To COS and Beyond

On paper, 27 months in the Peace Corps sounded like a long time--longer than grad school, longer than I lived in Portland and Germany combined, longer than any relationship that I've ever been in, just long. Not necessarily long in a bad way, just a big commitment of time. And now, that time has practically come and gone. Last week was my COS conference, which in Peace Corps parlance stands for "Close of Service." In other words, I'm almost done so I can move on to ??????

A lot (too much) of the COS conference was devoted to explaining the mountain of paperwork that we must complete to even leave Macedonia and because it would be challenging to process all of us at the same time, they stagger our departure dates which brings up one of the most anticipated parts of COS conference--the infamous LOTTERY. The lottery is essentially this: all the possible departure dates are put up on posters and then our names were drawn one-by-one to sign up for a date. The anxiety was palpable for the people with plans that hinged on leaving by a certain day. We aren't a cutthroat group but had it been an out-and-out race to the board, I think some elbows would have been thrown. As it is, people actually did what they could to help everyone get a timely COS date and we began our individual countdowns: 79 days until my date, November 10th.


I don't actually plan to be home in November though; instead I will be on what has now been dubbed my "honeymoon." No, I didn't meet a guy but why let that stop me from taking a great trip? I'm still formulating my plans, but Kosovo, Bulgaria, Romania, India, Thailand, and Laos are the places that I'm hoping to visit and then wind up back stateside in early January.

A certain amount of nostalgia and freak-out is washing over me now that I have a COS date. Nostalgia for the many things that I will miss about Macedonia, including but not limited to: my teens, the farmers market, the mountains, my flexible schedule, being "the American," and my Peace Corps family. Freak-out about soon going from a small income to no income and needing to find a job (preferably one I'm excited about doing and that pays well) in what I hear is still a tough market. I'm thinking that I'll return to Washington DC, so if anyone knows of any positions that would be right up my alley then I'd love to hear from you!

In the meantime, I will be updating my resume, eating all the ajvar I can reasonably consume without making myself sick, and figuring out how to close out my projects and say my goodbyes. So much to do, so little time...