carlystell

To Managua, Nicaragua via Washington DC

Thu, 15 Dec 2005 02:08:57 GMT

So my staging kit finally got to my house. Staging is basically our orientation in the United States where we meet the rest of our group and go over some details before we head out of the country. We are staying at the Holiday Inn in Georgetown which is rather ironic since I go back and forth to DC all the time to visit Casey. Anyway our tenative schedule looks like this:

We arrive on Monday January 9th. They suggest that we have lunch prior to registration. Open registration is from 2:00 - 3:00pm where all the offical completed forms are turned in. Then from 3:00 - 7:00pm we are having a "Welcome to the Peace Corps and start of Training" program.

On Tuesday, January 10th the day begins nice and early. 8:30 am - 12:00pm the training program continues, then lunch, then from 1:30-6:00pm we have more training program stuff.

After that we hopefully will all go out, probably in a big loving Peace Corps family, and get our "last supper". Seriously I have been thinking about what I want and I am thinking that I will probably want Thai and sushi and maybe some Korean food if we can sqeeze it in and I have enough room in my stomach. I will go into some major Asian food withdrawl when I am in Nicaragua. Which is sad because I ate tons and tons of Korean food while I was in Milwaukee with Casey. Alas I will probably be living on gallo pinto for the next 2.5 years. Not that I have anything against rice and beans but seriously I love Asian food.

Then on January 11th, we leave for Nicarague. Our check out of the hotel is at 4:00am ... why they insist on us leaving at the crack of dawn is beyond me, I mean it's a really quick flight down there couldn't we have at least left at a more reasonable time? Regardless, our bus leaves for the airport at 4:15am. Our flight from Reagan leaves at 7:05am and arrives in Atlanta at 9:05am. Our final flight will be leaving Atlanta around 10:05am and will arrive in the lovely city of Managua, Nicaragua at 12:35pm. Can you believe how quick of a flight it is!?!? I am pretty sure I will be having some minor panic attacks on the flight down to Nicaragua, but I have been assured that it is normal.

I can't believe how quickly January 9th is going to be here. It seems like just yesterday I was filling out my forms and now here I am ready to leave! I was really sad today though because Este left for the Philippians. He's going to be over there from December 14th until January 11th. Of course when I talked to him today he was like "bye I'll talk to you again in 2 years". Clearly that is not going to be the case because I will stalk him from Nicaragua but it is really setting in now that I am going to be away from my friends and family for a very long time. I am so nervous that everybody else's lives are going to go on and that they are going to forget all about me and when I get back nothing will be like it used to be. I know that my life is going to be dramatically different when I get back too but it's just a lot to take in right now. Ahhh right now I feel like my emotions are going on a rollercoster ride. Ready or not Nicaragua here I come!!

Time is flying by

Sun, 04 Dec 2005 16:15:05 GMT

Holy shit T-minus 5 weeks and I'll be outta here!! I can't believe how fast time has flown by! I have been hanging out in Upstate New York getting my fill of family, friends and snow before I leave for Nicaragua. I really haven't done any packing ... it's rather pathetic. I haven't bought anything or really thought too much about it in the past few weeks. Oh well I'll get started soon I promise!

This weekend my family and I (minus my gimpy sister who got her tonsils out on Thursday) spend the day decorating for Christmas. It's always so much fun! We get out tree old school style and go up into the middle of freakin nowhere to a tree farm. Then we go out and find the perfect tree, which let me tell you takes forever because my parents can't make up their mind. So here we are standing in the snow, wind and cold in the middle of a huge tree farm trying to find the "perfect" tree ... which this year would be classified as "tall and skinny but full and not too thin" Yea right that took about an hour and a half to find haha. But in the end we found a great tree and then brought it home and decorated it. Now we have our beautifully lit tree in the living room and all the Christmas decorations are up. I am beginning to realize how much I am going to miss just sitting at home, curled up on the couch with a nice big fire going in our fireplace and just relaxing.

Other than that not much has been going on. I am trying to start studying for Spanish ... let's be honest I totally lied when I said that I could speak Spanish. What I really should have said was I remember how to say "no I can't speak Spanish very well" haha. Oh well hopefully they won't hold it over me the fact that I haven't taken Spanish in about 4 years. I hope that I pick it up quickly!! Ugh it's going to be so frustrating to be in a country, living with a family and not being able to communicate very well. Ahhh the trials and tribulations of the Peace Corps.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Tue, 29 Nov 2005 03:30:54 GMT

Well I hope that everybody had an awesome Thanksgiving. It was great to be home and enjoy lots of yummy food. On Wednesday night my Aunt Lisa came over with my Uncle and their three kids and we had a wonderful Harry Potter marathon. Casey got me all three DVDs last year for Christmas so we sat down and watched all three over a two day marathon on our huge flat screen TV. It was awesome. Between the movies, I am obsessed with Harry Potter, and all the popcorn we had an awesome time! Then on Thursday it was time for tons of turkey ... yummy! Knowing that this was going to be my last Thanksgiving in the States for a few years I definitely ate my share fare of turkey with all the yummy sides all loaded up with tons of gravey ... ahhh the joys of Thanksgiving gluttany. Then on Friday we had a birthday party for my Grandpa's 80th birthday. Again tons of food. It was a fabulous weekend/holiday.

I also was able to catch up with a bunch of friends from high school, both from Marcus Whitman and from Midlakes. On Friday night we randomly went down to Naples (in the middle of nowhere New York) and went to a house party there. It was the most eclectic group of people there ... but it was a lot of fun catching up with people that I haven't seen in a really long time. Then on Saturday night I went out with Mike and a bunch of his friends. It was really good to see everybody. Ever since Mike and I broke up I haven't really kept in touch with his friends so it was nice to see everybody and catch up ... we all became pretty close over the 4 years that we dated so I'm glad that I haven't lost touch with them completely. The coolest part of the weekend was going to the Bills game on Sunday! My dad had an extra ticket (he gets season tickets with a bunch of his friends every year) and he asked if I wanted to go. It was sooo much fun, even though it was freezing and we lost. I seriously don't know how the Bills manage to sell out every home game since we suck sooo bad. I mean seriously they haven't been good in like 10 years ... it's kinda depressing. Oh well I will remain a loyal fan until the end!!!

Alright enough babbling ... things have remained relatively stagnent with the whole Peace Corps stuff. I am just waiting to get my staging packet from them and see when I leave for our orientation. Leaving for Nicaragua in about 5 weeks! Holy shit!!

Start writing me letters

Wed, 23 Nov 2005 16:54:58 GMT

Here is my address when I am training for 11 weeks in Managua.
Carly Stell, PCT
Voluntario del Cuerpo de Paz
Apartado Postal 3256
Managua, Nicaragua
Central America

So start writing and send me some letters! Airmail usually takes around 2 weeks and it the best way to send a letter or package is to use padded-envelope sized packages. It is best if the mail and/or packages don't exceed 5lbs, since I am responsible for paying customs fees on larger items, and since I am going to be a poor volunteer I am not going to have any extra money obviously. Once two year site has been identified I will write my new address so that my mail can be delivered directly there instead of in Managua.

I was reading through this packet of information that the Peace Corps sent me and it talks about transportation. Mostly people just get around by foot or buses and stuff. But it also mentioned that "in few instances, volunteers also own or rent horses to travel from home to isolated communities and farms." Haha! Wouldn't that be the best thing ever if I was able to horse back ride through Nicaragua to get around! I have been asking for a horse for about 22 years and I have never gotten one ... this may be my last and only chance to get a horse.

T-minus two months

Thu, 17 Nov 2005 17:52:10 GMT

I can't believe that it's already November 17th! Less than two months to go before I leave for Nicaragua! It's crazy to believe how quickly the time has gone by! I feel like it was just yesterday that I was filling out my Peace Corps application and now I am trying to finalize all this stuff before I leave! Anyway things have been going along relatively smoothly. I sent out my passport stuff to SATO travel. Since I already had my old (well actually relatively new) passport I was able to expadite the process and just go to a website and fill out a form for passport renewal. We are getting a passport from the Peace Corps that is specifically for our in-country service. I also sent out my resume and aspiration statement today. So I am glad that all of that is done and now I am just waiting for my Staging Packet, which will tell us where staging is and hopefully give us an indepth packing list and all of that fun stuff.

Unfortunately I got bad news the other day from my mom. My grandfather went into cardiac arrest on Nov 15th (coincidently my mom's 50th birthday) and it was really bad. I have been on the phone pretty much 10 times a day with my mom getting updates as to how his condition was. It was pretty touch and go for a while because they didn't know how much brain damage he suffered because of the lack of oxygen but today I got really good news! My Grandpa is doing much better and thankfully doesn't have that much brain damage from what they can tell. He can recognize everybody's face and even his short term memory is pretty good. So he's going to be transferred from the local hospital in Canandaigua up to Rochester where they have some really great cardiologists. The doctors are going to do an angioplasty to make sure that there is no blockage in his heart and then they're going to put in a pace-maker and stint to help stabalize his heart and hopefully make it a little stronger. It was a really big shock to hear all of this especially since I was stuck here in Wisconsin. But thankfully he's doing better. Casey and I changed our flight home and will be going home on Friday afternoon to be closer to the family.

The news came though at a horrible time, the day before I was suppose to take the GRE. I thought about cancelling the test but i thought I would still be able to take it. Big freakin mistake. While I didn't do horribly I did much worse than I would have liked. I think it was the stress of the test and also the stress from hearing all the bad news about my grandpa. Anyway I am going to take the test again on Dec 1st. Quick enough so that I don't lose all the stuff crammed into my brain but enough time for me to pull myself together and try and relax about the test. Compared to the MCAT seriously the GRE is a breeze I just got really tense when I took the test. Hopefully this time goes better.

But for now I am sitting in Casey's freezing apartment (it's 61 degrees in here and I don't know how to turn on the heat) and trying to pack up all my stuff. I can't wait to get back to NY!! Goodbye Wisconsin!

Research and paper work

Fri, 11 Nov 2005 01:46:31 GMT

So now that I have offically accepted to be part of Nicaragua Peace Corps I have been doing a lot of research about the country and the Peace Corps programs there. It looks like a really awesome country to be part of and the health program there looks to be pretty well established. I have to get my passport information into the mail to the Peace Corps so that I can get a Peace Corps passport that will be used when we are in service. I also need to send an updated copy of my resume and aspiration statement to the Peace Corps - Nicaragua office so that they can forward it down to Nicaragua. I'm not sure what we are doing with them but I guess our Peace Corps application isn't sent down to Nicaragua so our resume and application is used by the people down there in order to meet us and understand what we are hoping to do accomplish when we are down in Nicaragua.

I have also been in contact with somebody that Laura Goodman met. She and I are going to be in the same program and coincidently a person who is in her friends class just got back from Nicaragua in the Peace Corps. Anyway we have all be conversing back and forth through email and he has given us a bunch of tips about what to bring and things like that. It looks like 99% of the time we'll have electricity, which is great. He also said that one of the things that people wish that they brought the most was "going out" clothes. Very counterintuitive I know, however I guess the Nicaraguans are hardcore about looking nice and therefore it is necessary to bring nice clothes. At least one outfit for formal occasions - weddings, birthdays, church, etc. and at least one or two outfits for going out in the town. In Managua and other larger cities there are a lot of cool places to go out and the Nicaraguans like to dress up when they go out to dance and to bars and whatnot.

It's really nice to have all this information and to have first hand knowledge from some other RPCVs (return peace corps volunteers). I have also been talking to another girl, Erin, who is going to be in our group and is going to be a health volunteer also. She is 24 and is living in Omaha (wherever that is). We've just been sharing information about the Peace Corps and about the things that we need to pack and everything.

Anyway I have to go shopping when I get home. I have already made a list of things that I think I WANT to bring with me, however I am sure that I will have to cut it down to the things that I NEED to bring with me. We are only allowed 75lbs, it sounds like a lot but seriously it's not that much. I am going to buy a 5000 cubic inch full pack, use my North Face bookbag, a small duffle bag and then I'll bring a utility waist bag (which is basically like a heavy duty fanny pack with two spots for nalgenes and space for ipod, ids, money and other things) for when I am biking, hiking or walking around town.

Alright that's it for now, I'm sure there will be much more in the next two months as I get ready to go and get things together. It will be super crazy with Thanksgiving and the holiday's coming up, trying to get everything together ... AHHH but that's enough craziness for one day more coming soon ....

Officially Accepted

Tue, 08 Nov 2005 17:34:05 GMT

So today at 9:00am I called my placement officer at the Peace Corps office and offically accepted my invitation to join the Peace Corps in Nicaragua. The tenative schedule right now is for pre-service training or staging to occur in Washington DC on January 9-10 and then we would be leaving on January 11 for Nicaragua. Then our in-site training in Managua, Nicaragua would occur from January 11 - March 29, 2006. We are tenatively scheduled to be sworn in as true Peace Corps Volunteers (PCV) on March 29 and will be then serving in Nicaragua from March 29,2006 until March 29, 2008. My offical job title will be a Community Health Educator. I will be working with the Nicaraguan Ministry of Health (MINSA) and in health centers and posts as health eductor and community organizer in a poor, rural community somewhere in Nicaragua. There are some key areas that health eductors focus on in Nicaragua and they are 1) evironmental health promotion, 2) nutrition promotion, 3) adolescent health promotion and 4) maternal/infant health promotion. I will be receving in a few weeks/days another package that has all of the staging information and hopefully will provide a packing list. It looks like the weather in Nicaragua is pretty hot and rainy during our summer months and then also hot but not rainy during our summer months. I am so excited for my experience to get started. I am taking the GRE on November 17th then it will be time to get down and start studying some Spanish. I haven't taken Spanish in about 4 years so I have forgotten a lot so I need to brush up on the vocab and everything before we head down to Nicaragua. I will be getting back home to upstate New York right before Thanksgiving and then the craziness will start. I need to start getting stuff together to pack and also need to finalize all of my financial details and things like that. Who knew that I would have to write a living will! Anyway I am sure there will be a lot more details to come but for now I am offically a Peace Corps Trainee (PCT)!

I have a country

Thu, 03 Nov 2005 17:59:43 GMT

In order to make my birthday even better I find out today that I just got my placement at home. Since I am still out in Milwaukee my parents got my placement before me and had to call me and let me know where I was going. I am going to Nicaragua!!!! I am sooo excited! My staging/orientation is on January 9-10 and then we leave to train in Managua which is the capital of Nicaragua. I am actually going to be going with a friend of mine from high school. Very random I know. We are both going as health/community educators. I think the reason they placed us together is because they had no idea that we actually knew each other. Her address is in Washington DC, where she went to school (she went to American with Casey) and mine was in upstate New York ... therefore nobody would have put two and two together to think that we actually knew each other. Regardless I am excited that I will actually know somebody when I get there. I haven't seen any of the paper work yet but my parents are sending it out to me so I can read it over. I have 10 business days to decide whether or not I am going to accept the invitation (which I am) and then I just have to call my placement officer and let them know. Then I have 2 months to get all my stuff together and then I am going to go to Nicaragua!!!

Placement Sent!

Sun, 30 Oct 2005 21:08:52 GMT

Hey just wanted to let you all know that my placement was sent from the Peace Corps office in Washington DC on October 28th. I am so excited. It should take a few days to get up to Canandaigua, NY and then I will offically know what country I am going to be living in for the next 2.5 years! Once I receive my offical placement invitation I have 10 days to respond to the Peace Corps to either accept or decline the nomination. I am pretty sure that I will accept unless I am placed in some random weird country not in Latin America. However, since I am 90% sure that I will be placed in Latin America I am going to accept my nomination. I am sooo pumped! I am sure that it will finally sink in once I get my letter that I am actually doing this and I might get a bit more scared since I will probably be leaving in about 2 months but right now I am just excited to get my life started! I feel like everybody else has started their lives and I have just been waiting and waiting. So that is the update right now. I will write again soon and let you know what country I was placed in and when I will be leaving! I can't wait to find out!!

Peace Corps Placement

Fri, 28 Oct 2005 19:14:08 GMT

So today out of the blue I get a phone call from the placement office for the Peace Corps. It turns out that I am in the last of the very long process with the placement office and should be getting my placement in the next couple of weeks. I am still on track for getting an invitation to leave in January for Latin America, howevern once I get my placement I will know what country I am going to. I am sooo excited ... I feel like I have been waiting forever to get my placement and now it's finally coming!

Other than that I am still studying for the GRE. It is the most pointless test in the whole world however I feel like I should take it now instead of later since I'll probably be stupider later. I finally signed up for the test. I'm going to take it on November 16th and just get the damn thing over with. Seriously I feel like I have forgotten all the math that I thought I knew and all of the words are like foreign to me. It sucks. Oh well gotta just get it done with!

Birthday Celebrations

Tue, 25 Oct 2005 04:34:41 GMT

So it's offical on November 3rd Casey and I are turning 22. Yea I know it's scary getting old and the best way to remedy it is to get completely wasted. However since there is nothing to do in the wonderful town of Milwaukee, WI in terms of the bar scene we have decided to go to DC for the weekend. Since Casey and I weren't together for our 21st birthday we have decided that we will make up for that and pretend like it is our 21st birthday all over again. For all of you where were actually present for my celebration we all know how much of a shit show that was haha

But in order to get my body ready for a weekend of debauchery in DC I am going to have a bit of a pre-birthday party with Casey and her friends from Spain. Jill and Lindsay who lived in Sevilla, Spain with Casey during our sophomore year of college are coming out to Wisconsin to visit. Casey and I haven't really gotten out much in Milwaukee so we don't know for certain that there is nothing to do here but we have heard that it's not really the most hoppin of towns. However we have decided to give it a go for this weekend and make it a girls night/weekend out. We're going to give it a comparison to a little bit of SATC action or something like that. So we'll see how it goes ... hopefully we'll have a blast here for Halloween weekend.

Speaking of which what do you guys think I should be for Halloween? I have yet to figure out a costume ... I'm not going to lie I'm not a huge fan of Halloween, yes I know shocking isn't it? I hate being scared, which Ajay and Este can attest to since they made me watch Scream for the first time ever the last time that I saw them and I think I might have cried. And then there was that imfamous grave yard outing with Ajay, Este, Justin and Ava at like 4:00am. That was a super lot of fun especially when someone kicked over a grave stone (not going to name names here) which I think might actually be sacrilegious. Anyway I don't know what I should be for Halloween so I'm open to suggestions.

Alright that's about it for now from Milwaukee, WI oh by the way I just finished reading 100 years of solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez I highly suggest it if anybody has time to read.

GRE

Mon, 17 Oct 2005 19:51:33 GMT

Okay so I am sitting in Casey's apartment in Wisconsin studying for the GRE. It basically sucks. I forgot after a very nice 4 month hiatus how much I hated studying. What is worse is that the words that are used in the stupid GRE are words that nobody and I mean nobody has ever heard of. I have been trying to incorporate my newly found words into my everyday vocabulary, which has basically turned into me saying weird words in the middle of a sentence. I tried this once with Casey and she laughed so hard I think she almost blew liquid out of her nose ... the sentence didn't really fit or make any sense I guess.

To make my life a little more exciting I have changed up my routine from just studying, watching tv, eating and working out and branched out to studying at Alterra. It is the best coffee house that I have ever been to in my life (no offense to 7th street cafe). Alterra is a Free Trade Coffee House and has a really awesome ambiance. I can just walk from the apartment down a path and walk right to Alterra. It is located right across the road from Lake Michigan and there is a beautiful view of the harbor and boats. It's great! But other than that I have yet to explore much of Milwaukee ... Justin has given me great advice and told me to just get out there and find a dairy boy and corrupt him or something. Let's be honest I might just do that if I get any more bored.

Wisconsin

Fri, 14 Oct 2005 16:16:57 GMT

So I have offically been in Wisconsin for a full weekend now. It's really not as bad as I thought it was going to be. I did have that one brief weird sensation of "holy shit I'm in Wisconsin" when Casey and I were driving out to Madison to pick up Jared from the University of Wisconsin. We actually spent Friday night out at University of Wisconsin - Madison. It was a very interesting party/bar scene out there. None the less it was a lot of fun and provided me with some sort of entertainment out here in the Mid-West.

So Casey is going to be gone with her IBM assignments starting on Thursday this week and will be gone until the next Saturday (ugh 10 days) and then she'll be gone again in Novemeber for 2 whole weeks. So if anybody is interested in coming out here and visiting that would be the time! I will have this sweet apartment all to myself (rent free mind you) and will clearly be bored so I could obviously use the company. So far I have tried to talk Este, Ava, Andria and Ajay into coming out and haven't really gotten any postive response. Come on guys! Get your asses out here! We can party it up mid-western style haha

Well other than that the Bills won this week (thank god) so that should maybe hold up and get me through since the Yankees managed to suck out and lose tonight. I am also still waiting to hear about my placement from the Peace Corps. Trust me once I get it I will let everybody know I promise!

Medical Clearance

Fri, 14 Oct 2005 16:16:30 GMT

Finally! I just talked with the Peace Corps nurse who checks all of the medical forms and stuff and she has informed me that she just cleared me medically today! I am sooo excited! The medical clearance is the longest process in the whole Peace Corps application so I'm glad that I am done with it. Now all I have to do is wait for my Placement and I should be all set to go!

Aside from this exciting news I just got to Milwaukee, WI yesterday. This was the first time that I have seen Casey's new apartment all furnished and stuff. The last time I was here we slept on the floor without any furniture and lights and stuff haha "urban camping". It's really nice to be here and Casey's good friend Jared is coming to visit tomorrow so I'm sure that we'll have a very exciting weekend.

On a side note I am sitting here at Casey's apartment waiting for her to get home from work and I'm watching My Super Sweet Sixteen on MTV. It's one of those shows that is so bad and ridiculous that you just have to watch it. I mean seriously these girls are so goddamn spoiled and bitchy I swear if I ever met them in person I would just have to bitch slap them for being so stupid. Spending $200,000 on a birthday party ... how much more ostentatious can you get? Okay that was my rant on that stupid show

Slow Process

Fri, 14 Oct 2005 16:15:52 GMT

So pretty much I have been waiting for my medical approval and all that beurocratic shit that goes along with the Peace Corps. It's been a long process but I am excited for my placement. The last time I talked with the Office of Medical Services (OMS) they said that everything was going fine and that I should hopefully *fingers crossed* get my placement by November time. That should make it just about right for me to be leaving in January. Wow am I excited. I mean seriously I know that they say its about a 12 month process and everything but it seems so much longer than that. Ann told me to just be patient since she was waiting and waiting for her medical approval and placement then bam she ends up in Niger in West Africa. So for right now I am getting used to this whole patience and calm thing that I know I will have to figure out before I leave for the Peace Corps.

Other than that I just got back from a wonderful trip to see my friends from college ... it was kinda like the last horrah and stuff before I leave for Milwaukee, WI for 6 weeks and then with Thanksgiving and Christmas and everything I probably won't have a chance to see my friends from college again before I leave for the Peace Corps. So I spent 10 days travelling around to New York City and Philadelphia seeing as many people as possible. I was able to see in New York City: Ava, Este, Emily, Andria, Alison, Mike, Jaclyn and Leanne and then in Philly I was able to see: Ajay, Este again, Alison, Marie and Ann. So it was a pretty well-rounded trip and I was able to see basically everybody I wanted too. Alright so now I am trying to get packed and get stuff together since I leave for Wisconsin tomorrow .... can't wait for the cold weather it's going to be super