PEACE CORPS IN THE 21 ST CENTURY: A RHETORICAL ANALYSIS

109life of the volunteer consists of working alongside host country nationals to achieve agoal or work on development. According to their blogs, their work is generally part time.Volunteers fill their remaining hours with secondary projects of their choosing. Andgenerally, volunteers write about their lives as quite busy and filled with projects, whichis a contrast to the official web site where work is rarely mentioned. Some volunteers,especially the teachers, have strict schedules where they need to be at school a set numberof hours per week. But even teachers with regular schedules, find the lack oforganization found in many developing countries to be frustrating. One volunteer writes,“Not too much has been going on here in Albania. School begins here in the 18th, so theteachers have begun to go back and hang out at the school. Nothing is really happeningwith that yet though, we go and drink coffee, and then I usually go home.” 187Becausevolunteer blogs tend to be written as the event is happening, the reader gets a better senseof the “reality” of daily life which includes the frustrations and joys of working in adeveloping nation.Agriculture and rural development volunteers have more flexibility than teachersand generally focus on creating projects that fulfill a need in a given community. Ericawrites,The biggest question I've been getting is “Have you started work yet?” Theanswer is not so simple. During my next 2 years in Solenzo I will never haveactual work in the American sense of going somewhere or doing something everysingle day. That's just not how Peace Corps service works. For the moment I amin a period called “Etude de milieu” which is sort of a precurser to beginning any