Lisa in Tanzania - A Peace Corps Volunteer's Blog

29 July, 2005

Resumes and aspiration statements sent & Notice

Russ and I finished revising our resumes and wrote our aspiration statements and sent them to the Tanzania staff. We were asked to write about our expectations of our PC service, strategies for adapting to a new culture, and personal and professional goals for our PC service. It's nice to have that done so we can concentrate on selling our car, packing, and researching Tanzania and teaching.


Also, I submitted my letter of resignation to my boss today who let the whole company (11 people) know that I am leaving for the Peace Corps. They are sad to see me go but very interested in my decision and wish me luck in East Africa!

28 July, 2005

Yahoo groups

I was looking around at the links on my blog and noticed that at tupo.org (the site for returned tanzanian pcvs) that Isaac posted a message about what to bring to Tanzania because he will be leaving in September. I wrote him an email saying that Russ and I are leaving in September too! Since Isaac had heard from another person who is in our group, Aaron, he created a Yahoo group called PCVTanzaniaSeptember05 (see link to the right) so that anyone in our group and anyone interested in PC service in Africa can chat, etc... Pretty neat, eh?

25 July, 2005

Map of Tanzania

Russ and I immediately took passport pictures and sent in the information for a Peace Corps passport because it takes six weeks to process and we leave in eight! We are currently revising our resumes and typing up our aspiration statements which will be sent to the PC staff in Tanzania. A map of Tanzania follows...

Map from Perry-CastaƱeda Library Map Collection

23 July, 2005

Tanzania Flag



Black: the People
Green: the Land
Blue: the Adjoining Sea
Golden: the Mineral wealth

Our Application Process

My husband, Russ, and I applied for the PC online on December 2, 2004. We had picked up a paper application at the office in Minneapolis a few months earlier so we could gather all the information needed to apply online. We received a call from our recruiter the next week asking if we could come in for an interview before she left for vacation. We were interviewed on December 12, 2004. We didn't heard back from our recruiter until almost two months later where she mentioned that there were two positions available for married couples in the region of Africa departing in June and July. Our selected regions were Eastern Europe and Asia so we said we would keep those assignments in mind but asked her to look for assignments in our selected regions. Our recruiter called us a week later saying the only thing she could see for us was an information technology assignment for Russ and a math teaching assignment for me in Sub-Saharan Africa. By this time we were already reading about the countries in the African continent, which ones had French as their official language, which countries the PC goes to, etc...so we said YES! Our recruiter nominated us for these assignments on March 7, 2005. We received our medical and dental packets on March 14, 2005 and began making appointments. We mailed our packets together to DC on April 6, 2005. We received email notifications that our application status has changed on April 14, 2005 so we checked and we both were dentally cleared. Then we both received an email about a status change and we checked our status online to find out that the medical office has received our physical exam forms on April 20, 2005. (It's nice that they update both of us at the same time!) We were both medically cleared on July 4, 2005. We both received placement clearance on July 14, 2005 and then received notice that our invitation was in the mail on July 21, 2005! We received our invitation on 22 July, 2005 to Tanzania and accepted our assignment leaving on 19 September, 2005.