Medical Forms

Hopefully I'm done with all my medical stuff for the Peace Corps. I sent in all the paperwork and I just got confirmation that they received it (which is good because I forgot to make copies of everything before I sent them). Now I'm preparing myself for the long wait.

getting old

The other day I went to the doctor for a physical exam that I needed for my PC application. I don't have health care, but I found the place here in Santa Cruz called El Centro de Salud para Mujeres that would treat me for free. As part of the exam, the doctor checked my skin. Noticing my rosy red cheeks, she asked me if I wear sunscreen. Just this simple question had me explaining, apologizing, and promising that I would wear sunscreen from now on. And I was amazed that a doctor, a woman I've never met before, can ask just one simple question and make me feel so guilty. I guess I've just never noticed the power that doctors can have over us just by being doctors. I was reminded of this again later during my pelvic exam. As she swabbed my cervix for the pap smear, she said, "Well there's a little bit of bleeding, but it's probably nothing." Of course "it's probably nothing" translates in my head to "I'm sorry, you have cancer, you need treatment, you can't go on the Peace Corps," and plenty of other horrifying thoughts. Once again, what amazing power doctors have over us. Or probably more precisely, what amazing power we give doctors in our minds. By the way, I got the results of my pap smear and everything is perfectly normal, of course. But I was actually a little scared to see the results. I guess I've always had this mentality that I'm young and healthy, nothing bad is going to happen to me, I have nothing to fear. But now I understand why so many people, like my mom for instance, are afraid to go to the doctor. Afraid to find out that something is wrong. I've just had my first little taste of that fear. I guess I'm getting old...

so the peace corps huh...

I had heard that applying for the Peace Corps was a long, complicated process. I've since found out that everything I've heard is true. I started working on my application back in March 2007, and right now it looks like I'll be leaving in May or June 2008. At this point I know that I'm probably going somewhere in the South Pacific, and I'm probably in a program called "Protected Areas Management." The requirements for this assignment are a) coursework/degree in marine biology, and b) SCUBA certification. At this point, if nothing changes, I'm stoked. This sounds perfect for me. But, they told me that 40% of the time, something changes. Lets hope that I get to keep this assignment and I won't have to jump through too many hoops before I leave.

In the beginning...

So I was born on the Pacific coast, though I grew up land-locked and have no conscious memory of my first home by the ocean. But I think there must be something in me that remembers. I can't think of a time in my life when I didn't know that the Pacific was my home. All through my childhood I knew that once I graduated high school I would move to the west coast, though I'll admit that my childhood dreams never went further than the west coast of North America. Now that I've been here for almost five years, I still feel the pull of the Pacific, and it's pulling me further into itself. I had the fortunate experience of living in Hawai'i for four months. What a short amount of time! Only enough for a small taste of what the rest of the Pacific has to offer. So what next? Well I tried (I really tried!) to find a job that would allow me to live and work on the Pacific Ocean. I had interviews for jobs in California, Hawai'i, American Samoa, and Oregon. But nothing came through. I didn't know what to do, I couldn't understand. I have a B.S. in Ecology and Evolution. I'm an intelligent, hard-working person. Why can't I land a job? And then I got an idea. I didn't come up with it all on my own. Thousands of other people in my situation have had the same idea I'm sure. But it seemed so crazy to me at the time that I was afraid to even tell people about it. What was my idea? The Peace Corps...