Quick and Dirty since it's been a while

In my last post I had submitted an extension proposal and was awaiting an official decision from Headquarters while meanwhile going about the rest of my life as a regular teacher and PCV finishing up his 2 years of service.

There's a couple better posts forthcoming, but since that was about 4 months ago, a bit has happened since then.  Actually, more than a bit, quite a lot more.  Hence the radio silence here on Embarkations.  So I thought the quickest way to dispatch with the news would be a quick and dirty list.  In bullet form.

The context:  In March, we hosted the Simulation Games Development Conference, we launched Public Achievement with the training conference, and on March 28 I officially submitted my PCVL and extension proposal.  Since then, it's kind of been a blur.

• April
• Early April: Our SPA Project "To Teach with Care" is approved to build school technology and interactive teaching capacity
• Mid-April: PCVL Transition Team Meetings begin for Health Education (HE) Program (basically, moving things from the previous PCVL to me)
• April 18 - 21: Bill and I manage a vacation to Kiev over Easter break
• Focus In/Train Up (Peace Corps-wide initiative) revision of HE Program begins in earnest
• May
• May 3: Program Manager and Director for Programming and Training visit Carahasani for a site identification meeting to determine if a follow on volunteer should be placed there after me; this is also my first time in one of these meetings (something I'll be doing more of as a PCVL)
• May 4-5: Site visit to Susan Adams' site for her Hygiene Campaign (we want to develop new training materials based upon her campaign in order to encourage this model in the future)
• May 7: Simulation Game Project Meeting, then back to site
• May 9 - 11: Back to Chisinau for Close of Service (COS) Conference for M25 Volunteers and M24 Extendees
• May 12: Haiducii Training for our newest members
• May 14: Another Simulation Game Project Meeting, then back to site again
• Ongoing: medical clearance for year 3 tests and appointments
• May 19: Final HE Partner Conference
• May 20: Planning for M27s' Pre-Service Training (PST) begins
• May 21: Bill's bday in the village (my host mom wanted him to have a Moldovan birthday)
• May 23 - 26: Bill and I attend a conference sponsored by a Romania Fulbrighter and RPCV on Public Health and Social Services in Romania
• May 28: Medically cleared!
• May 29-30: Last days of class, last days as a teacher
• May 31: Last Bell, the school does not realize I am leaving but does ask me for a toast at the celebration afterwards
• May 31 (evening): I look at my June calendar and realize that when I leave for Chisinau the next morning, it is effectively for good.  Packing and purging begins...
• June
• June 1: To Chisinau; may days of PST planning meetings ensue
• June 4: Susan Adams and her husband Curt become the first of our group to COS (i.e., leave), Matt Mockerman will follow suit later that month, as will MacKenzie (the M24 Healthie who was our program's previous PCVL)
• June 6: Comments back from Headquarters asking for clarification on our PCVL work assignments (not the easy process we were looking for)
• June 7: The M27s arrive!  (more commonly known as the "newbies" or, more bureaucratically, the "trainees")
• June 7: I opt instead for a monitoring and evaluation trip out to 2 Public Achievement groups on the borderlands with Transnistrea (the newbies will see plenty of me soon enough)
• June 8: Bill's going-away BBQ
• June 11: Health Education technical sessions ("tech") for PST begin; my personal life ends
• June 11-15: First week of PST
• June 14: Elvira (the HE Program Manager) has an accident and suffers a severe contusion to her foot, effectively taking her out of the first 5 weeks of PST and complicating things for everyone a bit
• June 15: Lease ends on Bill's house (earlier than expected) and 2 months of vagabondage begin 
• June 16: Final Public Achievement Conference
• June 18 - 22: Second week of PST
• June 23-25: Two sacred nights back in the village
• June 26: Bill and I leave for vacation!  Desperately needed.
• June 26 - July 8: A great 2 week romp begins that takes us to Bosnia and Herzegovina for the Annual HIA Conference and a week in Italy with Jess and her fam
• July 8: I return to Moldova but Bill heads off to Poland
• July
• July 9: Back to the grind, while luckily the trainees are on visit to their future site and it gives me a couple days to catch up
• Also, the Stenbergs (Heath and Leigh) COS, marking the full start of COS season and a constant string of goodbyes to the volunteers I've served with for 2 years
• July 13: One treasured night back in the village, it will be the only one this month
• July 14: Opening of a SPA-funded basketball court outside Chisinau
• July 17-18: Trainees conduct micro-lessons, their first time teaching in Romanian
• July 19: We finally simulate the simulation game designed as a Peace Corps training tool!
• July 22: A day off.  Strange.
• July 25: Lindsay Wing, my best friend of the past 2 years COSes.  F@!#.
• July 27: Final Practice School prep time with Trainees; first Practice School tears
• Sometime in July: apartment search
• August
• July 30 - August 4: Practice School Week 1, more tears ensue
• Bill gets back
• August 6 - 11: Practice School Week 2, slightly fewer tears
• August 10: Moving day!  (Finally get to move into a permanent home)
• Aug. 15: Trainees swear in and become Volunteers!  Immediately leave for their new sites.  They're a great group, pretty well prepared, and we didn't lose a single one from the Health Program.
• Exhale sigh of relief.  
• Aug. 20: Facilitate Haiducii for a summer camp
• Aug. 21: PCVL training (better late than never)
• Aug. 26 - 29: In the village (now officially my former site) for 4 days of facilitating technology seminars
• Aug. 30: Technology training for another volunteer's school (luckily close to Chisinau that it was a day-trip)

And that pretty much brings us to today.  Cheers!