Downer

18:45 07 October 2008

It is now my official three month anniversary in country (yes I am aware at the inherent irony in calling anything not annual an anniversary) and I can look back and overall, I am immensely happy here. My host families have been really good to me, I enjoy learning the language here, a lot of the culture I really like (though of course there are aspects which are hard for me to adapt to) and I feel like I am making a positive contribution at my work- teaching seems to really suit me. Overall, my service up to this point both as a Trainee and now as a Volunteer has been extremely difficult but also completely worth all the hardships and struggles I have encountered.

Having said that, the past two days have been kind of rough for me. I am sure that many of you have heard about the earthquake in Kyrgyzstan that killed scores of people. Thank goodness that as far as I know all of the Volunteers are alright (and I am sure I would have heard if anything was otherwise). While everyone that I know physically is fine, I’ve talked to volunteers that were nearby (the nearest volunteers were still a good 50 km or so from the epicenter) and it seems that all of their host-families had family or knew people that were killed. As I am in the North of the country, I didn’t even hear about it until much later and didn’t feel anything, but there is a somber cast over the whole country.

While obviously in the grand scheme of things it is of much smaller importance, I was more affected by finding out that a friend of mine decided to ET (Early Termination- the term used for going home early because you want to leave). This was a complete surprise to me- nobody knew she was considering it, and while she was living on the other side of the country, I frequently communicated with her and she was one of the people I bonded with most during training. Needless to say, I feel, her loss will be deeply felt by me and the K-16 community as a whole.

To top off my somewhat negative mood, gastro-intestinal issues have come back resoundingly and this time I don’t have the luxury of a seat. The plus side is that my already quads are going to be Lance Armstrong-like when I am through with this most recent bout. The colder weather (nights dip into the mid-thirties) plus the fact that the two shipments of Gatorade I was supposed to have received got intercepted and stolen in shipment makes my bowel issues even more fun. (Sorry for the sarcasm- in addition for this being a place for me to spread interesting stories and keep abroad of my life, it is also a place for me to vent when I can’t talk to an English speaker. On the plus side it’s been a really long time since I last talked about my BMs, it might have been a record for me)

I apologize for the rather negative energy contained in this entry (but in a twist of the hilarious- I am channeling it into a barbershop quartet arrangement of a Kyrgyz song), but I do think that it is important for anyone considering Peace Corps to realize it is not all fun and games and there are a lot of issues to deal with along with the physical ones you expect. I don’t want it to seem that in any way I regret coming here, I don’t and I still am really committed to my service and think that it was the best possible decision that I could have made. As the old Peace Corps motto stated, being a volunteer is “The toughest job you’ll ever love” for a whole host of reasons (I’m not a huge fan of the new motto, “How far are you willing to go?” because I think it sounds a little like a game of “Nervous” or “Truth or Dare”). I do love this job, without a doubt in my mind, but it has also been the most physically, mentally, and emotionally straining time of my life.