It's A Packstravaganza!!!

Obviously I saved the better title for the later post. A reward for my repeat viewers.

The second packing run has been a resounding success, and I have somehow managed to pack everything into one small bag (the kind that is just an 8x10 inch nylon bag with strings instead of straps), one piece of carry-on luggage (in stylish electric blue), and previously described 5400 cubic inch backpack. I will have to also carry on my sleeping bag, which i plan on claiming to be my pillow. Thus, i will probably not have to pay a hefty fine, and i will have reduced my load to a much more manageable size. The spanish wine botas hasn't been included, but i think i may be able to squeeze it in somewhere.

And of course, here are my packing list and some photos:

Item	# taken
Belts	2
Windbreaker	1
Cubs hat	1
Sunglasses	1
Sturdy Gloves	1
Cotton or Polyester blend slacks	2
Nice Shirt	2
Ties	3
Button down shirts	2
Shorts	1
T-shirts	5
Cotton Underwear	20
Socks	12 pair
Swimming Trunks	1
Running Shoes	1
Dress shoes	1
Work Shoes (comfortable)	1
Hiking Boots	1
Chacos	1
Medicine	All
Shaving Cream	1
Deodorant	3
Shampoo	1
Toothbrush	1
Toothpaste	1
Razor	1
Blades	4
Nail Cutters	1
Spices	6
French Press	1
Towels	3
Swiss Army Knife	1
Leatherman	1
Measuring spoons	1
Mess kit	1
Color visa size photos	6
Black and white visa size photos	4
Passport photos	10
Sewing Kit	1
Alarm Clock	1
Nalgene Bottle	1
Slumberjack and inflatable pad	1
Headlamp	1
Reading light	1
Watch	1
Binoculars	1
Day Pack	1
Backpack	1
iPod solar charger	1
Guitar	1
Books	3
Sketch Pad	1
Guitar Strings	3
iPod	1
GPS	1
Tuner	1
Hiking Pants	1

Here are my luggage containers:

From rishi

This is what's going in my backpack:

From rishi

and this is what's going in my small electric blue carry-on luggage:

From rishi

Overpacking

Well, in the spirit of getting ready to leave, I've made up a packing list, and did a preliminary packing run. Everything fit tightly into my backpack (5400ci) and a large blue suitcase. unfortunately, I'll have to leave behind my Spanish Wine Botas but i'll find a way to survive. I also have found that although I am under the weight limit, I'm definitely going to be above the dimensional limit. This is entirely attributed to my guitar. Now I have two options:

1. take everything as is, and hope that i can carry my guitar on the plane with a wink and a smile, but be ready to pay $100 for bringing an extra item of baggage.

or

2. try and reduce my big blue suitcase into a small blue carry-on suitcase. This would require me to cut the items i have packed down by about 30%.

The first option is easier, and it would save me from worrying about whether or not i brought enough stuff. but i'm a manly man, so i really want to show up and be one of the people laughing at the folks who brought everything they owned, and ended up not needing.

Ah, my laziness vs. my ego. Usually the latter wins out. I'm going to try to repack this afternoon, so the answer will show itself soon.

The ridiculous application process

When I was starting the application process, i found myself pouring over peace corps blogs, imagining myself in remote locations around the globe. unfortunately there weren't a lot of retrospective looks at the application process, which made it hard for me to really grasp the whole thing. this isn't going to be a very exciting post, so if you're looking for that trademark "Rishi" zest and zeal, i recommend reading toothpastefordinner for the next ten minutes instead. if you're genuinely interested in the process, read on. i really should have mentioned that before toothpaste for dinner.

firstly, i started the application process in november of last year. that is to say, i started filling out the application and getting my references in. you have to have three references: one from a professor or work supervisor, one from someone who has seen you work in a volunteer capacity, and one from a peer. since most of my volunteer experience didn't involve direct supervision, i chose two work supervisors instead. my good friend matt wrote my peer reference, since he had flowered me with praise on the comments section of my last blog (and i swear the detroit academy of ninjas will rise again).

Aside from this, i had to fill out a bunch of forms saying that i've never worked in intelligence, never shot anyone, never slept with a chimpanzee and a south ecuadorian banana tree on the same night, and the like. it was all online, and it was all pretty easy. my references understandably took a little bit more time, but i had the application filled out and all of my references in by the middle of january.

soon after, i received some more paperwork to fill out, including (i think?) some forms for security clearance. i had to get my fingerprints done and fill out some more forms, and send it all in (this is pretty much the gist of this entire post: get some forms, fill them out, send them in, wait, get some more forms). finally, i got called for an interview!

on that note, my friend zach and i were talking recently, and he brought up the fact that people often write exclamation marks in e-mails and notes, even though while they're doing it, they don't seem to be very excited. at first i thought, yeah, of course i don't make a happy face when i type an exclamation mark. but i realized that every time i read someone else write a sentence ending with an exclamation mark (man, if ever a word needed a synonym, it's exclamation mark. i mean, that's just describing what it is. a mark of exclamation. how about some creativity you lazy wordsmiths!) i imagine that they are giddy with excitement, slapping their hands together with glee while asking me if i watched grey's anatomy last night.

anyways, i finally got an interview! this was sometime in the spring, march or april i believe. since i lived in chicago, it wasn't a big deal for me to come into their recruiting office, which i like since i'm not a big fan of phone interviews. the interview lasted a little over an hour. everything seemed to go pretty well, and while we were there we set up a second interview. the second interview was on the phone, and at the end of it, the recruiter told me about a few positions that she could nominate me for. the one that sounded best to me was secondary education in sub-saharan africa in october.

a little while after i got my nomination, i received a new set of paperwork (this included access to mytoolkit, an webpage online that lets you track the status of your peace corps application status), this being the monster that is medical, dental, and visual clearance. i don't want to get into the murky details of how this all went down, but it took forever. i sent everything in, and they wanted more tests, and more information, and i sent more stuff in, and they wanted more stuff, and this went on indefinitely. they really, really, make sure that you're healthy enough for this job. this entire process lasted until the middle of october, when i finally got my clearance.

sometime in the summer meanwhile, i was contacted by my recruiter, who told me that i was no longer going to be doing the program in october, but now would be leaving in november. if you're amidst the application process, you should know that just because you're nominated for a position, doesn't mean that's the one you're getting. in fact, a lot of the blogs i've read talk about being switched once or twice.

now, the worst part of the application process is waiting for your invitation after you get your clearances. this is when you know that you can go, and you probably will go, but you have no idea when or where, and you don't know when you're going to find out. it makes it pretty difficult to think about anything else. i have a friend who waited months to find out where she was going. for me, it only took about a week after my clearance for me to find out that my invitation kit had been sent out. so, i diligently waited for the postman to arrive every day, but alas, no invitation came the next day. or the next. or the next. in fact, despite mytoolkit saying that it had been mailed out, i waited a week and a half and there was no invitation kit.

i got nervous and called my recruiter (who was extremely helpful in this entire process. hopefully all the recruiters are like this, and if you're applying and are not sure about anything, this is probably the person who can point you in the right direction) and she told me that she didn't know when i was going, but she could see that i was going to be going to uganda. now, i was more excited, but still worried that my kit had yet to arrive. finally, my dad came in one day after a long day of golf (yay global warming) and brought the kit that he had found leaned up against our garage. i'm not sure if it had been there for days, but at the time i was just happy it had arrived.

so i got the invitation kit, found out i was leaving march 3rd (the day after my birthday) and that all was going to be well. i filled out more paperwork, sent in my passport and visa forms, and read about my actual assignment, what i was going to be doing, and what kind of living conditions to expect. i also got the url for a pdf containing all of the information about uganda for peace corps volunteers. this included a packing list, some cultural information, and that sort of thing.

so, once again, filled out paperwork and sent it in. after everything was in, i was just left to wait around again, this time for my staging kit. this kit tells you where your staging is going to be. i received my staging kit 4 weeks before departure (they say 3-5 in general) and found out i was going to be leaving out of philadelphia. for those who don't know, before your service you go to staging in an american city. here, everyone else who is going to your country at that time meets, and there are a few days of seminars and vaccinations, and name games. after staging, you all fly to the country of service, and the whole group trains together at the same facility for three months. after these three months of training, you start your two years of service.

anyways, i also found out that staging began march 2nd (my birthday, as well as donnie's and dr. seuss's) which was a day earlier than i had originally been told. so, i guess i'm trying to tell prospective volunteers, that when the peace corps says something is subject to change, they mean it. i then called the travel agency to tell them that i would be driving to staging, although most volunteers would be calling to make flight reservations.

so, that's where i am at the moment. i'm just acquiring all of the things i'm going to take with me. i'll be leaving home with my parents on the 28th, we're going to hang out in philadelphia until the morning of the 2nd, when they'll drop me off at the hotel where our staging is going to be, and that'll be it. the beginning of my peace corps experience.

so, hopefully this gives a reasonable timeline as to the process. i began in november, and am leaving in march a year later, so 16 months total from application to departure. the best advice i can give is to get your medical forms in as quickly as possible, and try not to get too frustrated with the lengthy process. this is where i should say that in the end it was worth it, but i won't be finding that out for another month or so. good luck to those applying, and i don't know why you're reading this to those who aren't.

No, seriously. Why?

I despise small talk. It's just spewing words to fill the silence that exists between two people who don't actually have anything to say to each other. Unfortunately, my life is filled with it. I don't blame people for making small talk -- I make more than my fair share of it -- but I still loathe the process.

Since I applied for the Peace Corps, small talk has further declined in its appeal. I would be asked about my plans for the future, and I would mention my matriculation in the Peace Corps (actually, I'm going to start abbreviating Peace Corps: PC. I know that those letters already represent two acronyms, but you're a smart person, figure it out). Since this appears to be an interesting topic on the surface, the person decides to probe deeper.

"Really, the Peace Corps? Do you know where you're going?"
"Um... Sub-Saharan Africa... Probably..."
"Oh yeah? so that includes...?"
"Basically all of Africa, except the countries on the Mediterranean."
"Oh, wow. What will you be doing?"
"I don't know really. Something to do with teaching and math."
"Is that what you want to do? Teach?"
"No, not really. It's just what I'm qualified for."
"Oh."

(note: most small-talkers don't have the courtesy to abbreviate PC)

At this point, the other party in the conversation realizes that I know nothing about my assignment, and that I may have nothing interesting to say about this topic. Then, they strike gold.

"What made you decide to join?"

This should provoke an interesting response right? Unfortunately, I don't have the propensity to delve into the myriad of reasons for which I chose PC service. I tend to replace the lengthy, true response, with a much more concise and flippant response:


"There was a character in a book I read once, who said 'I'd like to live my life based on doing good stuff, instead of just not doing bad stuff'."

"I don't really want to get a job yet, and I don't want to go to grad school yet either."

"Cause it'll be a sweet adventure."

and of course:

"Because I really don't have anything else to do."


Some of you may be thinking to yourself, "Hey, [insert response here] is exactly what Rishi told me!" Don't feel neglected. It has taken me a few hundred words just to finish the exposition here, you still aren't even sure what this post is about. I've showed complete disregard for the patience of my audience, as well as any semblance of MLA formatting.

I've spent so much time giving canned responses to this question, that it is going to take some serious effort for me to honestly answer this question in full. So here it is, the real response to that wonderful question:

Why did I join the Peace Corps?

And why am I only occasionally abbreviating the agency as PC? Shouldn't I be more consistent? Do I realize how confusing it is for me to switch aimlessly between verb tenses and perspectives? Have you realized how confusing it is for me to have switched aimlessly between verb tenses and perspectives?

I digress. Why did I join the Peace Corps?

I should start at the beginning, but I sadly can't remember when that was. I don't remember when I first heard about the Peace Corps, which would be a sappy start to this explanation. I also don't know exactly when I began considering it, which would be a much more logical start. I guess I should start with the last concrete non-PC (non-Peace Corps, not non-Politically Correct. Fuck it, this abbreviation thing isn't working very well) life plan. This is also a great sappy beginning, although I have retroactively added a significant amount of gravitas to the event, in the tradition of all great historical revisionists.

A Doctor. I was going to go to medical school. This was of course, the perfect response to any Indian adult's questioning of my future. I would make a lot of money, I would be helping people, I would be swimming in gold-digging women, and I would be driving a sweet car, but not too sweet, because I don't really care about money, after all, what would Gandhi do, aside from ending four lines of run-on sentence masochism.

Then, I went to India for a winter, and decided to go backpacking in the Himalayas (for those of you who haven't seen me tell this story, I usually deepen my voice and breath on my knuckles before rubbing them against the breast of my shirt, thus making such a pretentious statement seem, well... not as pretentious [also, does anyone know the history of this gesture? It seems quite silly]). I was planning on hiking a trail that was frequently blanketed by fog, and often poorly marked. My Lonely Planet guidebook recommended that I hire a guide. I went to a travel agency and discovered that a guide for four days would cost me 1100 rupees, whereas a porter would only cost me 500 rupees. The guide would talk more, but the porter would carry my stuff. Of course, I took the porter.

At some point during the trek, I discovered that my porter, a 4'11" 100 lb man in his late sixties, had twelve children. He had to support his family on 125 rupees a day. That's a bit over three dollars. Still, he was happy. He spent his days in the mountains, enjoying the peaks of Kanchenjunga and Everest. Thus came the proverbial epiphany in which I decided not to pursue a career in money-making, and instead do something that I would truly love.

So, this Himalayan mountain man made me rethink my priorities, and decide not to become a doctor. That and something about my grades not being too hot, as well as ten odd years before I made any money, and the fact that I hadn't gotten any women as of yet saying that I was planning on becoming a doctor, but mostly the Himalayan mountain man.

This feeling was augmented several months later when I worked my first summer at Matawa, a YMCA camp in Wisconsin. There, I worked hard, but loved what I was doing, and realized that I couldn't spend my life doing a job I didn't love.

So, what were the things I loved? Pumpkin pie, music, movies, pseudo-Irish pubs, and puns. Aside from making a film about a punk band that makes it big by winning a battle of the bands at O'Malley's, before crashing out of the stratosphere due to an uncontrollable addiction to Thanksgiving deserts called When Irish Pies are Beguiling, I didn't have a whole lot of options.

Sometime between the summer of '05 and the following October, I happened upon the Peace Corps. I had decided to leave the country for a while after school was over, and this seemed like something I should look into. I began the application process, and as it went on for months (which I will describe in tangent filled detail in a later post) I had to figure out if I really wanted to do this. And I've written a couple of pages and have yet to give a good reason as to why I am joining the Peace Corps.

So... why did I join the Peace Corps?

Firstly, the "do good stuff" line applies. I really do often feel like I am just trying to avoid the pitfalls of life, rather than trying to do something worthwhile. The avoidance of the negative is much less appealing than the pursuit of the positive. I have spent many a dime in movie theaters, bars, restaurants, museums, concerts, and sporting events, but scarcely a penny on charity.

I once told a story to a philosophy class in which I was enrolled, about how I don't believe people are inherently good. Since I was certified as a CPR/First-Aid professional rescuer, I thought that during the Katrina disaster, I could go down and help. So, I called the Red Cross, and told them that I would skip the first week or two of school in order to help people in need. They responded by saying that they have a lot of volunteers down there, but I could really help out by donating money. I thought about the $183.44 in my bank account, but I had been saving up for an iPod, and I wasn't going to let my mp3 coated dream slip out of my hands. So I didn't donate the money. I had visions of myself reaching into the gushing waters of the Mississippi, saving women, children, puppies, and jazz musicians, and being lauded by the people at home who admired my efforts. Signing a check isn't quite as heroic. I concluded that I wanted to help these people because I wanted the fulfillment that you get from doing good things, not because I actually was good. I was actually just looking out for number one.

My professor countered by telling me that this pursuit of fulfillment could be construed as evidence that people actually do want to be good. He was a sharp guy.

Anyways, I think I actually want to do some good. That's reason number one for joining the Peace Corps. Putting something good into a world that has stacked a lot of chips on my side of the table.

Secondly, I'm a big fan of having adventures. One of my favorite quotes is by G.K. Chesterton: " An adventure is only an inconvenience rightly considered. An inconvenience is an adventure wrongly considered." If there is one thing in life that I am always trying to do, it's have adventures. Remember the line in Pulp Fiction, when Samuel L. Jackson is going to quit killing people, and John Travolta wants to know what he is going to do?

Jules: I'll just walk the earth.
Vincent: What'cha mean walk the earth?
Jules: You know, walk the earth, meet people... get into adventures. Like Caine from "Kung Fu."

That's more or less the Tao of Rishi.

Finally, I want to join the Peace Corps, because I hate a U.S. Navy commercial. You know the one where there's gratuitous use of blue lighting filters, and a bunch of people are in a helicopter, then a raft, then an aircraft carrier, and then a piece of text comes on the screen, in a font that consists of letters that are all scratched up like they had been draped across an ornery cat, and it says "If someone wrote a book about your life, would anybody want to read it?" Well, aside from my mother, and people who like endless digressions, lengthy sentences, and supercilious observations about life, the answer is no, no one would want to read it.

So here's to a story worth writing, and more importantly, a story worth reading.

So, I Desaided to go to Uganda...

Well, since I've exhausted many hours perusing the blogs of many a Peace Corps Volunteer, I've decided to start one of my own. Hopefully this page will help me keep in touch with friends, family, and voyeurs, as well as allow me to document the next few years of my life.

Apparently there are some rules regarding blogs written by Peace Corps Volunteers, but since I'm still an invitee, I'm pretty sure I have free reign until I depart. Still, this means that I won't be cursing, which really is the crux of most of my jokes, thus reducing my writing from hilarious to merely wildly amusing.

Also, make note of the fact that you can comment on any of my posts. Not that my insightful post-modern discourse deserves third-party commentary (I'll be lucky if there is even a second-party involved), but most people who are reading this are people that I want to hear from.

Finally, most Peace Corps Blogs have a picture of the blogger on the main page, along with a bunch of greenery in the background. I assure you, I will be staging a photoshoot here in Cross Vegas soon enough. Until then, find me on facebook.