Chicago Might Be the Greatest City in the World

At least I think so.  I haven't been to very many of the cities of the world, so my decision to name Chicago the greatest of them all is not very scientific.  But Chicago can also be stubborn and opinionated, so at least let me make my case.

Consider this.  It's September and I'm out of shape and reluctantly dragging ass through a 5k beside my equally reluctant boyfriend, telling myself that the faster I run, the faster I get this thing over with so I can eat a hot dog.  And then we turn a corner, finding ourselves jogging slowly along the lakefront.  And this isn't just any lakefront, it's Chicago's lakefront, just south of the Loop.  At sunset.  The colors reflected on the water, splashed onto glass windows, feel like the most beautiful, heart-stopping sight we've ever seen.  Pink and blue and purple vibrate over the water, interrupted only by gently bobbing sailboats.  The glow off the buildings is a soft sunflower yellow, and running isn't so bad anymore.

I can feel the crowd of runners feeling it with me--a collective hush and skipped heartbeat.  I'm speaking through someone else's voice when I hear a fellow runner behind me say, reverently, "This is why Chicago is the greatest city in the world."  The euphoria lasts long enough that I barely even care when the free hotdogs come with ketchup.  I still feel it now.

Many of my friends from college left Chicago after graduation, scattering to New York, Boston, Washington D.C., and San Francisco.  I wish I could brush them off with my big Chicago shoulders--"Your loss!"--but I do miss them.  And when they visit and, I can re-experience the first impressions that made Chicago feel so big and grand and wonderful when I first moved here for college.

One evening not long after the 5k, I met a visiting friend at Ghirardelli for ice cream and then walked down Michigan Avenue for old time's sake.  I remembered my fellow runner's comment on greatness as she expressed that nowhere else has a downtown quite like Chicago.  Boston has quaint walkable neighborhoods and New York does tall and crowded very well--another kind of impressive--but nobody does magnificence like Chicago.  It doesn't just have tall buildings--it towers, it imposes.  And yet, walking along the sidewalk, even in a crowd, there is space for you here.

Now it's October, and I am going out of my way to step on as many crunchy leaves as I can.  My new neighborhood, Ravenswood, with its abundance of tall old trees, is an excellent venue for leaf crunching.  I baked delicious pumpkin bread in my apartment's full size oven, and last weekend Cam and I carved pumpkins to display in our window.  And sometimes I look around--at kids running to the school near my apartment, at Burberry's plaid building and the Tribune Tower, at the wonders that are Gene's Sausage Shop and Cafe Selmarie in Lincoln Square, at the beautiful and delicious sushi at my new favorite, Fin Sushi Bar--sometimes I look around and I am so in love.  And I never want to leave Chicago, because Chicago is the greatest city in the world.

Adventures

I didn't realize how much I had been stuck in a rut until I felt the relief of everything changing all at once.

Moving has been a month-long process that still hasn't ended, and while I didn't move very far from my old apartment, it is still all very new and adventurous (and awesome!).  Cam and I are now officially the proud owners of an honest-to-goodness couch!  We bought it for $70 from a friend of his, and I am happy to say that it is not as purple as it appeared in the photos.  Last week on Tuesday, we also made a trip to Indiana to visit Cam's very generous family, and came back to Chicago with a TV, kitchen supplies and more.  We are still living surrounded by boxes and are lacking quite a bit of furniture, but piece by piece we are turning our apartment into a home.

Sadly, we left a hunk of Cam's bumper on the side of the highway somewhere outside of Gary.  A semi in front of us lost a tread, which hit and then went under the car and took off chunks of both the front and back bumpers (and snapped the wiper fluid hose, and dented the radiator--it's still in the shop).  But we didn't get hurt, and we were still able to drive the rest of the way to Lafayette and Indianapolis, so I'll say it's all part of the adventure!

I also started training yesterday with the National Runaway Safeline (NRS).  I'm thrilled to be digging in to something totally new.  I'm also terrified I will say the wrong thing and the kids will hate me--it's basically the first day of high school.  But while my new(ish) office is a much better environment to work in than the old one, I am not really being challenged, so this is a good kind of nervous-exited terror.  Yesterday was the first of six training sessions that I will complete over the next couple of weeks in the process of becoming an NRS "liner."  So far I'm very impressed with what NRS does, and with the awesome people who work and volunteer there--it helps to know that they will have my back when that first phone call comes to my phone.

One adventure I've backed off of over the past month is fitness.  I'm amazed at how quickly progress at the gym can be reversed--where did my muscles go?  I'm sure my pizza and take-out diet isn't helping.  I am getting better now that I've moved, but not better enough to make up for that last week before I moved when I didn't cook for an entire week (oh Taste of Thai 2 and your $0 delivery fee, why are you so delicious?!).  It is especially problematic that I haven't been running, either, and I am signed up to run a 5k this week on Thursday (the Race Judicata to raise money for Chicago Volunteer Legal Services).  Here's hoping I don't keel over, and my next adventure had better involve some weights.

Stress over the perfect font

Today I learned that Baskerville is, allegedly, the most persuasive font.  As in, people are more likely to believe something written in Baskerville than in other fonts.  A study has found this to be true.  The firm I work for uses it whenever possible, and I recently found that it makes a nice looking font for my resume, which is my first step in applying for law school.

In other news, I'm no longer planning on applying to law school, I actually am.  University of Chicago's application is the first available (the rest will come out on Sunday, for the most part) and I went so far as to click "apply" and start reading their application requirements, as well as to start sobbing internally about having to pay $100 to apply to just one of the schools on my list, which also happens to be one of the schools I am least likely to get in to.  Christ on a cracker, I am doing this!  And it's expensive!  And terrifying!  

And there are so many little details to consider.  I'm trying to do something very big picture for myself, but to get there, I first have to make all these small decisions about which font to use, and which words perfectly describe my work experience, and is it OK if it goes onto a second page?  I will also eventually have to write a personal statement, where I will nitpick over every single word until either it's perfect or it's the day before it's due and I have no choice but to hit "send."  

Meanwhile, I am also moving this weekend--not just moving, but MOVING moving in with my favorite person (Hey you!), which is another huge step that comes with its own set of little details to consider.  How many boxes do I need?  How should we arrange the furniture?  And later on, how will we grocery shop?  How will we make sure we don't kill each other?  I feel like I'm Inigo Montoya about to storm the castle to rescue Buttercup and kill Count Rugen all at once.  They have a plan but:

WESTLY:... Now, there may be problems once we're inside. 

INIGO:  I'll say.  How do I find the Count?  Once I do, how do I find you again?  Once I find you again, how do I escape?

FEZZIK:  Don't pester him.  He's had a hard day. 

INIGO:  Right.  Sorry.

In my case, the "him" I can't pester is the universe in general, which threw me a curve ball when my roommate discovered a couple of bed bugs, less than a week before I'm leaving.  I suppose that makes this a great time to be leaving the place, but the added stress of worrying about taking them with me is not helping anything!  I'm going home tonight to start packing up my room, armed with bedbug proof mattress covers and DE powder and plastic garbage bags for my clothes and linens--I'm going to move them in bags into the basement of my new place, where the laundry is, and then wash everything before bringing it upstairs.

I have to keep reminding myself of the big picture so I don't get too bogged down with details.  The font and furniture arrangement I use will matter, but only as a result of being on this really awesome adventure where I'm going to explore law school and love and whatever comes next.

GRANDSON:  Does it got any sports in it? 

GRANDFATHER:  Are you kidding?  Fencing, fighting, torture, revenge, giants, monsters, chases, escapes, True Love, miracles!

GRANDSON:  Doesn't sound too bad.  I'll try and stay awake. 

T-Shirt Collection

"A person--a woman--can adapt to more than she might have thought she could.  What she's unsure about is when that stops being a virtue and turns to something else, leaving you too much changed, undefined, unanchored, like a fisherman's empty boat drifting on a river, with no way to be returned to where it belongs." --from Under Heaven by Guy Gavriel Kay

 I have accumulated a large collection of t-shirts that together tell a story of how my life has been since High School.  I still have many of my Appalachia Service Project volunteer t-shirts, including then one from the summer of 2007 which I am still proud to say has "STAFF" stamped on the sleeve.   I have a couple of Habitat for Humanity ones, too.  And a few classic UChicago puns: "I Am Uncommon!", "Where fun goes to die", a dinosaur ("UChicago") stomping on a stick-figure ("My Soul").

Going through my room yesterday to fill a few boxes for Goodwill, I was sad to finally relinquish my worn out "New Orleans: You Gotta Be Tough" t-shirt, complete with a screen print of the Superdome, a gift from a coworker.  After so many washings, and a little growing on my end, it's now much too tight across the chest.

I find it oddly fitting that my Peace Corps t-shirt spells "Cuerpo de Paz" incorrectly, and the graphics weren't printed as anticipated, making the blob on the front unrecognizable as a llama if you don't know what you're looking for.  It says to me, Hi, I'm a mess.  But I'm an awesome shade of green, so you'll wear me to work out or sleep sometimes.

I just got a new t-shirt from work--my firm is running in the Race Judicata next month, a 5k to raise money for Chicago Volunteer Legal Services, and we're all going to match.   

I went to all of these places and did all of these things and collected all of these t-shirts, and that has been my life for the past eight to ten years.  

Yes, I know they are just shirts.  But then why is it so difficult to get rid of them?

I've been thinking about adapting, and losing my way.  Wearing these t-shirts when they were new, I was putting them on to say, this is me now.  This is what I'm doing, just like everyone around me wearing the same matching t-shirts.  Collecting them over the years and continuing to wear them, I'm proud of what I was doing or had done, proud to proclaim my affiliation with an organization or school on my chest.  They are part of me now.
  
Except sometimes I worry that I let those affiliations too much define who I am.  I can match everyone around me, blend in and adapt to my surroundings.  I can track how at almost every new volunteer opportunity or school, I had to learn how to do what needed to be done, to fit the t-shirt on my back.  My pride comes from learning new things and achieving something that I might previously have thought impossible (Remember the one time I learned how to shingle a roof?  And terrified the Harvard football players with my mad power tool-weilding skillz?).  But from all of these defining moments (ASP, UChicago, Habitat for Humanity, Peace Corps), I am also left with this overwhelming feeling that I learned how to do something, but then it ended, and I'm lost without it.  Because maybe I learned how to adapt to it, rather than incorporating the experience into me.  

This is not to say that I am not enormously grateful for all of the life experience I've accumulated along with my t-shirt collection.  But did I ever give up defining myself in favor of adapting?  How do I make sure the fishing boat travels to where it belongs?

Washington, D.C.

Is it just me, or is the lighting in the Washington, D.C. subway stations extremely erie?  Anyone who has had a childhood should know that lighting from underneath, like faces with flashlights around a campfire, creates an instant ghost story--or in the case of the Metro, a 70's sci-fi flick where aliens abduct unsuspecting passengers for study on their home planet.

Thankfully, Cam and I managed to avoid the aliens and enjoyed the almost-plush seating and cleanliness of both the Metro system and the city as a whole (at least, the touristy parts that we managed to visit during our 2 1/2 days there).  I'd like to scoff at the lack of cracked pavement and weird sewer smells (psshhh this isn't a REAL city, real cities smell bad!) but I can't help myself--it was really nice!

Something we learned, though, is that cramming as much sightseeing into one weekend as possible does not make for a very relaxing vacation.  Friday we did the Air and Space Museum in the morning, Chinatown for lunch (sadly we couldn't find any mambo/mumbo sauce, but the food was still delicious), and the Holocaust Museum in the afternoon--after wandering around near the capital building, discovering that the Botanical Gardens were already closed, and checking out the Navy Memorial, we were too worn out to do anything besides trek back to our hotel in Crystal City to shower and grab dinner nearby at Legal Seafood.  Dessert was chocolate cake and a (decaf) irish coffee back at the hotel, which put me right to sleep.

The Holocaust Museum was as memorable as it was depressing--very well done.  I'd recommend it to anyone visiting D.C., and I'd also recommend making some time afterwards to sit on a bench and eat some ice cream.

Saturday we missed our scheduled walking tour of the National Mall because we couldn't find a new breakfast place quickly enough after seeing the absurd line outside of Lincoln's Waffle House (And here we see the under-caffeinated hungry monsters emerge from hiding, stalking their prey viciously and without remorse, determined to destroy everything in their path until food and caffeine is provided...).  Eventually we ate at a french bakery with delicious omelets--at which point it was raining, so we probably didn't miss out on much on the tour.  Our morning was better spent inside at the Natural History Museum, which we may not have had time to see otherwise.  The human evolution exhibit was definitely my favorite.  Once the rain stopped, we caught a glimpse of the White House and hung out at another memorial (there are so many, I lose track...).  We met friends for a late lunch at Ben's Chili Bowl (try the chili cheese fries--yum!) before heading back out to see MORE memorials (Lincoln, Korean War, Vietnam...).  My feet are still sore!      

Sunday we let ourselves sleep in before having an early lunch in Georgetown at Tackle Box (I finally got my lobster roll!), visiting the Marine Memorial and taking a (rather brisk) walk through Arlington Cemetery.  We then spent an absurd amount of time in the airport because our flight was delayed 2 hours--I don't fly much, so maybe I've just been having terrible luck this summer, but I have never flown on American Airlines and NOT experienced a delay of at least one hour.

Today I am back at work and still trying to process everything.  I will upload the pictures on my camera tonight, after I hit the gym to work off some of the delicious food I ate over the weekend!

Overall it was a really great trip! (Insert cheesiness about getting to spend it with Cam d'awwww). Someday I would like to go back to see everything we missed--but first, I think our next vacation should involve a lot less walking and a whole lot more sitting on a beach :) 

I used to think lawyers were boring

I just started a new job last week, my second job as a paralegal since leaving the Peace Corps, which has been going very well so far.  Admittedly I haven't done much--the paralegal that I am replacing is still here, training me while still doing most of his job, plus the firm settled a few major cases right before I got here and the workload hasn't picked back up yet.  In the down time, I can research law schools, plan my upcoming vacation to D.C., and, well, blog.

I'm not entirely sure when or how I became interested in studying and practicing law, but it feels very right, and it's wonderful to be working towards something somewhat specific.  

Senior year of high school, my AP U.S. Government/Macroeconomics teacher told me that I should be a lawyer.  My class participated in a village government day where we could shadow someone within the local government--the day concluded with a mock council meeting where we actually got to decide (from among three or so choices) how a few hundred dollars should be used.  The drop boxes at the Schaumburg Metra Station, where residents can pay their water bills, are, to my knowledge, still there.  You're welcome, Schaumburg water bill-paying commuters!  

Sadly, I can't actually take credit for the group's choice--I remember being very disappointed that, as the Village Attorney for the day, I did not get to vote.  I had signed up too late to get any of the "cool" jobs, a sentiment that was probably all over my face when Ms. Howard suggested that I'd be a good fit for the role.  I'm surprised that I even remember that exchange, especially since I found the entire mock-government experience that followed to be incredibly boring (the poor village attorney's office was crammed in a dark basement somewhere--meanwhile, somewhere more fun, Lauren got her name printed on a real license plate.  I didn't even get to vote!).

And now I want to be an attorney?  Working in public interest, where my office will most likely be crammed in some narrow hallway in the darkest reaches of the ugliest building?

I have always liked to argue--my parents can vouch for that.  And supposedly before I got to be too smart[-assed] they could get to me do whatever they asked just by telling me, with a very serious face, that something was a "rule."  Maybe I was the dumbest toddler on the planet, or maybe I was just born with a healthy respect for the law.

Either way, here I am, trying to narrow down my list of schools to apply to once the applications become available in late August or September.  Right now I'm considering 14 different schools--if I apply to all of them, that's $881 in application fees.  Eek! (Also, if you're crazy and the $1 bothers you like it bothers me, Wisconsin-Madison is the cause, at $56.  But at least they're not $100 like Northwestern.  In fact Wisconsin is one of the cheapest, after University of Illinois, which is $0, and Indiana-Bloomington, which is $50).   

I'm limiting myself to schools in the Midwest, but even then, there are a lot of good choices here.  There's the top-notch "reach" schools (UChicago, Michigan, Northwestern), but then a lot of other universities (Wisconsin, Minnesota, U of I, Indiana, Iowa...) have great programs and could be an excellent fit.  I have a lot of considering to do.  It helps a lot, though, knowing that this is something that, despite my former disdain, I really really really want to do.

Trying to Write a Story-Shaped Personal Statement

“I like things to be story-shaped.” The unnamed narrator in Neil Gaimon’s short story, “The Flints of Memory Lane”  (in Fragile Things: Short Fictions and Wonders) begins this way.  He proceeds to describe what he deems a very unsatisfactory ghost story, the only ghost story he has ever lived: he once saw an oddly-dressed woman under a remote street lamp and asked her if she was looking for someone--her only response was a terrifying smile.  He left her there, heart thumping in fear, and turned to find her vanished, leaving him with nothing but the memory of her smile and the terror that followed.  That’s it.  The narrator laments, “I wish there was more...anything that would give some sense of closure to the story, anything that would make it story-shaped...”

The irony is that in claiming he has no story to tell, in great detail, he tells a rather effective story.  It has a ghost, even.  

I, too, like things to be story shaped.  A beginning with a prompt, a middle with some action and perhaps a few plot twists, and an end where finally everything makes perfect sense.  For example...

THE BEGINNING: A young lady goes to high school and gets the grades she needs to go to a prestigious college.  She also develops a passion for service.  People think she’s religious, which isn’t entirely true, but she doesn’t mind--she finds fulfillment in accomplishing things that help others.   

THE MIDDLE: Our young lady does pretty well in college, too, and continues volunteering when she can.  She doesn’t really think about story-shapedness too much--she’s busy studying for midterms and organizing a fundraiser and learning that social services are best performed through grassroots organizing, or leveling the playing field through affirmative action, or holding people accountable, or something. Based on her interests from the beginning, she decides to join the Peace Corps and let everything fall into place from there. 

Cue the adventures and plot twists.   

Things do not go precisely as she plans, of course, but that is part of the adventure, right? (right?!).  One thing leads to the next--abroad, she uncovers the secret to her later life back home.  Her subsequent employment is fascinating and meaningful and step by step she works towards her goals until... 

THE END...she lives happily ever after, filling two clean white pages with the perfectly shaped words to gain admittance to one of the most prestigious law schools in the country.

OK, I lied.  This is not an example of story-shapedness.  It’s supposed to arc nicely from humble beginnings, to heart-wrenching adventure, to “Admitted!  With a scholarship!”  There’s some bullshit packed in around the middle and the end is completely fabricated (to round out the edges, you understand), and it still doesn’t make a good story!  I don’t even have an unsatisfactory ghost to add some excitement!

Apparently the pieces don’t just fall into place, and the real bullshit is trying to make it story-shaped. Back to the drawing table...

Learning to Be

I haven't blogged since getting back to the States, mostly because I have no idea what to say.  I've changed, but I can't really say how, and it's hard to sum up what I've taken away or learned from the experience.

I am finding that my PC-related learning probably hasn't stopped yet, but I'm not sure how to explain it without sounding terribly selfish.  Here it goes:  I think PC taught me to pay more attention to me before I try to fix anything else.

On the surface, PC volunteers have an incredible amount of freedom to work on what we want to work on and do what we want to do, but the boundaries are there, and, in retrospect, were a lot more confined than I realized at the time.  I had to work with community partners who mostly didn't want to do much with me,  within a cultural context, within my program's goals.  This had the result of both overwhelming me with the possibilities of what I could do ("Where do I even start?!") and also underwhelming me to the point of extreme frustration when I found myself stuck in a corner against community issues and my own limitations as one human being who is only capable of so much.  Like moving a mountain with a spoon.

In that confusion, how often do volunteers end up having a spare moment to think about what is best for them, the volunteer?  PC is humbling and limit-testing, and I'm not disputing how awesome that is, but the difficulty for me coming back to the States was to realize that putting so many other factors before myself and my own interests for so long was actually a terrible way to live.  I slowed my thinking down to fit with my site's slower pace, but now I need to apply that kind of patience to where I'm going next, what I want, what I'm interested in.  I don't know what I'm interested in, and it's terrifying!

Which is, of course, horribly ironic, since didn't I join the Peace Corps in the first place in order to "find myself"?

Well, I didn't.

But I might have learned how.  I think the answer is to try stuff--any kind of stuff.  And most importantly, the answer is to be OK with failing and quitting.

So far I haven't encountered anyone who noticeably thinks less of me for having left before my 2 years were up--from what I can read, if they know, they are generally impressed that I even tried it in the first place.  Joining the Peace Corps, packing and moving halfway around the world, sounds so impressively difficult, no matter how long you actually remain there.  Well, sorry to disappoint, but that was actually the easiest part for me.  It was a grand adventure, it was a way to avoid searching for a career path, it was patriotic and selfless in a way that makes people go, "Hey, you're pretty neat."  Patting myself on the back and strapping on my Chacos, I had no idea what I was getting in to, but that was the whole point--I was positively dreamy-eyed at the prospect of encountering something magically different.

And then I couldn't do it.  

Don't get me wrong, I met and enjoyed and sometimes loved some incredible people, I traveled and saw things I never dreamed I'd see, and I put up with things I never thought I could handle--it was messy and sexy and all kinds of experience.  But I'm not writing about the good parts today.  

The style of work when it came down to working--totally unstructured, almost totally without support from my community or the PC office--was something that I could not handle.  After my trash management project fell apart, I couldn't deal with being crushed by another failed attempt.  I couldn't fill my time--and  it turns out I'm someone who needs to stick to a schedule and stay busy to avoid going crazy.  I couldn't stand the way my face started to get stuck in a permanent unapproachable "bitch mode" as success came to be defined as making it from point A to point B without being cat-called or otherwise harassed.  I also gained 15 pounds and my self-esteem plummeted, along with my motivation.

Looking back at all of the problems I had, the reasons to leave are absurdly easy to spot.  But at the time, I had no idea.  I was a mess and I didn't know why.  Mostly I thought something must be wrong with me.  Leaving the US to join the Peace Corps had been so easy, but admitting defeat was truly the most difficult part of the entire experience.  It took me months to even admit to myself that I was unhappy.  Giving up went against everything I thought about myself and my capabilities, and argued strongly against my inner determination to do something meaningful with my life.  It was terrifying.

So if you're going to be impressed by anything that I have done, be impressed that I survived quitting.

I think I'm on the right track now--I have a somewhat boring job as a paralegal, and maybe I'll find out law is for me.  Attention to detail, writing, arguing--that's all right up my alley.  But maybe it won't be.  Who knows.  But what I do know is that I've grown, and I've learned that it's OK to fail because I'm strong enough to get back on I'm feet.

  

Learning to be me, however, is a process that is just beginning.        

My Biggest Fear About Reintegration

Reprinted from the November 2011 Edition of Pasa La Voz

The Real Peace Corps, a universal experience?

I'm overdo for my own blog post, but for now, I want to share someone else's words that do an excellent job of summing up what the Peace Corps is really like.  We hear over and over again that everyone's experience is vastly different--which is most definitely is--but there are some major themes in common even across continents.  Required reading for anyone interested in joining.  Thanks, Waid!  (http://waidsworld.wordpress.com/2011/08/07/the-real-peace-corps/)

The Real Peace Corps

I feel as though I’ve done somewhat of a disservice throughout this blog. I’ve painted a picture of my time here that isn’t precisely accurate. I’m an emotional person, a romantic, optimistic to a fault. I like extremes and superlatives. I exaggerate in an attempt to draw the reader in, and to make sense of things I can’t make sense of.

I romanticize this experience as a function of my personality but also as a coping mechanism. Peace Corps is really hard.

So I want to write about the real Ethiopia. And the real Peace Corps experience. That way, if a future volunteer reads this, they understand what to expect, and won’t hate me for only showing sunset pictures and kids holding hands.

So what should you expect?

Nothing is the best answer. Expect nothing and you will be pleasantly surprised. Every experience is different. My friend Jon lives 80 miles away. Our lives could not be more different. His house has no floor save for the mud it was built on. He is lucky to have power one day out of the week.  My sitemate Dave lives 200 meters from my house and our experiences are entirely different.

So here are some observations, a look into what I do, and an idea of what your potential service will look like.

Peace Corps is defined by a strange dichotomy. Freedom and containment. I wake up every day with a blank slate. I can do anything. I can do nothing. And while the possibilities are only limited by my own imagination, the ability to do as I please is corrupted by a number of social, political, and cultural practices.

Case in point: Most volunteers assume they will run to let off steam in their new country. However, running here is a cause of stress more so than a release. You get stared at as a foreigner here. These are stares that know no shame. Stares that you can feel without seeing. They are honest and curious stares, but can crack even the kindest of spirits. But a foreigner in shorts? Running? That is unheard of. Running here means being followed by hordes of children, the last thing you need when trying to let off steam.

I want to export coffee to benefit local farmers and provide an organic alternative to the Starbucks mess we have back home. The bureaucratic structure here has destroyed those dreams. Disappointment is part of the PC experience.

Doing something like the Peace Corps will be your lowest of lows and your highest of highs. Highs that shatter your previous world views.  You will feel refreshed, walk in a forest and quote Thoreau. The lows can last so long that you need a fleeting moment of existentialism just to make it through the rainy season. Well, that, and a ton of movies. You will consider going home. You will count down the days until you leave. You will count up from the day you arrived.

“I can’t believe we’ve been here for a year.”

“I can’t believe we’ll be here another year!”

You will understand yourself, question yourself. Compare where you came from to where you are. I have days when I miss America. I have days when I loathe it. Why do people care about Charlie Sheen and Amy Winehouse? How many marines died last week? How many kids in the horn of Africa died of hunger? I can’t even imagine dying of hunger. When I’m hungry, I eat.

But I eat strange food. Ethiopian food is unlike anything else in the world. Sometimes it is delicious, but most times it is very mediocre. Other times, it is so incredibly bad that I consider burning down every plant that grows whatever the hell is in ‘gunfo’

Don’t try gunfo.

Universally, Peace Corps volunteers crave food. I have dreams about it. Vivid dreams where I belly flop into a bowl of ice cream off of a hot fudge brownie diving board. Sushi. I have a long distance relationship with Sushi and we are not communicating well.

As volunteers, we love to complain. We joke about our poop and our pooping locations. We laugh about smelling bad.

We smell bad.

We yearn for hot showers. But I think it’s just for show. Any volunteer, more so than food or showers, miss people and places. You will miss friends and seasons. During your service, you will be alone on the Fourth of July, Halloween, Thanksgiving. You will miss your family, your really hot girlfriend, and the contextual clues you associate with fond memories. I know what the Chesapeake bay feels like on thanksgiving. I can feel the football, and taste the sweet potato pie. I know what Glebe Park looks like, the green asphalt and the smell of cut grass.

You will be stared at 24/7 365. I understand what it’s like to be a good-looking girl at a frat party. Stay strong ladies.

You will develop an eerie sense of calm. I’ve spent 75 hours in the last two weeks on a bus. The DMV will be a breeze now. I’ve found new and embarrassing ways to entertain myself. I could watch paint dry and be perfectly happy.

One of the great things about Peace Corps is you have a massive amount of time to become a better person. The best advice I can give is to try and do something everyday to improve upon yourself. For some people this is writing or reading. For others it is teaching English or working out. Learn an instrument or paint. Do whatever works for you. You will stare at the wall. I stare at the wall a lot. I’ve had every thought someone can have. Probably twice.

Transportation completely sucks.

I just got out of a bus with 12 seats on it. There were 25 people on it. There were two chickens and probably 20 kilo’s of rancid butter. Here’s a quck letter:

Dear Ethiopia,

It’s ok to open the windows on the bus. I promise you won’t die from the wind. I promise it’s not that cold. Currently, sweat is running down my lower back and into the danger zone. My sweat is sweating. Fresh air is nothing to be scared of. Tuberculosis is. As much as I like saunas and the smell of chicken feces, can we please crack the window’s for 2 minutes? I will love you forever.

Yours truly,

Michael

There is no average day.

Last week, my Tuesday was crazy. I had a meeting with the tourism office about making them a website. I taught a man how to make guacemole and tortillas which he will sell in his store. I played basketball, added a layer to a clay oven and worked on the newsletter I am writing for Peace Corps.

The next day? I slept in, watched a silly amount of the show ‘Dexter’ and checked my fantasy baseball team while the internet was up. Yeah, I’m cool.

There will be times when, despite your pictures of you hugging little kids, you just want to tackle one of them and scream, my name is NOT,

“you you you!!!!!, give me money!!!!!!”

In America we ask for the time. Here, we ask for the month. It’s the most obvious difference. The pace of life here is slow, methodical, cyclical. Everything takes a long time. If you aren’t a patient person you will become one.

Life here is completely different. It is another world, lost in space and time. It is hard, and the little annoyances can manifest themselves into a black cloud. They certainly will, but it is important to make note of the small victories and the little moments. When I open my eyes I am reminded of why I am here. Just when I think a kid is running up to me to ask me for money, she tells me that she loves me and blows a kiss. But then I get on a bus and start crying. I’m stuck in the middle of nowhere with a busted engine. It’s getting dark, I have a chicken in my lap and personal space at this point is a distant memory. People are yelling into their cell phones, begging me to speak to them and take them to America. Oh and the only food in the town by the road is Gunfo.

Remember in times like this to take a deep breath. Peace Corps really is a roller coaster. An exhilarating and scary ride that completely sucks and totally kicks ass.

And when you are feeling down, just remember to go outside and let Africa save you.