For those whom I’ve mercifully spared the roller-coaster ride that has been my PC-Nominee existence for the past ten (10) months, and to answer some of your questions, the Peace Corps loves acronyms. Read the other blogs at PCJournals and you’ll get the idea. Now for this gal whose pet peeve is abbreviations, it’s been a tough but necessary adjustment. I don’t do LOL, OMG, et cetera - I refuse! But for blog purposes, here’s a quick overview of the Peace Corps’ acronym jargon:

• PC is obviously Peace Corps
• PO - Placement Officer or Placement Office (they're in Washington, my recruiter is here in Dallas)
• PCT - Peace Corps Trainee (what I’m about to become). No, this isn’t an official PC Volunteer – that’s PCV, which can only occur after the successful completion of three months of in-country training and the swearing-in process. I'm nowhere close to PCV, or am I?
• SSA - Sub-Saharan Africa
• RAS - A brilliant acronym coined by another extremely clever blogger meaning Restless Applicant Syndrome. Great googly-moogly . . . aren’t we all?!
• OMS - The PC's Office of Medical Services
• SED - Small Enterprise Development
• BA - Business Advising program
• BD - Business Development program
• ET - Early Termination, which happens if you can't learn the local language (obviously not French) or cry about eating camel lung (could that be true?!), and which I will not do voluntarily
• NGO - Non-governmental organization
• CLEP - (for you youngsters out there) College Level Examination Program. Yes, I had to (what we used to call) “CLEP out” of college French for my Francophone nomination. Hey, I took my dog to Paris – that counts, right?!
  
  Why would anyone take a dog to Paris? When will my invitation arrive? Where am I going, and when? We can only speculate.