By my calculations, there is about 100 hours left in my Peace Corps service. The official COS (close of
service) date is Friday July 11th, at midnight, to be exact. The official COS is August 10th, but you can leave up to a month early. Almost every one in my group (China 12) has chosen this early COS. I have begun the process of closing things down here. Today I made it into the Peace Corps office with another volunteer and did some of the initial paperwork, which included signing multiple forms, giving them your final travel itinerary, agreeing to release your DOS (description of service,which is essentially what potential employers will get in lieu of a letter of recommendation from the Peace Corps--if I can find mine, I will post it here), acknowledging that you have been informed about health insurance options, releasing Peace Corps from responsibility, etc. Tomorrow I have my final medical exam, which includes bringing along a couple of stool samples (always fun to prepare those). I have to bring in the equipment the Peace Corps has supplied, including my air purifier, water distiller, bicycle helmet, smoke hood, CO2 and fire detector and medical kit. The director wants to have a final exit interview. After tomorrow the last thing I will have to do is to bring the form signed by the head of the Foreign Student Office on my campus that my room is cleaned up and everything is as I found it.

I still have a lot of stuff to give away. Brought some books and dvds into the Peace Corps office, gave my dvd player and a few odds and ends to my site mate, Kristin, who went off to her summer project last night in Leshan, so I treated her to one of her favorite places to eat, the buffett at the Shangri La hotel, a 5 star hotel. Trying to find other people to pass stuff off to in order to get my baggage weight down for the trip home.

To complete the circle, the new group of volunteers (China 14s) began their training and I ran into a group of them today