When I'll Be Coming Home or Why I Feel Relived to Hear Bad News

So, I could put the date of when I'm headed home for a little R&R, but that would just make reading this post oh so easy, wouldn't it? Also, when have I ever gotten straight to the point? You should know better by now. So, first thing's first: I'm going to start with the latter part of this blog post's title.

I was up late the other night, and while it was late, I decided to check my e-mail one last time before heading to bed, because, hey, you never know. It was 11a in D.C., so it was plausible that I could have received an e-mail regarding the Foreign Service Officer's Test (FSOT). As I mentioned before, I had passed the initial written test and essay but had yet to hear back on my Personal Narratives and the results of the Qualitative Evaluation Panel (QEP). Lo and behold, there was an e-mail from the Department of State. There was definitely a bit of anticipation as I read the response, which went something like this:

"Dear Garrett,

...because this year, there have been an influx of applicants taking the FSOT and a decrease in the rate of acceptance...After much evaluation by the QEP, we regret to inform you...

Sincerely,
Copy and Paste"

So, that was that. No cushy job waiting for me when I finish my job in the Peace Corps. However, more positive outcomes prevail over the (hardly) negative ones. My dreams of being a Peace Corps Field Recruiter can still be chased. Grad school doesn't necessarily have to be put off for 4 or 10 years while moving around every 2 years to another country (but who knows, I might end up getting a job that requires me to do that anyway!). Best put, I think, as I was discussing this with someone earlier today, is that if anything, I would have had a much more difficult time enjoying what I have going on in the present were I to be constantly wondering about two years from now. Many of us would like to have "Five Year Plan(s)", but I'm going to be here for another 16 months, and what a waste that would be to not be able to fully focus on what I have at the present moment. Do I have ideas of what I might like to do in the future? I do. They might be a little vague, but they exist. For now, though, I plan on enjoying the next five months and five days until I come home. <---did you get that? (9+7)*3/47x-2H =....

Saturday, October 27th

I'll be home and plan on traveling between Phoenix, Tucson, SoCal, and D.C. until

Sunday, November 25th

when I return back to Phnom Penh.

Talk to you soon,
Garrett

Clarity or Hey! Wanna Know What I'll Be Doing Next Year?

So, I finally had this long-awaited meeting with the technical director of PSI/Cambodia and PC/Cambodia's Director of Program and Training. We sat down and had the opportunity to discuss several things, of which I have been patiently (then impatiently [then patiently (then not so patiently, again)]) waiting to find out.

So, here they are:

When will I move to Phnom Penh: Most likely, June 25th

• How many days left physically at site: 27....27!!!! It's really strange. While I am very much anticipating my beginning the next stage of my Peace Corps service, including but not limited to: cooking for myself, having cheese, milk, and pizza readily available, and a toilet the flushes...I am also very sad to leave my village which has treated me so kindly and left me with a feeling of comfort, safety, and happiness (not to mention many friends, countless memories [most of which involved laughter (at my expense [the best kind])]). As well, it has left me with the ability to add brackets within parenthesis and vis versa.

When will I start working for PSI: Definitely, July 2nd

What I will be doing:

                                         

Training Consultant

1. Assist Communications and Marketing department in monitoring, supervision and coaching activities of Interpersonal communications (UHN (United Health Network) and CM (Community Monitor) programs*) and MVU (Mobile Video Unit) activities:

•  Regularly join staff in monitoring and supervision activities. Assist PSI staff with monitoring and supervision functions to improve their supervision and coaching skills. Help to structure UHN and CM field visits to ensure more IPC  (Interpersonal Communication) direct activities are observed and to give better feedback to UHN member organizations.
• Help to design and co-facilitate trainings to CM or to UHN members to strengthen programs
• Serve as a key point person to document compliance of IPC activities 
• Help develop system where UHN member organizations have clear quarterly areas for improvement and are supported by PSI to act on those areas.
• Strengthen phone support and direct IPC field coaching in CM program
• Attend MVU activities and help to revise show formats and effectiveness of shows as needed

Specific to Child Survival -

• Help to design integrated prevention and treatment messages on diarrhea and Safe Water tabs (including benefits of each product) that are simple and easy to demonstrate to the community
• Co-facilitate trainings on integrated prevention and treatment messages on diarrhea and Safe Water tablets to Roving team, MVU team and CMs
• Attend MVU activities and help to include integrated messaging during the event
• Help to revise formats and effectiveness of MVU shows
• Assist PSI staff (coordinators) with improving their supervision skills

  2.  Identify areas for collaboration between the PC and PSI.  Develop an implementation plan that     ensures sustainable collaboration between PC and PSI.

• Map areas of PSI's work and overlap with PC
• Train PCVs to understand PSI's approach and link the individual PCVs behavior change communication activities with PSI's work.
• Assist PSI to deliver IEC (Information, Education, and Communication) materials to PC volunteers and monitor use.

   3. Assist with photography projects as needed including expansion of photograph bank for general use and development of photographs for IEC materials when needed.

   * United Health Network (UHN) is a network of local NGOs sub-granted by PSI to implement IPC activities. CMs are volunteers directly supported by PSI to promote birth spacing and refer to the Sun Quality franchise.

Where will I be living?

• Phnom Penh still, however, I am not sure whether it will be in a one- or two-bedroom apartment or a house with multiple people. I'll be finding out all of that in the next few weeks, so I'll be sure to update you when I know. One thing, though: Phnom Penh will have a lot of temptations that I will have to resist in order to not break the bank (i.e. Western restaurants, ice cream, movies, etc.). Honestly, I think I'll be alright, but it's nice to know that soon, should I need to sneak out for a needed break, it's there. One downside, though: I live in a semi-rural village now, right? Well, there's not much to do here, so when I do get to escape to other places (i.e. Siem Reap, Battambang, Phnom Penh), it really is an escape, and then I can ground myself when I get back home to my little abode. However, in Phnom Penh, while there will be escapes like Sihanoukville and Kampot, there won't be the (occasional) quiet that I enjoy out here in the middle of nowhere. 

When will I be coming home for my 30-day R&R?

• Still waiting on that one, but I'm shooting for autumn. 

When will I be coming home for good?

• My new COS (Close of Service) date is now Sep 3rd, 2013

Yup, so that's about what I know at the moment, and I'm pretty excited for all of it.

Talk to you soon,

Garrett

A Couple of Photos from My PSI Tech Exchange

This little girl was with her family at a Mobile Video Unit presentation about birth control.

She's probably pretty happy that her parents hadn't seen this video nine years ago.

This kid just showed up to see what was going on while we were setting up.

"Oh no!!! What's going to happen next?!"

This little boy on the left was probably the happiest, most cooperative kid I worked with the whole ten days.

The caption for this was: "Women happy to live their lifestyle"

I couldn't get them to stop laughing...perfect.

This woman is just gorgeous and was so photogenic. The literal translation for photogenic in Khmer is "eat camera".

She sells chicken in the market.

We needed some shots of unhappy families, and this little girl was less than thrilled about something, but it seemed to work in our benefit.

...and this is me, incorrectly lifting these weights. I'm surprised I didn't throw my back out. Props to you Chris, whose weights these belonged to; he wants to add another weight...

Belated News on Extending

Hey All,

For those of you who don't have Facebook, I apologize for the belated news, but:

I was approved for extending with PSI in a full-time setting. I will be living in Phnom Penh and may be there as early as late June, but all of that will be defined in a week when Peace Corps program staff, PSI's technical director, and I meet to discuss further my scope of work, start date, housing and other concerns of interest. I currently don't have a great idea of what exactly my day-to-day will look like, so guessing on here would just be pointless and superfluous when I re-post post-meeting next week. Things I do know:

- I will be extending with Population Services International/Cambodia (PSI/Cambodia)

• Full-time

- I will be one of four PCVs living in Phnom Penh

• I might live alone
• I might live with another PCV as a roommate (that hasn't been approved yet

- I should hopefully begin:

• End of June
• Beginning of July

As far as coming home is concerned, I should be coming home late October through late November for obvious reasons (engrossing myself in Thanksgiving fare and weather that won't have me sweating as I walk back from the shower). What I don't know yet is if I passed the Personal Narratives (PNs) and Qualitative Evaluation Panel (QEP) portion of the Foreign Service selection process. If I do, then I'll be invited to the Oral Assessment (OA) which is slated to occur (according to the Department of State's website) between August and November. Should the only time I'm invited to that (if I get invited) be August, September, or early October, then I'll be coming home around then (no need to spend big Gs on a ticket home when I could do it for a couple of hundred). I'll let you know when I do. Until then...

Talk to you soon,

Garrett

When I Will Find Out About Extending...

So, I've been as patient as possible with finding out about extending and this PCVL position. However, there are vague dates that have been thrown out there. With that, I should know by the end of next week, so keep your eyes peeled for a blog post sometime close to then. Keep your fingers crossed that all goes well! All that patience is beginning to unwind...

Talk to you soon,

Garrett

Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon)

Day 13 + 14 in Ho Chi Minh City -

Day 1:

Our bus from Dalat to HCMC was supposed to be 6 hours long. It ended up being 8 1/2: how long it takes to get from my site to Phnom Penh; it felt like a nice taste of home. So, we arrived into the largest city in Vietnam, our last stop, simply expecting everything to go so wrong (every other group's experiences were terrible). We got dropped off and had no idea where we were. We look at the address for our hotel: Pham Ngu Lau. Great! Our location: Pham Ngu Lao District...so did we get led astray to a general area and not a specific street? We ask a moto driver, and he simply points us in the right direction without giving us much strife for not taking his moto. "That way, to the left," he seemed to say (he was gesturing and speaking in Vietnamese). We turn left, and lo and behold we are on the correct street two blocks from our destination. We walk to our hotel down an alley way and as we walked in he said, "Oh. I'm sorry. I sold your room. You said you would arrive 2:00pm, but it is now 4:30p. I didn't know if you were just going to be late, so I booked a room at family hotel just next door. It is a bigger, nicer room (a family room). It is usually more expensive, but I want to give it to you for the same price as this one. Is that okay?" Is that okay?! What's going on? Excuse me. Excuse me! Can somebody please help explain why everything was working out so well? Hmmm, so our friends that we met in Hoi An had arrived only a couple of hours earlier and text us at that very moment that we got into the hotel that they were at the nearby Subway (Subway!) on the same street as our hotel. What?! We walk to the Subway. It's only 3 blocks away. Hello!!! Why is this working out so well. At this point, by the way, Jill and I were still not feeling well. So, we were in shock. Subway was delicious, if you were wondering. Right before we got there, Jill added, "I bet they'll be out of tuna. Watch." We turn right to walk into Subway: "Tuna special: 40% off. 50,000 VND ($2.50) for one 6" sandwich" Stop it. Stop it. Seriously. We met Rachel and Angela and hung out for the next several hours until Jill and I both retired to our room. We still weren't feeling that great when we saw the commercial for Pizza Hut. We had to. We just had to. We did. We called and ordered delivery to our room one large cheese pizza. It was glorious, enough so that we toasted slices. We called it a night.

Day 2:

I woke up at 7:40a with a sty under my eyelid. The pain was sharp and intermittent. Here it was. Of course. The last day. I wasn't feeling so hot, and here I was, standing in front of a mirror, staring at my blood shot eye hoping it might go away. At breakfast, I used warm water with napkins as a "hot compress" for my eye and after a couple of hours, it started to feel better. And then, my cold started to go away. And then, my abdomen started to relax. Fantastic. By the way, breakfast was scrambled eggs, half a grilled tomato, baguette, iced coffee with milk, and a sausage (or...a hot dog, I found some mustard and ketchup for it). Afterwards, we went to this park 30 min away which was laced with flowers and statues of dragons. It was pretty beautiful (minus the not-so-pretty water). We all walked around for awhile and eventually ended up on a Ferris wheel (one that moved at a normal rate and wasn't 1/4 the size it should be). After that we headed back to the hotel by taxi. Fruit juice stand? Yes. My selection: guava, passion fruit, orange. After that, Rachel and Angela left for Phnom Penh on their bus and Jill and I parted ways for the next part of the day. She went to get some trinkets for people back in her community while I walked to the War Remnants Museum. For your information, the Vietnam War is referred to as "The American War" in Vietnam, for obvious reasons.

The War Remnants Museum:

The museum had a 15,000 VND ($0.75) entry fee. The museum was inundated with tourists of all nationalities (including Vietnamese). I felt almost nervous walking around, ever so aware of my being American. It's hard not to be even more aware of this when you walk into the "Agent Orange and its Effects" room and a young Vietnamese girl, who is walking in front of me, holds the door open for me. The building was four stories tall with a "show room" outside of the main edifice featuring a mock-up of what were prisons for women (where blown-up-picture of several women clinging to the bars of the cell door were gasping for fresh air) and "tiger cages" which were 3m x 2m x 1.5m, the last one being the height, where, during the hot season, 5-7 men would be kept and during the cold season, 2-3 men. Inside the building they had several sections: children's drawings of peace, countries of the world who supported Vietnam at the time, memorials and commemorations to the Americans who opposed the war, the history of American involvement starting with the French in the early 50's, the use of and after-effect of Agent Orange (which has counterparts: white, blue, purple, etc), torture methods used, and a gallery donated by the State of Kentucky of photographs from journalists (half of them Vietnamese). The photographs were stunning and had you staring at them for a little bit longer than the initial glance after reading each one's caption (e.g. "Mr. Ho's three children, dead."). Some of the photos were those you've likely seen (i.e. soldiers crouching through rice paddies) and those you might have not (e.g. a man holding the 1/3 of the remains of a assumed V.C. soldier). I spent a good 2 hour in the War Remnants Museum.

After this, I went back to the room where Jill met me an hour later. We're currently watching 127 hours. My day started with friendship and serenity, transitioned to war and violence and seems to be ending with solitude and reflection (and amputations). Bravo to James Franco, by the way.

We head back to Phnom Penh, tomorrow. Our travel time on the bus should be six hours, however, it's Khmer New Year, where everyone GETS OUT of the city to go back to their "homeland" (provinces where their families live), so it should be either calm or CRAZY getting in. It should be six hours, but it might take nine. We'll see. Anyhow, I'll probably not post for a week or so. I've done a good amount for now. This is the end of my Khmer New Year vacation, and it was absolutely splendid. Vietnam is a beautiful, beautiful country with delicious foods and some really nice people. I hope at some point in my life I can come back and spend a little more time, now that I have a better idea of what to do, what to eat and where to go.

Talk to you soon,

Garrett

Dalat

Days 11 + 12 in Vietnam: Dalat

Let's start with the 5 hour bus ride that made one 20 min stop and another 45 min one where the reason we stopped was because of the bus driver's lack of legitimate plates and of any registration papers. He said nothing and didn't speak to the Vietnamese guy on the bus who spoke a little English so that he could inform the rest of us. The bus driver got off the bus, walked away, then disappeared. Where'd he go? No one knew. Then, some people got off the bus 20 min later and walked back. What was going on? We were so confused. Finally, the Vietnamese man was able to help us out after speaking to the police. The bus driver finally came back and off we were to go up large hills where the engine almost failed several times. The bus rocked back and forth pretty violently here and there. Oh, yeah. I felt safe. I was laughing a lot.

We reached Dalat. I got off the bus. I wanted my fleece. My fleece! The novelty of wearing one! A couple of volunteers who were already here met us at our hotel, which was swank, by the way: the were two shower heads and 6 sprayers (3 on the left, 3 on the right). There was urinal with a sensor, and an energy-efficient toilet. Even the sink had the option of hot water. Crazy! Best $20 spent! We met up with the rest of the crew, then went off to the market where we bought strawberries (STRAWBERRIES!), mulberries (MULBERRIES!), avocados (AVOCADOS!), and almonds and cashews (NUTS!). I got a kilo of the strawberries for $1, 1/2 of one of the mulberries for $0.50, and three avocados for $1.75. I was absolutely elated. We ended up buying some Delat wine (red and white) and mixed in strawberry and passion fruit juice (respectively). We ended the night eating Pho then going back to big group's hotel to watch Zombieland together.

The following morning (this morning), we woke up to a homemade breakfast of local fruits, cornflakes, milk, yogurt, eggs, bacon, ham, passion fruit juice, and coffee. All of this was included in the price of the room. Sierra hung out with us for the beginning of the morning (she couldn't get a ride back to HCMC the day before) and had to wait for the 11p bus tonight (she just left). Around noon, Jill and I took a taxi ride to the cable cars which overlooks the city. We get there and it says "Under maintenance for April 11th"...out of all the days! Anyhow, we saved $3 by not doing that, right? Well, it cost us $3/person for the taxi ride to the cable cars then to the Crazy House, which is a house designed by a Vietnamese architect that would have members of Home Owner's Association in absolute hysteria. It basically looks like a giant tree trunk and has stairs that go every which way. You can actually stay in one of the ten rooms, each with its own strange difference. After visiting the Crazy House, we walked back towards the hotel. Or well, we thought we were heading back towards the hotel. We found a couple of drivers and write down the name of the hotel. They have no clue. Where were we? They didn't know our hotel, and everyone near our hotel knew of it. We get back in the right direction, and its the other way. It was actually quite a ways away from our hotel, but we were so happy to make it back. We spent the rest of the night chatting until going to dinner at a semi-fancy restaurant where I had sweet and sour pork with snap peas, bell peppers, cauliflower, and tomatoes. I had to leave early as I came down with something. I don't know what it was, but it hit me hard. I went white as a ghost, so I walked back to the hotel. It was amazing how much the fresh air helped. I'm fine, now.

Now, I'm in bed watching Homeland. We thought it was a movie before looking it up. It's really good so far. Okay, off to HCMC/Saigon, tomorrow.

Talk to you soon,

Garrett