This is the final post of my Peace Corps blog, “Gone South.” The blog, originally found at www.gonesouth.org, has since been retired, and I migrated the old posts here to this Tumblr. You can find the whole collection of the posts if you filter by the Peace Corps tag.  

Summarizing two years of your life isn’t easy. Doing so is even more difficult when those two years consisted of a non-stop series of new experiences in a different culture where everyday brought new lessons, adventures, challenges and triumphs. Every Peace Corps volunteer in the world comes home to curious friends who ask, “How was it?” The problem is, this isn’t some week-long trip which yielded an easily relatable slideshow that can tell the whole story. This was, for me, the single most rewarding, challenging, and defining experience of my life. It’s something that I will probably be looking back on and analyzing for the rest of my life. There are a few points that I think I am ready to cover with this final post as a Peace Corps volunteer, but I think in the end, this will really only scratch the surface of what is ultimately an ocean of stories, lessons, and insights.

Three years ago, I began my application for the Peace Corps. It took the better part of a year to finish the application process and be invited to serve in Paraguay. As it turns out, the process for leaving the Peace Corps is, in many ways, equally drawn out. I’ve spent the last month closing out projects, writing reports on my site’s security, helping to train the newest group of trainees, summarizing the work I’ve done with my schools and the hospital, getting tested for every conceivable virus known to man (and a few that I thought only existed in computers), and doing so much paperwork that even an IRS agent would cry at the sight of it.

I’m afraid I have no funny anecdotes to share, (but maybe I’ll think of something before the end of the post), since life has been slow around these parts lately. I remember hearing from an outgoing volunteer I met when I had just arrived that Peace Corps service doesn’t exactly crescendo into an exciting climax; it sort of just fizzles out. For the most part, your last three months aren’t spent doing anything new. You need that time to close out what you were already doing, and for the forest-endangering amount of paperwork. There is quite a bit of pomp and circumstance for swearing-in ceremonies, yet swearing-out is essentially a handshake, a pat on the back and a plane ticket placed in your hand.

Last week, the 28 twenty-somethings from G-29 (my training group) congregated in a hotel outside of Asuncion for three days of paperwork, discussions, and thrilling Powerpoints complete with gripping animated slide transitions (and sound-effects!). Our group started with 31 trainees in February ‘09, and losing just three volunteers to ETs over the course of two years is, statistically speaking, very rare. Apparently, Paraguay has one of the highest retention rates of volunteers of any PC country in the world.

The conference, known as COS (Close of Service), is an exciting sign of how close the end is, sort of like that moment in a flight when the plane starts its descent and you can feel it in your gut. It marked the first time in over a year that we were all together, and it was great to find out what everyone had been up to. It felt like a high school reunion, though the hotel we stayed at was decidedly nicer than my old high school gym.

I sometimes get contacted by future trainees back in the US who have questions, and I thought I’d address some of their most frequent questions:

Dear future G-35 trainees,

I think it’s customary for most soon-to-be-leaving volunteers who keep blogs to write up a post full of advice for the incoming trainees. I recently realized that writing such a post in April when I leave would be useless, since the group that will replace mine (G-29), will be swearing-in at that point. G-35 will arrive next month to begin their three months of training, and I wanted to offer some advice and perspective in a post before they leave for Paraguay. Hopefully the advice will be more useful to those of you in the incoming group, since most of what I will discuss will be more valuable before departure.