January 15, 2013 3:00 PM—COS Conference

So my COS conference is fast approaching, which is very exciting!  COS stands for Close of Service.  This is basically when we finish Peace Corps and we are all free people again.  Our COS Conference is a get-together that we have as a group about 3 months before we COS.  It’s a time for us to share many of our successes from the last two years, look to our own personal futures and have one last hurray as a group.  This conference is next week from the 22^nd to the 25^th and it will be at Jinja Nile Resort.  Generally Peace Corps splurges on COS conferences.  I guess it is like a “way-to –go you made it two years”, so they send us somewhere nice. 

The biggest thing that happens at our COS conference is that we get our official COS date.  Currently there are 32 people left in my original training group of 44 and 2 of those are extending their service for another year (Crazy People!).  That leaves 30 of us COSing, but we don’t all leave on the same day because it is too much for the Peace Corps office to process, so we will gradually all COS over the course of about 2 months.  Our COS date for our group is April 22^nd, which is 2 years to the day from when we swore-in as volunteers.  So what that means is that we can COS from up to 30 days before and 30 days after that date.  So we will start leaving on March 22^nd and it will probably continue through to about mid-May, because they only COS about 4 people a week.

This is a point of stress for a lot of people because so many of us are mentally finished and so ready to leave.  There may possibly be a battle royal at our COS conference next week, but I have faith that everything will work our the way that it should.