frustration is what it is.

After the last post about my negative feeling about my prospective future with PC. I received a confirmation email staying that I definitely am not making it to the June PC sent off for real.
Sad? Yes.
Disappointed? Yes.
Surprise? Not really. I had a hunch that something wasn't going to work out.
As an attempt to push myself forward and stay optimistic about life and blah blah blah after this news, I tell myself, everything happens for a reason, just be like that little cat in that one little poster and keep hanging on (you know what I'm talking about), and one day I'll understand the reason for all the screwed up shits that happened. Instead of sitting around and mope, I applied for a few jobs went to SD and had some fun distractions, then today, I came back to a letter telling me that my Medical Kit is still incomplete... and more questionnaires about my health are needed to be filled out, like my ability to ride a bike and lifting 50 lbs. I guess it makes sense now why I am not leaving next week.
The frustrating part is that I keep having to go back and forth to the doctors and health places to request additional information for PC, and that they are pretty much just keeping me in the dark with everything they are doing and won't tell me how the process is going until they need something from me, which is usually some more paper works.
The 3 pages of documents they are asking me to fill out are about my physically ability, which my doctor has already stayed that I am healthy and fully vaccinated. Then they want to know more about my TB test by requesting confirmation that my skin test was positive but I do not have TB, which I also already sent to them 2 months ago.
There are nothing new that I need to do, just running around the same paper trail I have been establishing for the past couple of months, (except for a Polio Booster, which I somehow missed out on getting). And now that I have move to LA, going back to the same clinic in SD for more stuff will become annoying.

gloom

My immediate future is looking bleak.

The government as decided to cut some of PC's budget and some programs are no longer available, and for those that are, the completion process might actually take longer than usual.

My instinct is telling me that I might not make it to Africa as soon as I hope... or at all. Reading all the current and pass PC blogs, it seems that I might even have to wait longer for this departure date if that happens.

I'm trying to stay optimistic, but fuck...

It's been almost a year since I've gotten out of college. I'm starting to really feel like a complete failure now at this point. I want to pack my bags and travel again, but I don't think that's will sit well at all with my parents. The pressure of "what are you going to do?" and "what are your plans?" are really pushing down on me. At this point, in their eyes, I'm pretty much good for nothing because I don't have a job and making money. I have been applying at places again after a hiatus, but the same trend is happening. I'm starting to real question my market value. Why am I not selling?

The high of my 1.5 month in Vietnam is wearing off, too soon. I don't want to go back to the sad pathetic self I was before I left, but at this rate, I am afraid I might be. I'm just living one day at a time right now, waiting for today to finish so tomorrow can come and hopefully brings me some good news.

This is definitely not what I expected to see myself five years ago.

frustration.

"Your file is currently under consideration."

WHAT DOES THAT MEAN PEACE CORPS?

Two days after I sent my Dental stuff in, I'm cleared for it, but there was still this little exclamation mark on my medical section on my online profile, which indicates that there is something that needs to be done/missing/ain't right. But as of now, it's cleared, and I get that little sentence above, taken out of context, but not that drastically.

How much longer do I have to wait?

"that's the first movement I've gotten out of that tooth in the past 15 minutes"

I know I have been lagging on updates, and there is still the rest of my Vietnam trip to talk about, but for the time being, here's something pretty current, a Peace Corps update.

While I was in Vietnam, Peace Corps sent a response to me medical package. I'm not sure if I have mentioned it already, but it seem that I needed to take out my wisdom teeth. All four of them.
I don't know if there is anyone out there who enjoys going to the dentist, but I am definitely not one of them. It's nothing personal, but really, who enjoys laying helplessly with their mouth wide open while another person is probing and drilling around inside it. The worse part for me, I think, is that even though I can't see what's going on, I can hear everything, and no matter how much I try to distract myself from the intense drilling sound, my mind always returns to it along with all these crazy images.

And my jaws are always so sore afterward. Who likes that?

But I have to do it, so I scheduled an appointment at an office in the valley at the recommendation of yelp. My appointment was this past Monday. Everyone has been telling me about how surprisingly quick and easy it was going to be, and just stick with soft food and I'll be fine, so I was expecting some 45 minutes max ordeal coming. Well, I went into the room at around 3:30pm and didn't come out until 6:30pm.

It turned out that all of my teeth were difficult, each in their own way. At first the dentist told me that he was gonna try and get the easier one out first, then the hard one last, and I felt pretty optimistic hearing that. But after about 30 minutes of continuous grilling sound and taking another extra shot of Novocaine on top of the 4 I already had, the first tooth didn't feel like it was an easy one. That was the one that was laying sideway and had to be broken in pieces in order to get it out.

why yes, that is an x-ray of my face

After about 45 minutes, I started to hope that he used some kind of reserve psychology and lied to me and that the first teeth was actually the most difficult one. Turned out that my wish came true, after what felt like an eternity, he said he was lying, and that the rest should be easy.

Then he jinxed himself. The second tooth had relatively little problem coming out, but the third one apparently was "so intimately connected" to the tooth next to it, that I think he might have pulled a muscle trying to pry it out of my mouth. The handle of the drill left a bruise on my lip because he had to press on it to get leverage to pull out my tooth.

By the last tooth, the dentist was so beat that he offered to wait another 6 months for it to grow out some more before taking it out, but since I was already numb and bleeding massively, I wanted him to just go for it. Which was pretty much another 45 minutes and another shot of Novocaine. This one was barely leaving the bone, so he had to dig way deeper up and probably cut out a good amount of flesh from my gum.

could as well be pass off as torture devices

Speaking of blood and gore, thought I was completely numb from the eyeballs down, I could pretty much felt all action being done to me, i.e: scalpel cutting/carving out my gum to get to my teeth because none of them actually surfaced, and saw what used to be a white suctioning tube tainted blood red.

My favorite part was seeing one of my tooth taken out with a huge chunk of bloody flesh wrapped around it.

I bet my dentist went straight for the bar after my surgery, and I would have too had I not have four bloody holes in every corner of my mouth.

after all the bloody flesh were cleaned off

I was given anti-biotics to avoid a sinus infection because my upper teeth were so close to my sinuses still. I also got vicodins, which completely knocked me out every time even though I would only take half a tablet at a time. It is now day 4 after the gore-fest, and I have stopped bleeding though there are still swelling and there is a massive sore inside my cheek, probably a side effect from the massive mouth invasion. I didn't swell up like a chipmunk, but I think my lips got really big...ger than they already are. Random? And every time I try to touch my teeth, the swollen flesh inside my mouth would rub against each other in a rubbery gross way.

The bright side is, I sent out all my stuff to PC now, so hopefully I can still make my program next month. I. really. want. to. leave. already.