We hopped over the physical and metaphoric mid way line.

I recently came back from our groups' mid service training, feeling reconnected to my fellow peace corps volunteers and a deep sense of pride for all we've been through together and separately. There was a sense of connectedness that nothing but time and similar experiences could provide, as well as a stellar collection of tired faces with expressions of learned acquiescence. The last time we were brought together in a formal training was in January of this year, when we thought we knew things.

Now 9 months later, we've all hit a bottom, we've all seen success and failure, and we've all adopted tico-isms for better or worse. There are few words that can express what it is like to hear that not only have your peers stared at walls for countless hours, been crushed by the weight of real life development work, and spent entire days in bed, binge watching whatever they had on their computers to cope, but that they have also done really great and wonderful things, integrating and making friends, doing cool projects in their sites and actually making a difference in the lives they've been a part of for a whole year. And, it gets even better when they are interested in the stuff you've done and say what a good job you’re doing! Imagine my surprise.

It may have happened apart, but we have gone through a lot together in just one year.  I can’t speak for others but I walk away from that training with a fuller heart, a sense of accomplishment and a returned sense of adventure. What is left of our small part here as pcvs ticks away faster and faster. Now that we've set up our routines and comfort zones in places once uncomfortable and new, we try to make the rest count as we count down the time left in this once in a lifetime adventure. 

general acceptance

August 10, 2014

Life abroad is fantastically uneventful. I recently have been catching up on way too much television, which I will choose to blame on having my last wisdom tooth being forcefully removed from its nest, deep in my jaw and then getting dry socket. I can't quite translate into Spanish  but people pretty much get that I've been in a lot of pain this past week. If dry socket is anything close to child birth… I'm seriously never having children, not ever.

Anyway, I made it through as much "Homeland" as I could manage. It’s  a television show about a Marine P.O.W. who’s sort of a terrorist but not really, whatever. Point is, in one episode he talks about what got him through while he was captured and how now that he has returned those things don't really exist any more (granted there is a script writer that makes things sound flowery and better than I can attempt to express my self). Despite never being a P.O.W. or marine, or abroad against my will, I did assume a job, with responsibilities and a lifestyle that has removed me from close access to family and friends and what seems now, an old life. It made me think about all the things that get me through.

This past week, I have wished so much that someone was here to help take care of my sorry ass. Not that there aren't people here who care, because there are. But they aren't my mom, they aren't my friends who would drop what they have for the day and come joke around to help me take my mind off of wanting to cry. The memory of these people and moments of peace I've felt, I realize are just the things that are going to get me through these low and lonely points.

But they are just memories. The world changes, people move, get girlfriends, husbands, pregnant and jobs, and when I come back I’ll have to start all over again, making a place for myself in their lives. Half my nieces and nephews have no clue who I am, even though I think of them every day. Sometimes the sun and wind remind me of my father’s beach house, or Christmas in Florida, and all my little friends here at the school remind me of my first nephew who is probably taller than I am at this point, but this is how I remember him, short and running around, being a kid.

Maybe I am being dramatic, I probably am, it’s been a hard week and I can just now get it together enough to clean my house, which was surpassing its acceptable spider quota.

Being abroad is fantastically unnoteworthy. There is little I have done in a year that I can write on a piece of paper, little forward movement in any one project, and yet I’m reminded at times of how awesome Peace Corps service is, how proud people are of me… although at times I struggle to see what they see. I’m not curing cancer, building orphanages, or even contributing much to the greater good. What I have done is become a member of a community, with a few friends and people I call family, and I do what I can, and who knows if I’m even doing that right.

All I know at this moment is I don’t want to jump off a tall building every 4 hours when the meds wear off. I will continue to do what I think I can do, but part of me feels like I want to do the things I can’t do, that seem impossible; you know the old, reach for the moon quote where you end up with the stars. But then the other part thinks I’m not made of that kind of stuff, that’s not how things work here, that I can’t do it alone and getting other people involved means the dream changes. There is no great scale I even have access to try and tip. I can’t make social change, I’m not a leader, I haven’t reached a vulnerable population and empowered them. I want to be great in the way that really can make people proud, not just that I gave up to years to live abroad and make no money. Turns out I’m finding out exactly how many expectations I walked in with and how hard it is to let go of them.