Ramblings

So, as you can tell, blogging has not been high priority lately. (Actually, this is the first of 3 new entries, so scroll down and check them all out!) I believe that is at least partly a reflection of what point of service we are in. There is just not as much stuff that we run into now and think…”Whoa, how strange/different/weird/cool/great”, ect… Also we are pretty comfortable with our community so no big cravings for things to be “normal” or more like back “home”. Combine all of that with being busier than we were last year, and the fact that we can now see how fast the end of service will be here… Well, it all makes for less time to ponder those things that make good blog entries, and fewer moments that seem so… bloggable!

I typically don’t go back and read any of my old entries, so I’m sure I have said some of this before… but here are a few of the more interesting phenomenon of the second year of service, at least in El Salvador:

**You stop making any real effort to get to know any of the new volunteers. You realize they don’t have much in common with you. They are going through all of those new things, learning about their site, the language…and they still have big ideas, most of which you have given up on by now…or at least resigned yourself to lower expectations. You find it hard to talk to them because of these differences. If you do talk to them, you end up sounding so negative from their perspective that you scare them, or they think you are “jaded”.

**Everyone in your site starts talking about the fact that you are leaving soon! This one was almost like a switch, one-year, boom! We are leaving in a year, and everyone starts to comment on that. You want to tell them no! That we still have lots of time, a full year left… but it’s true, you are now at the point where you too realize how short a time that is. People you hardly know come up and tell you how much they will miss you! Even little kids will come into your room and say things like, “so, you gonna be leaving this camera/iPod/hat/guacal/box/book/bag of churros behind, right?” They start looking around your room wondering and hoping that they will inherit something cool when you go. Still, they always tell you how much they will miss you too.

**You start to think about the things you will miss most when you go home. Things like, back home as you are walking down the street not everyone you see will be yelling out, “Don Jon, Niña Katie!” You have to remind yourself that back home you are unlikely to even be “walking” down the street. Then you realize you also won’t be able to walk to the store, work, friends houses… anywhere! You won’t be so important anymore! No longer will the Mayor come by your house first when visiting the town, or the Minister of Agriculture, President of “Blank” organization… you won’t be served first at all occasions, get the best piece of chicken. Kids won’t be coming over every afternoon just to hang out with the cool gringos and listen to their funny Spanish. (this point is a whole blog, and better done a bit later)

**Your first more conversational question for fellow volunteers is no longer “How are your projects going?” or “How are things at your site?” but rather, “What are your plans at the end of service?” You don’t have an answer to this question yourself, but it is comforting to hear the others stumble over this as well.

So yeah, here we are nearing the end of service, or in Peace Corps jargon Close of Service (COS), with just around 4 months to go. It’s a weird time. You are mostly pretty busy, the days go quickly unlike the start of your service. You are still trying to accomplish some things, anything really… and yet, at the same time you are definitely preparing to leave… mentally you are spending at least half your time thinking about where to go, and what to do “after”.