This post is going to be awesome. Yay!

I recently ordered some iPhone camera lenses from an online company called Photojojo. The lenses weren’t quite what I expected, so I e-mailed Photojojo to find out how to return them.

“I’m so sorry you weren’t into your order!” responded Christina, the “Smile Distribution Coordinator.” She advised me how to return the package, concluding: “Once we receive and inspect it, if it’s in okay shape and it’s got all its packaging, we can give you a refund for the cost of the item, if it’s totally used we’ll getcha store credit.”

“Into your order”? “Getcha store credit”? Phrases like that never would have made it past my red pen when I was the head of news and communications at Duke.

But Christina was just getting started. After she received my package, she wrote back:

“Hey Hey,

“We have received your returned goodies! (Yay!)  I’ve just refunded $54 buck-a-roos to your credit card.  The moola should be racing your way as we speak (erm… type?) and should show up in a day or two.

“Let me know if you have any questions, I’m only a keyboard away!”

I wrote Christina to thank her and asked whether she was trained to use this kind of language, which is abundant on Photojojo’s website. Her response: “I’m native in Photojojo speak 🙂 Have a sweet day!”

“Hey hey”? “Returned goodies”? “Buck-a-roos”? Yikes! I felt like Lou Grant when he said to Mary Tyler Moore: “You know what? You’ve got spunk. {pause} I hate spunk!”

Then I stopped to ponder that my cultural reference was from a TV show that aired 46 years ago. Perhaps I’m just ancient. After all, I was impressed with Photojojo’s products and service, and with Christina’s helpfulness.

Sure enough, I found this review from another Photojojo customer: “I just wanted to hug the person who responded. They talked to me like I was their best friend in the world. They were nice, personal, helpful, and still professional. They also said that I can refund it, and the way they used very personal language like ‘snazzy’ and ‘easy peasy’ just made me know that I was an appreciated customer. This is customer service.”

Wow. Now there’s an alternative viewpoint.

I’m also mindful that Champa and I will soon be serving alongside Peace Corps colleagues who are, for the most part, much younger than us. One of the best parts of my job at Duke was interacting with bright, talented younger people. I’m really looking forward to doing that every day.

I’m not sure what to make of all this. Am I clinging to outdated language and editorial standards? Does the future lie with Photojojo’s approach? Help me out! Please write a comment and share your opinion.

I might even say “yay!”

As Peace Corps people who avoid shopping centers, buy things on sale and keep clothes for years, how did we accumulate so much stuff?

During the past several weeks, I’ve been hauling bags of clothes, kitchen goods, books, toys and other stuff to local charities. Here are just some of the receipts I’ve accumulated from Goodwill and others.

Champa and I have been cleaning out closets, cabinets, dressers and shelves. We’re getting rid of everything we can’t fit into a small storage room or bring with us to Moldova, where we’ll be serving as Peace Corps volunteers. Each of us is allowed to bring two bags weighing 50 pounds or less. The bags need to carry winter clothing, summer clothing, dress clothes, boots, shoes, electronics, photos, gifts and more, including school supplies for Champa.

We just met with a representative from Habitat for Humanity, to which we’re donating almost all of our furniture. We’re keeping only a couple of couches, two beds and not much more, depending on how much space remains in our upstairs storage room. Once everything is stored or removed, we’ll be living in a nearly empty house and sleeping on an air mattress until we depart on May 29.

It’s been humbling to confront how much stuff we’ve accumulated during 36 years of marriage. We don’t think of ourselves as materialistic, and we’re not hoarders. But all of those suits I needed for work, the books we bought for children and grandchildren, the sports equipment, kitchen gadgets, old sneakers, photo albums, CDs, LPs, DVDs and so much else — well, it added up more than we realized.

Getting rid of it has been liberating. We’ve already downsized so much that our house will be nearly empty when we return, which will probably motivate us to sell it. We’ll worry about that later. For now, we feel like we’re unloading the excess baggage of our old lives. Already we can sense how this lighter load will give us more flexibility to seek adventure and embrace what life has to offer.

Leaving my job and then joining the Peace Corps was the nudge we needed to undertake this process. Now that we’ve nearly completed it, I feel like someone who waited until a heart attack to get serious about losing weight. I wish I’d begun moving in this direction years ago. Stuff happens in life, for sure, but it doesn’t need to accumulate in such a large pile in my closet.

We’re excited about traveling to Moldova in less than six weeks. This brief video shows you where we’re going. As Peace Corps volunteers, we’re not approaching it as a “travel destination” — but you can.

We’re also looking forward to the music. Last week we went to see the Romanian brass band Fanfare Ciocarlia perform here in Durham. Although we’ve begun studying Romanian, the main language in Moldova, we weren’t able to follow what the singers were saying. (Not yet!)

If you have a house, cars, a dog and a modern American life, how hard would it be to leave it all behind?

It would be hard. Really hard. Trust me.

The hardest thing Champa and I will be leaving to serve in the Peace Corps is our two sons and their families, especially our grandchildren. We expect to stay in regular contact but will miss them terribly.

During the past several weeks, though, we’ve been so busy taking care of everything else that we’ve barely had time to think about this.

This photo shows the stuff we’ve begun moving into a storage room in our Durham house, which we’re renting while we’re gone. We hired a local property manager a few weeks ago and just heard yesterday he might have found renters for the first year.

Tomorrow we’re driving to Winston-Salem to meet again with a family that may adopt our beloved dog, Bailey. A friend is buying Champa’s car and I’m giving my car to my son.

I still need to cancel everything from my library card to our gym memberships, forward our mail and shut off our electricity, gas and other utilities. I have to call our bank and credit card companies to alert them to our travel plans. I already ordered an additional card from a company that pays for foreign ATM withdrawls.

Absentee ballots? You bet, since North Carolina is likely to be a swing state in the election. Medical insurance? I’m suspending our current coverage while we’re covered through Peace Corps. I can’t forget the EZ-Pass device in my car, which bills me every month. So does Netflix, so I’ll need to cancel both of those. I’ve also been scouring our bills to make sure I don’t miss anything else.

On Tuesday, I’m visiting our bank to add my sister to our checking account and give her power of attorney while we’re gone. I still need to check our wills, buy souvenirs for our host families and create electronic copies of important documents in my file cabinet.

We just bought Champa her own laptop and spent several hours loading it with apps and documents. We bought shoes to walk on Moldova’s muddy roads and boots to survive its winters. I now have a new winter coat, too. We still need new suitcases. In fact, as I look through the “suggested packing list” we got from Peace Corps Moldova, we need a lot of things.

Simultaneously, and ironically, we’ve been downsizing and purging 36 years of stuff from our house. We’ve donated hundreds of books to the Durham library and dozens of bags of clothing and household goods to local charities.

Back when I joined Peace Corps the first time, as a 24-year-old in 1979, I threw some stuff in a couple of suitcases, said goodbye to my parents and headed for the airport. Now I feel like we’ve already proven the old Peace Corps slogan that serving as a volunteer is the “toughest job you’ll ever love.” Who knew it would be so tough even before we left?

As we get ready to begin our service with the Peace Corps, Champa and I are not exactly unusual in being not exactly retired. A surprising number of the other new volunteers in our group are also 50 or older — in several cases, considerably older.

Several weeks ago, we met for coffee with one of them, a commercial real estate broker from Cary in his late 60s. We liked him immediately and discovered much in common in our motivations to challenge ourselves and serve society in new ways.

One of the other new volunteers going to Moldova now heads a program at Howard University to prevent suicides among people of color. Another started a special needs dance program in Harlem and was a foster mother for nine children. Our group also includes an IT manager from Iowa, a software expert from Minnesota and others, all over the age of 50.

We’ll be joining several 50+ volunteers already in Moldova, one of whom is serving as a mentor for me and some of the other newbies. Before signing up for the Peace Corps, she worked for more than 35 years in Cleveland as an attorney specializing in business and employment law. Champa’s mentor is younger but worked for many years as a teacher in California.

Worldwide, 50+ volunteers now account for about 8 percent of the total. Peace Corps encourages them to apply, as at this website. NPR recently broadcast a fun story about the oldest volunteer of all, Alice Carter, 87, from Boston, who was serving in Morocco.

To be sure, many new Peace Corps volunteers are still recent college graduates, as well as people in their 30s and 40s. Whatever their ages, the ones who will be serving with Champa and me are impressive, with expertise ranging from social work to farming to financial analysis. Indeed, I am already inspired by many of the younger volunteers. I also know how fortunate we are to be in a position to join them, since we’re not tied to home by aging parents or children who still need active support. Financially, we figure Peace Corps will be a wash — no real income, but also little need to touch our savings.

How do I know so much about our fellow volunteers? Mainly through Facebook. Just like high school seniors getting ready to attend the same university, our group has its own Facebook group. We’ve been getting to know each other online. Several people have also met in person, as we did with our new friend from Cary.

It’s just one of the many ways in which Peace Corps has changed since I last served as a volunteer, in Nepal in the the late 1970s. Back then, I didn’t know any of my fellow volunteers until I showed up at staging. This time I’ll be looking for familiar faces, some of them as seasoned as ours.