Ketchup...

13:00 9 September 2008

I apologize, I have been quite lackadaisical with my blog writing since I returned from my permanent site visit. Truly much has happened since then. First and foremost, I had my 22nd birthday which was a lot of fun. A good friend of mine here, Ginger, had her birthday on the subsequent day and we celebrated in a café together. Ginger is half of a married couple, and they are the oldest and wisest volunteers in our group. I have really bonded with her and she is a wonderful woman, it was great to get to celebrate our respective birthdays together. While it was fun to grab a beer and hang out with a lot of volunteer friends (over half of the 60ish people in the K-16 group came out), I had probably the worst "pizza" of my life there. I was excited to see it on the menu, while the majority of the pizza in this country has little resemblance to what is back home, it’s usually close enough to provide some amount of comfort and justify its usually high price-tag. This was not the case this time. The "pizza" consisted of a piece of naan (flat bread that they make here- its actually really good alone) with Turkish cheese, peas, kolbasa (sliced sausage) and covered with ketchup. All I can say is yuck, and that was not pizza. Some of the trainees brought a cake, and I was given a Snickers bar as a gift, it was a really nice outing.

The day after my birthday, I had another fun day. One of the Sustainable Organizations and Community Development groups held a field day as a Youth-Development event. I didn’t participate in the center-piece event of flag football, but a three legged race with a child half my height was fun. Also, it was just nice to hang out again with the trainees and the volunteers as our time together is fast winding down. Most volunteers said that PST (Pre-Service Training) and its constant scheduling and oversight by the organization is the most difficult time of service and site gets better. While I definitely understand that having bureaucracy somewhat at bay will be nice, there are a lot of volunteers going to corners of the country I will rarely be in and I will miss seeing them regularly. I have formed a lot of close friendships here- high stress situations, especially those in which you are an ex-pat tend to facilitate their rapid formation- and I hope to be able to sustain them over the distances.

Overall, this past weekend was one of the most fun and relaxing ones in country. I have finally come to the point in my language skills where I can get by without problem. This allows me to focus more on enjoying myself whenever I leave my village than stressing out about the various aspects of transportation and getting back. Hurrah for adaptation!