all of our change of information (address, e-mail, phone) for our file. Then the strangeness... Katie comes home to a voice message on our answering machine from the screening assistants supervisor who is congratulating us on our medical clearance! He went on to say that he had been "bragging" about us and our very organized submittals to the assistant who said that he had just talked to me. That prompted him to try to call us in person and give us kudos.

Bottom line, while we probably didn't set any records with how fast the PC can clear folks...I'm sure there have been a number of priority/emergency clearances... but I bet we did damn well for the "normal" process by being cleared both medically, and dentally eight days from their receipt of our submittal! Que suerte!