Sunday afternoon and I'm sitting in the internet cafe at the bottom of our hill with some of my PC neighbors. My family has a mobile modem but I feel bad/stupid asking to use it more than once or twice a week. The constantly connected American in me will be hard to kill. I put up pictures last night of our first month or so here. Hopefully you will be able to see them. I don't want to waste my host mom's internet airtime by uploading them all over the place, so I'll just share that link. There are a shit ton more, but given the limited capacity of internet here, the final album may have to wait till I get home.
We had a teaching fair put on by the year in education volunteers yesterday and got to mostly just mingle and talk with the people we could possibly be working with this coming year. I learned how to avoid CFs in order to GSD (figure that one out, it's fun), how to make a rocket stove, how to put on a workshop for AfriPads (reusable menstrual pads for girls so they can actually come to school when they have their periods) and generally just reinforced the idea that PC people are one of a kind.
As of Tuesday I will have been gone for a month, and I'm starting to get little twinges of homesickness here and there. I was talking to Jen about how moments hit me where I can't believe that this is really my life, and how there's not really anywhere I would rather be, and 99.7% of the time that's completely accurate. That other 0.3% of the time I miss my mom and my dog and food that isn't hot.
Everything that happens here does so magnified ten times. The food is blander or more delicious, the laughter is louder (there is no way I'll ever forget the way some people's laugh sounds), the sun is hotter, the diarrhea sucks more, the showers feel nicer.
No one would ever accuse me of being overly patriotic, but I have been feeling very defensive of America lately. Some of the PCTs have been jokingly criticized about how we Americans sleep too much (going to bed at 10, getting up at 6 for a full day) how we don't eat enough starchy foods, drink too much water, don't care enough for extended family, etc. Last week I think I was in the "annoyed phase" of cultural adjustment. On the plus side, I got a jar of nutella for half off at the gas station the other day (for about $1.50 instead of $3) and am listening to Christmas carols in the internet cafe.... TIA.
Love you.
3 comments:
Love you...and miss you a whole 100%. :) thanks for keeping us updated!
I went through all of your pictures and love reading about your experience! I hope the homesickness isn't too bad. And that you get more of that delicious looking guacamole. :)
I'm so proud of us ^_^ Peace Corps has been an amazing experience so far, and even though we're on vastly different continents we're still kind of going through this together.
And I totally bought some Nutella too! Haha, that stuff is freaking AMAZING.
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