Peace Corps Invitation

Sure enough, while we were at sea, in a place where, for the next two weeks internet access was going to be extremely expensive and very intermittent, the Peace Corps sent our invitations giving us a week to accept or not.  We managed to squeeze an email out from the ship asking for some additional time which, we found out the next time we decided to spend some of our overpriced internet minutes, was granted.

We had a lot of questions.  Where in the hell is Moldova?  What is the weather like?  When would we be leaving?  What exactly was our program and were we really both in the same program?  Does that mean we would be able to cohabitate during the 8 to 10 weeks of training?

Up until now we really didn’t know if the Peace Corps would invite us to serve or just bureaucratically rub us out of the program.  When we got settled in Montevideo, obtained access to a quality internet connection and had some time to do some research we were ready with our questions. 

Our questions really boiled down to this: were we going to be able to live and work together, even during training?   We had embarked on this journey to be together and to enjoy each other rather than return to a kind of rat race where we see each other occasionally, usually while one or both of us are in a hurry.  A wonderful lady in Washington DC gave us all the right answers and told us that we would be in-country in early June 2013.  We were impressed.  It looked like we were going to be together throughout our service and the Peace Corps had even placed us in our first choice region; Eastern Europe.

Then came all the little irritating things.  We had to update our medical information because by the time we were in-country our medical file information would be more than one year old.  This included an exam, blood and urine lab work and a write up.  We also needed to have updated dental exams and a complicated form completed.  We also had to obtain a “no fee” passport for Peace Corps purposes.

Here we were, in Uruguay, with our health care insurance in Spain and we needed to get all this completed in a few short weeks.  Well the first thing we did was question specifically when each item had to be done.  When we explained the situation we were passed to the appropriate medical personnel who worked out the alternatives for us.  In addition, we found that we could apply for our “no fee” passports at the American consulate in Montevideo.

Without health or dental insurance in the US (except for emergencies of course) it was going to be expensive to update our medical and dental information.  In addition, we had no desire to cut our journey short and return to the US earlierthan was necessary to spend some time with our family and friends and make some final arrangements.  Then, an amazing thing occurred.

We were researching the cost to fly back to the states and discovered that the cost to fly to Phoenix from Montevideo was about $1,400 one way and included several nasty layovers taking approximately 21 hours.  We found that for about the same cost, we could fly to Phoenix via Madrid with a 10 week layover in Madrid.  We could visit our friends in Granada, spend time with Kellie and Brit and, better yet, use our Spanish health insurance for a majority of the medical file update, although this included several additional difficulties with translation and the fact that a basic “check-up or follow-up” visit is unknown in Spain.

Whatever!  We scheduled the flight and contacted Allie and Andrew for assistance in acquiring a place to stay for 10 weeks.  We asked them to keep it a surprise for everybody there (which they did successfully).  We felt that 10 weeks would be enough for us to schedule appointments with a doctor, get the lab-work performed and have the necessary follow-up visit and write up completed.  That would leave us approximately 3 weeks in the US to complete our dental file updates, finish our preparations and packing, and, importantly, see everybody we could before leaving for staging in Philadelphia in early June.

This really would work perfectly for us because it allowed us to spend a significant amount of time (3 months) in Uruguay which was, after all, the reason for our being in Uruguay.  We really wanted to get to know Montevideo and other places in Uruguay while meeting and making new friends and learning about the culture. 

From our apartment in Cuidad Vieja, we made the 45 minute shoreline walk to our appointment at the American consulate.  They were very friendly and efficient and processed our very strange request relatively quickly.  Our request was so unusual that a consul came out to chat with us.  He knew the Peace Corps and had served as a Foreign Service Officer near Moldova in Romania for several years.  He told us they didn’t see too many “no fee” passport applications, especially for future Peace Corps volunteers there in Uruguay but that he knew exactly what needed to be done and that he could arrange for the new passport to be sent directly to the Peace Corps staging personnel.  Unbelievably, 9 days later, the Peace Corps had our “no fee” passports. 

Perfect!  We had a modified plan and it looked like it would work.  Now we could really enjoy our time in Uruguay!