The Rumor Mill

Word on the street is that the education desk has gotten out its invites up until the month of June. Now, I know that not everyone who is nominated for June has gotten an invitation, at least not a friend of mine nominated for Central/South American in the environmental sector. Soooo, I suppose I cannot really speculate about the progress of the health extension sector. They may or may not be up to speed. For some reason, the Benin wiki maintains that staging is in Philly on July 6th. Since no one to my knowledge has actually gotten an invite to Benin yet, I really don't know how they could be sure of that. Oh well. Assuming other placement offices are shortly behind the Education folks, they should be starting the July stagiers pretty soon...which means, I'll probably find out for sure in the next two weeks or three weeks. Since that's right about when I'll get my MCAT scores back, it had better be good news to make up for the bad I'm expecting haha.

In French today my group presented on Benin. It was sort of luck of the draw what francophone country we were assigned. Quelle coincidence! Our presentation was pretty ghetto...just some translated wikipedia facts and some random pics from some PC blogs. It was pretty funny because I already knew a hilarious amount of information about the country just from obsessively reading blogs. Someone mentioned the city Cotonou and I was like "oh, it's very dirty there." Haha

Apparently there is a bit of freedom in getting to select your placement in country. I think the regional directors give a questionnaire and your preferences are taken into account. I, for example, really would like to stay near a bigger city with electricity if possible. I know, I know, don't I want the REAL experience? Well, yeah. I don't think being able to charge my cell phone, have an electric fan, or a lamp is really going to diminish the fact that I'll be living in freaking Africa. I already know I'm hardcore. Running water is slightly less important to me. What IS important, maybe even more so than electricity, is access to vegetarian food stuff. I really do not want to have to sacrifice this part of me if I can avoid it. Maybe fish. I have acquiesced that much. Actually, if I am being really super honest, the idea of a little meat in a situation where I cannot really avoid it is actually a bit appealing. I haven't eaten meat in almost 6 years; maybe a couple years of a change wouldn't be so bad. But, if it's possible to stay totally vegetarian I am definitely going to do it. I'm just not going to starve myself or offend people to avoid meat. Beef, though? I don't think I can handle that. Fish is okay for now I think. We'll see.