To Tonga or Not to Tonga...

That is the question. We just heard from a current volunteer's blog that because of budget reasons, they're cutting the number of volunteers being sent to Tonga from 35 to 24, that's a huge cut!!! And that's the place we thought we'd most likely end up. There will be 10 business volunteers and 14 education. We still have a chance, but it's much more competitive.

Brett called our assistant PO, and finally found out who our actual placement officer is, so maybe that means they're reviewing our files now, I hope. She's out of the office though until Tues. It's going to be a looooong weekend until we can figure out what's going on, and we're camping with Brett's parents at Itasca until Tues. so this will ruin the vacation mode for me, I'll just be thinking about what's going on with our invite!

On top of this, today was a sad morning - I ran out of my Cafe Dumond coffee that I got from Holly in New Orleans, so now it's just the coffee from work for me which is more bland.

Around the world

After we're done with peace corps, me and Brett are planning on traveling for about half a year. So we're saving as much as we can now to do this.

Tentatively, here's where we'd want to go, leaving from the south pacific assuming we get an invite there.

- New Zealand, both islands (either during service or after)
- Australia - sydney, melbourne, brisbane/sunshine coast, cairns/barrier reef
- Kuala Lumpar/Singapore
- Thailand - beaches, bangkok
- Cambodia - angkor wat
- Laos - river areas
- Vietnam - halong bay, saigon
- (maybe Nepal himilaya mountains, depending on time/money)
- Turkey - Istanbul
- (maybe Israel, Egypt depending on political situation, money/time)
- Greece - islands, athens
- Eastern Europe - bulgaria, croatia, hungary, czech republic
- Fly home from Amsterdam

We'll try to stick to the cheaper areas for longer - southeast Asia, and eastern Europe. And we'll do it all with one medium-sized backpack each, with about a weeks worth of clothes, traveling light.

We found out the Tonga departure date is Oct 7th, so we're about 9 weeks out from that, getting close to within the 6 weeks they have to give you notice. I think there might still be departures for Samoa in Oct. but no one I've seen has gotten invites yet.

Boundary Waters

Last weekend we only worked Monday and Tues., then went up north with my parents to the boundary waters. I didn't realize how far north it is, we stayed with my grandparents in Esko for one night, then it's another 3 hours or so past that, up by the Canadian border.

The Boundary Waters is a reserve/park area, no motorized boats or anything, and you canoe in with all your packs and stuff. I thought I'd be more sore from paddling but I guess I must have some arm muscle. We found a great camping site after passing a lot that were full already. Ours had a private sandy beach, and there weren't many bugs at all which is very unusual for the boundary waters. The lake we were on was huge, with lots of little islands and rocks. Some of the area was burned up from last year's fire, but a lot was still green and covered with fores. It was relaxing, we hung out, hiked around and paddled around the lake, floated out on our beach on our air mattress, and my dad and Brett caught a few fish. It was a very Minnesot-an weekend.

We called the placement office again, and heard it will be another 2 - 3 weeks (from 7/28).

another month

So we've waited another month, emailed the assistant placement officer again, and heard that they're prioritizing Aug. and Sept. invites right now and we should hear in about 4 - 6 weeks. I guess I wasn't that surprised, we've been waiting this long what's another month.

But it will be nice to know where we'll be living so we can start getting ready! Hopefully by the end of July we'll know. Everyone keeps asking, so it will be nice to finally have an answer.

We've actually been doing a lot so far this summer, every weekend this whole summer we'll be in a different city! Here's how our summer goes - Mankato, Jay Cook state park, South Dakota, Red Wing, Detroit Lakes cabin, Aspen CO, home, boundary waters canoeing, Moorhead, Itasca state park, Avon/St. Cloud, then home again. Wow, we're busy seeing family and with weddings!

A new placement officer?!?

So we waited a whole month with no news from our placement officer, and on Monday 6/2 we emailed her a quick update and I was shocked to get an auto-reply email back saying that as of 5/2 she was no longer working in the placement office!!! So for the whole last month our file was probably just shuffled off to someone else and just sitting there! I wish they would've told us that she had quit.

We emailed the couple of people listed in her email, and heard back on 6/3 that they wanted an updated resume and any other new experience updates, and that they would then do a final assessment of our legal, technical and suitability and should hear in 2 - 3 weeks from their office - which we've heard before from our first placement officer!! So it feels like the whole placement process is just started all over again, when we've been waiting since 4/14!! I guess that's government agencies though, very slow. Hopefully we'll hear from them by the end of June.