My Peace Corps service is now over. On Tuesday, Dec. 3, I went through all of the procedures necessary to end my service, including returning various items issued to me such as a bike helmet, fire extinguisher, smoke detector, Albanian and Macedonian dictionaries and a slew of other books.
I also went through a final checkup with my Peace Corps doctor and arranged for health insurance for the coming months. You automatically get one month of coverage and you have the option to purchase two more months, which I did.
A tip for departing volunteers: Email the medical office a couple of weeks in advance to tell them what countries you plan to visit before returning to the USA; that way they can have any vaccines you might need ready. (A tip for Peace Corps staff: Tell departing volunteers that they’d be wise to do this; that way most of them will and it will make life easier for the medical staff.)
After all this, I rang a ceremonial bell to mark my departure from the Peace Corps. (Not all countries of Peace Corps service use a bell. Some have departing volunteers bang a drum; some have them ring a gong and some have no ritual ceremony at all.)
Then I went to Skopje’s Irish pub for a beer and some fish and chips. After that, I changed most of my Macedonian denars into euros, and caught a bus back to Tetovo. I spent one last night in my old apartment, then packed up just about everything and took a taxi to Skopje International Airport. I exchanged the rest of my currency, then flew to Budapest, where my old friend Arthur Crane has been living for more than 20 years. We’ve known each other since we were first-grade classmates, but we lost touch after high school. But since my surname is so obscure, he was able to look me up pretty easily when I was living in Elizabethtown.
Arthur had very generously offered to host me after my service. I’m going to be traveling around the region for a while before returning to the United States. The great thing is that there are direct flights from Budapest to many places around the region on discount airlines.
Arthur and I are planning to travel together to Istanbul soon, but that’s just one of the places I’m going. So, for now, I’m both traveling around the region and applying for jobs. I’m mostly pursuing work with the U.S. government, but I’m open to other options.