One of those Age Old Questions

Love or Logic.  That seems to be the question of the day.  Each has its own pros and cons, and the world could not exactly run solely on one or the other.  After all, love did not show you how to file your taxes nor remind you to stop at that last red light.  But then again, was logic the driving factor when you bought a sweater for your dog or when your lover called you out of the blue?  And yet, the question remains.  When it comes time to make a decision, is it your mind or your heart that you rely on for the answer?

A lot of people like to proclaim that they turn to logic, and in many cases, they probably do. When you chose to move away from your extended family in order to pursue your career, you were acting logically.  When you joined a gym to better your health despite the short-term pain it would cause, there was most likely some logic involved in the decision.  But I would also like to suggest that many times we apply logic after the decision has already been made in order to mask the fact that our actions are emotionally based.  Joining the gym will improve your health, yes, but your original motivation for signing up was because you wanted to meet new people or you think that maybe your spouse will be more attracted to you if you are in shape or you need a challenge.  Going to the gym may be the logical solution to each of these issues, but that doesn’t make the desire to join a gym logical.  What it does is make logic the solution to emotion.

But what do you do when your logic contradicts your emotions?  I’ve found that this is not as divided along the gender line as you would think.  Although girls are more likely to let their emotions dictate their actions, the majority of people will tell you “it depends”.  Do you get back together with the person who cheated on you, when logic tells you that they shouldn’t be trusted?  It depends.    It’s funny to me how so many people claim to be logical, yet when you ask about a specific circumstance, the answer is always “it depends”.  When did emotions get such a bad rep?  What is it about emotions that are so shameful that while you can admit to having them, you can’t actually base your decisions on them? 

My problem with emotions is that they can be fleeting and have the potential to make you look stupid.  There is nothing predictable about emotions; nothing stable.  Depending on his mood, your boss could be delighted with your performance today and despise it tomorrow.  The quality of your work has not changed; only his mood has.  Emotions also aren’t sensitive to cultural norms.  Anyone who has ever felt the need to cry at work or throw a tantrum in the middle of a checkout lane knows what I mean.  We are told to express our emotions but aren’t often encouraged to act on them.  For years I thought I had found a loophole to the whole emotion problem.  I knew emotions weren’t completely avoidable, so I would allow myself to have them but limited how deep they could go.  I would have friends that I cared for, but would only get attached to a point.  There would be people that I trusted, but not with everything.  Logically, it doesn’t make sense to trust everyone, and so instead of taking the risk of picking the wrong person to trust, I trusted everyone as little as possible.  Because that’s what emotions are: risky.  Opening yourself to emotions also means making yourself vulnerable.  You never hear of someone’s logic getting hurt, only their feelings.   

This brings me back to the love/logic conflict.  How do you know when it is worth the risk to let your emotions overrule what is logical?  I know I write a lot of emails and not all of them are worth replying to, but I would really like to hear people’s thoughts on this.  All I ask is that you try to avoid telling me “it depends.”

 

Silence

Silence.  There are so many connotations of the word, but have you noticed that they all seem to convey a sense of fragility?  Silence does not simply end; it is shattered or broken.  It doesn’t just occur, it is held or maintained.  Silence is something precious, golden, valuable.  It can be humble and comforting, like the quiet of a night at home.  It can also be grand and intimidating, like entering an ancient and prestigious library or museum.  But silence is complicated, tricky.  It can be companionable, communicating a sense of understanding that is deeper than words.  But it can also be terrifying, seeming to highlight your fears and questions, bringing them to light simply by erasing the noises that once obscured them.    

It is something that is both sought after and resolutely avoided.  People travel the world in search of it, wandering to the far reaches of the earth just to hide from the noise of life.  They pay thousands of dollars to get away from the life that they have put themselves in debt to create.  But are we running from the noise that surrounds us or aching for the stillness inside that we know once existed but somehow has been lost?  When watching the sun set in the mountains, is it the quiet that surrounds you that is so calming, or is it your own stillness that soothes your soul? 

A few people spend their life pursuing silence and the peace that they hope will come with it.  Others content themselves with brief exposures to it, like a swimmer coming up for a gasping breath before plunging back underwater to continue his struggle against the current.  But most of us spend our time desperately avoiding it, drowning it before it can have a chance to point out what we don’t want to know about ourselves.  We do our best to ignore it, to push it away, because what we keep stored away in the silence are the tears we won’t let ourselves cry, the questions that have no answers, the problems with the solutions that we can’t bring ourselves to accept.  To let silence have a place in our lives would also mean opening our minds and souls to everything we have tried to bury. 

There are an infinite number of things you can do in this life, but a very limited number of them are truly worth doing.  Those that are worth it require so much more than most people are willing to give.  Time, discipline, effort, sacrifice, pain, honesty.  Being able to spend time in silence is one of those things.  And I don’t mean ten minutes of quiet reading, or not having the music on while you clean the house or drive to work.  I mean devoting all of your focus to being silent for a substantial amount of time and facing what that produces.  For me, one of the most impressive things that can be accomplished is for a person to spend time alone with the silence of his soul… and come out smiling.

 

Making friends

 

Everyone, meet Murphy.  This persistent little critter has been popping up all over my room.  One day he’ll be sitting next to my flip-flops, another day I’ll find him hanging out on my bureau, and then today he was waiting by the door to welcome me home.  At first, I found his antics a bit creepy.  His long, slightly curled antennas triggered long forgotten images of outdated handlebar mustaches, and the shape of his back and its coloring haunted me with their similarity to many a horrid tie that I was forced to witness while working in the business world.  But that was before I opened my mind, nay, my world, to what was really going on. 

You see, too often we judge our interactions with others by basing them entirely on what we have dealt with before, as opposed to viewing each moment as something new and unique.  That car honking at you on the freeway could be just another road-raging jerk, or maybe he is only in a hurry because his wife is having their first child in the hospital and he doesn’t want to miss it (can you really blame him?).  That guy staring at you could be another malcreado who deserves to be slapped, or maybe the cherry snowcone you recently enjoyed got on your face and it looks like you need medical attention. 

You just never know.  In the case of Murphy, I had to stop a second and really look at was going on in the situation.  The facts were as follows:  1) He always appeared in a different location, 2) he wasn’t always in an obvious place, but nor was he completely hidden, 3) he never made any noises to draw attention to himself, and 4) The pattern and colors of his appearance never changed.  It should be obvious by now to everyone what was happening.  He was trying to engage me in a live version of Where’s Waldo!  Now, every time I walk into my room I keep an eye out for my playful friend.  It is just so thoughtful of him to play a game in order to keep my mind off of all this heat.  That’s a true friend, right there. 

Alright, maybe that isn’t exactly what is going on, but I find I’m calmer when I look at it this way instead of thinking of it as a large, slightly creepy insect running wild within my room.  Sometimes, it’s all about perspective.  And if that doesn’t work, shoot for outright denial.  

 

A day at home

We’ve reached that time of year when the only sane thing to do during the afternoon hours is soak a towel, drape it over your body, and sit in front of the fan. Of course, the towel is dry after roughly fifteen minutes, but that is fifteen minutes that you are not sweating. The charla (kind of like a workshop) I had scheduled for today got canceled, leaving me with a whole day with nothing planned. That fit in perfectly with my desire to sit in front of the fan, and to keep myself occupied while staying cool, I decided to have a movie marathon and watch the Bourne Identity trilogy.

I just watched the first one, and the movie brings back so many memories. I can remember watching it in the theater in Stillwater, and then getting the movie for Christmas and being equally excited to watch it again. I watched it countless times in my apartment on Duck St, sitting on that ancient couch that had been handed down to me after my parents got new furniture, eating mac’n’cheese like every other college student in the US, and feeling slightly guilty about the amount of homework I was putting off. Then there were the times I would come home from work in Oklahoma City and pop in the movie while cooking dinner.

You see, I am not a chick flick kind of girl. I’d much rather go see a comedy or an action movie, something that will make me laugh or fill me with energy. That is why, if you take a look at my movie collection, you will find Braveheart, Gladiator, Dumb & Dumber, Bourne Identity, Zoolander, and a smattering of standup comedian acts. I want to watch a movie that will get the blood pumping, motivate me to tackle some problem I’ve been putting off, inspire me to do something with my life. Ironically, all of those things seem to require car chases and explosions.

Chick flicks, on the other hand, are rated on their ability to reduce their female audience to tears. For a chick flick to be a hit, there should be multiple moments where all you can hear is blubbering from the audience. There are other signs that you are about to watch a chick flick. You’ll see girls passing out Kleenex during the previews, somewhere in the opening credits it will say “Based on a Nicholas Sparks novel”, or there is a surprising lack of male audience members and those that are there already look bored.

The movie marathon experience lacks something when done in a Peruvian desert, though. A lot of the fun of watching a movie is the atmosphere. When I am at home, movie marathons involve drawing all the curtains, turning off the lights, ordering pizza and/or making popcorn, making sure there is an adequate supply of beverages, and stocking the couch and the surrounding area with so many pillows that you forget you have a floor. Then, once you are surrounded by enough food and drinks to ensure you won’t have to leave your new den of cushiony goodness for at least a week, you press play. Not really how it goes here. However, you take what you can get and quite honestly, I didn’t even expect to be able to watch movies during my Peace Corps experience, so can I really complain? Nope. And so, I am going to soak my towel again and start the second movie.

Cheers.

 

Busy Busy Busy

For those dedicated few who keep up with the blog and actually read the emails, you may have noticed a decided lack of information on the projects that I am doing here.  There are reasons for this, the largest one being that I am probably incredibly frustrated with whichever project I am working on and therefore don’t want to TALK ABOUT IT… ahem… deep breath… However, I thought that I should give an overview of some of the activities that have kept me busy lately.  Here we go…

Last week we completed a 6-week computer class that Liz (a volunteer that lives close to me) and I gave to 24 interested artisans.  During the class we covered the basics, and by basics I mean the stuff that most of us do without thinking:  how to double click, the difference between right click and left click, how to open programs such as Microsoft Word, typing, etc.  We held the classes in a town about 5 minutes away (remember, no computers in my town), and had participants from four different towns.  When we started, double clicking was a big issue, and well, after 6 weeks I’m afraid it still was a bit of a problem.  Nonetheless, by the final exam the majority of the class (those still attending) was able to find a picture of a product on the internet, clear the background of the photo with Paint, create a table in Microsoft Word, insert the photo, and type in the measurements and important info.  Therefore, in the future when they took pictures of their products, they could create a catalog (albeit a simple one) using Microsoft Word.  It’s not much, but it’s a start.  In April we’ll start an intermediate course (opening an email account, how to attach files, write professional letters, and of course, more typing practice) for those who passed the final exam, and we’ll also be doing another basic class. 

Right now I’m in the middle of a business plan course, which is a course put on by a government agency and is designed to take the artisans through the steps necessary to export.  I won’t say much about this course, other than it takes up a ridiculous amount of time and I always leave wanting to run head first into the nearest pole.  Basically, there are some good intentions there, but the professors are inefficient and the material is unrealistic (anyone know how to find the economic demographics of Spain’s population?).  In other words, it’s frustrating.  Luckily, there are only a few more weeks left.

At the end of January, I went to Chiclayo (a department capital about 3 hours away) to lead a workshop on color combinations with another volunteer’s group.  It was basically just a 3 hour long class where we discussed different methods of combining colors and did a few activities with what we had learned.  I’ll be going back at the end of this month to take the theories that they learned and have them apply them to their products.  In the meantime, next week I’ll be doing the same thing with my two groups, only I’ll be doing all of it in a three-day course.  I enjoy this type of teaching, possibly because I get to play around with colors and designs, two things I really enjoy.

Word has leaked out that I like those types of projects and I have been filling in my schedule with design projects.  So far, I have designed logos for tshirts for a youth volunteer, as well as shirts for another artisan group.  I’m currently working on a design for a new small business logo and the logo for the boys’ camp that is coming up in June.  And as always, I am searching the internet for new product ideas for my own groups. 

This weekend, I’ll be helping out another volunteer with her Jovenes Emprendedores (Young Entrepreneurs) group by teaching Finance and Accounting.  My only other youth project I have going on right now is the World Map we are painting at the high school.  However, school just started up again this week, and I am hoping to get a couple projects going over the next few months. 

And… yeah, that’s about it for this month.  Lots of varied work.  Some successes, plenty of frustrations.  

 

Moments

Normally, I don’t post things unless I have a substantial amount to say about them. However, every day is really only a bunch of moments lumped together because they happened to occur within the same solar period, and so today I think I will just mention a few of the moments that stood out. Kind of a glimpse into the “real” life of a volunteer, if you will.

We continued painting the world map today. Now, the point of this project is to teach kids about world geography, which in theory will get them thinking about more than last night’s episode on the latest telenovela. In training, visions of inspired young children squaring their shoulders and marching off to a better, broader life were inserted into our ripe trainee minds. In practice, however, what really happens is that the volunteer in charge, after many hours and days and meetings of trying to get the kids and teachers involved, gives up and calls other volunteers for help. In the end, the most interaction that takes place is when all the kids gather round to watch and one of them knocks over a can of paint. Not quite what we’re going for, but close enough. They also get exposed to American music, but there was a lot of Chris Brown playing this morning, and wasn’t his trial today?

Then there is sitting outside Liz’s house, waiting for a moto to come by, where we are once again watched by a couple of young girls. That is pretty much the volunteer life in a nutshell: you are being watched. In fact, whenever I tell any story you should always visualize a few random people of various ages staring because, trust me, they are there. It turns out, Liz and everyone else in town knows these girls because they are beaten on a daily basis by their father. So, for the time I have there, I play with the youngest one, having her fall off a ledge as I catch her and spin her around, trying to bring a little happiness into her young life. Because that is another thing that happens a lot in Peace Corps: you are confronted with painful situations that you have no control over and are not allowed to interfere.

Later that day I’m back at my house, sitting on the back porch and reading while I wait for my egg to boil (seriously, hardboiled egg, palta, tomatoes, and mayo makes the best sandwich ever). I’m sitting on the back porch for many reasons: 1) there is too much smoke in the kitchen for me to be there any length of time without crying my eyes out, 2) I would be standing directly under the monster of a spider that lives in my kitchen and I don’t want to tempt him (I really need to come up with a name for him), and 3) there is a slight breeze that blows over the porch and it is still so HOT here. Although sitting on the porch does have its downsides as well. Every truck that goes by contains men/boys that inevitably will send out a stream of whistles and catcalls the moment they spot me. Not because I’m looking all that attractive (glasses, hair sticking out at odd angles, paint covered tshirt and army pants, with a fine layer of dust covering everything), but because that is simply what they do when they see a foreigner. And to follow up the catcalls, once the truck has rolled past all of the dust it has kicked up drifts over me, adding to my already well developed feeling of grossness. Not to worry though, as soon as my egg cools off and I’ve made my lunch (which I will eat inside my mosquito net), I will shower and be completely dirt free for at least 3.5 minutes.  

And then, thanks to the extreme heat and lack of sanitation, I have managed to pick up a skin fungus that is currently turning me into a reverse Dalmatian (white spots instead of black). It doesn’t have any annoying symptoms like itching or pain, and I’m told the white spots will fade away once the fungus has died. However, it’s going to be quite the pain to get rid of. There are pills to take and creams to use and even a ten minute foam ordeal in the shower.

Yep, I do all of this just so that at the end of the day I can go to a business planning class with my artisans, where the instructor will tell me that I don’t understand the meaning of the word “Drawback” even though it is an English word and I happen to be a business degree carrying English speaker.

Asi es la vida.

 

The Finish Line

Peace Corps is a lot like a marathon.  Not in that, pace yourself, it’s not a sprint kind of way, although that would apply as well.  It’s a marathon in that at various parts of the marathon, you start to seriously question your sanity.  I mean, honestly, why in the world would anyone, short of evading death, run a marathon?  Or, for that matter, what exactly is it that drives a person to give up all the comforts life has to offer in order live on next to nothing for 2 years?  You’re going to notice a pattern during the following paragraphs, in which all questions, and their corresponding answers, could apply to either event. 

You start thinking that it is a great idea when you see an ad on tv or read something about it in a newspaper or hear a story about a friend of a friend who just got done.  You see/read/hear that and you think to yourself, “I could do that.”  And that’s as far as it goes for awhile.  It just hangs out in the back of your mind, occasionally surfacing during a down moment.  Bad day at work?  You should get away, move to a foreign country for a couple of years.  Last year’s favorite going out dress too tight?  No big deal, you’re thinking about running a marathon anyway. 

Then, the idea starts to come up a little more frequently, and with a little more conviction to it each time.  Everywhere you look there are reminders of it.  People you work with have done it.  Every book you read seems to make some reference to it.  Before long, you’ve done more than think about it.  You’ve researched it on the internet, talked to other people who have experience with it, set up a plan, signed up.  You tell yourself it’ll be good for you.  You’ll learn what you’re made of; find out just how tough you really are. 

You start out alone, but then while you are in training you meet people who are going to be running the same marathon.  You all bond, encourage each other, share the ups and downs.  And while you’re still pretty convinced that it’ll be good for you, you’re starting to realize that it is going to hurt a lot more than you originally thought.  You change you’re eating habits, your sleeping habits.  You go places you’ve never been before and along the way you accomplish things that you never really believed you were capable of.  And yet all the while, you’re thinking ahead, wondering if you’ll want to keep running even after the marathon is over.  You notice ways you’ve changed from the experience, some good – like the way you feel after accomplishing one of your goals – and some bad – like the night you were up with horrible cramps from what you had done the day before. 

And then there is the marathon itself, the agony and the triumph of it.  The first quarter of the race is a breeze; you’re excited, you’re ready to set some records.  The next quarter is tougher, things are starting to hurt, but you get your second wind and focus.  Then you pass the halfway mark and are momentarily elated, taking strength and encouragement from the knowledge that you’ve made it so far.  Then you’re in the third quarter, and for the life of you, you can not remember why you decided to make such a huge commitment.  I mean, why not just a year abroad?  There is no shame in running a half marathon, right?  It proves you’re tough without making people question your sanity.  Without making you question your sanity. 

And what is it, during that oh-so-tough third quarter, that makes you keep going?  What is it that drives you on?  I’ll tell you what it’s not.  It is not all the reasons that got you started.  Those reasons are all still very important, yes.  But they are not what makes you take that next step.  At that point, it is mere stubbornness that motivates you.  You’ve put so much time and effort and sweat into it; you’ve cried and laughed and sworn over it.  You keep going because you simply cannot give up.  That stopped being an option long ago, and all that is left is the determination to give your all until you accomplished what you set out to do.  From there on out, your mind is fixed on one thing:  the finish line.  I’ll let you know how it feels when I get there. 

But just so we’re clear, by “finish line” I mean the end of my service.  No way am I crazy enough to run 42 kilometers.  

 

Food for Thought

I have had to revise my opinion of peppers.  I would say all vegetables, but I feel like this statement would be too general and unfair to those earthen products that were not involved.  You see, I tended to view vegetables as peace-loving produce that spend their days soaking up the sunshine, breathing in the aroma of freshly tilled earth, making small talk with the bees and butterflies that visit, and in general letting time bring them along their life’s path until it’s time to bid farewell to the field they’ve known and lay themselves down in the farmer’s basket.  And for the most part, the vegetables I’ve met have not disputed this fact.  They never complain, they always give off such a wonderful aroma and taste when they are used for a meal.  But then, the other day, a single red bell pepper made me stop and reconsider all that.

 

I was making breakfast burritos, like I often do here, and the pepper I was going to use was almost too far gone to use.  Its skin, normally so smooth and shiny, had become a bit wrinkled, a bit tired of holding that vibrantly round shape.  The color, instead of fading like everything else does as it ages, had instead darkened, changing from a festive red to a more somber maroon.  In general, it gave off the impression of being tired, of being at the end of a life that had not been all that kind, and now it was resigned to the end it saw coming.  But then, when I opened it up, I found a bug.  A dead bug that was not large, but was still much too big to have any business being inside so small a pepper.  At first glance, it looked like a moth.  It had the delicate wings that cover everything they touch with a dusty shadow.  But a closer look revealed the body of something more akin to a mayfly.  A bug of a much more annoying variety trying to pass itself off as something worth preserving (not squashing with the nearest flat object).

 

And that bug made me wonder if maybe my earlier views weren’t a little naïve.  Maybe the world in which this pepper grew up wasn’t all sun tanning and playing in the rain.  Maybe the neighborhood it grew up in was full of desperation, plants willing to steal your sunshine without any hesitation or guilt.  The inconsistent availability of water filling everyone with an uncertainty that put them on edge, making everyone selfish with what they had and suspicious of anyone who showed more than a passing interest.  Maybe along his row, the grasshoppers had preyed on the inhabitants like mafia lords in a rundown Italian city.  Maybe the thieves, disguised as butterflies, would attack just when you had let down your guard, a bit embarrassed of always being so suspicious of those whom you had never even met.  Then being snatched from the vine just as it reached the prime of its life.

But this pepper, despite looking like all the others it had known, despite its calm demeanor and stable countenance, had fought back.  It had rooted itself in the ground that it grew up in and refused to be bullied.  And throughout the rest of its life, during the scorching hot days when merely breathing was difficult and the blessed rain that turned into life-threatening downpours, through the silent battles against the ever-hungry jaws of grasshoppers and the long days of seemingly endless boredom, this one pepper had within it the proof that at one point in its life, it had seen through at least one thief’s charade and won. 

 Or, it had snapped at an unintentionally annoying insect, one that was just trying to be loved by dressing up its wings, and had forever hidden the evidence of its transgression deep within itself.  Spending its life proud of the radiant sheen of its outward appearance, while secretly hiding the proof of its shame and regret. 

But for all the mysteriousness surrounding the situation, the pepper’s story remains unsolved.  For even if bell peppers were capable of sharing their stories, I ate this particular one for breakfast this morning.  I guess we’ll never know. 

                             

 

Somedays you need a little help

Last week there was one morning that I woke up with too much on my mind and not enough planned for the day that could distract me from it.  Like many women, I find that I can’t give my thoughts too much leeway or they become like really loud echoes in too small a space, bouncing around in repetitive nonsense until your head hurts.  When I get this way, the calm countryside where I live is the last place I want to be because, although it has many charms, the ability to escape your thoughts isn’t one of them.  So, I grabbed a few necessities and headed into the capital city, having created in my mind the only thing that could save me from myself:  lunch at my favorite restaurant, with a great book, a journal to release my thoughts, and the real kicker – a glass of wine.  There is something about wine that slows down the thoughts speeding around my brain and instead gently nudges my attention towards other things, like the loveliness of that breeze on a hot day or the beauty of light as it plays on water. 

Admittedly, I do not drink wine that often and therefore it takes very little to accomplish very much.  Mind you, I had one glass, just one, and I drank that with my lunch.  As I sipped my way through that one glass, I would pause from time to time to write in my journal, slowly releasing my thoughts from their eternal jumble.  I went back and reread what I had wrote, and while I won’t repeat it all, there were a couple of paragraphs that I think very accurately describe the turning point of that day (and yes, it did end up being a good day), and so I thought I would share them here.  Nothing mind blowing, but I know a few friends who will be amused.  And so, here is my thought process when it is being helped along by a little liquid love.

“Why does getting exactly what you wanted so often make you want to throw up?  I’m having a bad day, and all I could think of was a book, a salad, music, and wine.  And for awhile, I had exactly that. I sipped my wine while I wrote, then read my book while chasing carmelized pecans around my salad, the whole time letting the music soothe my mind like a warm bath.  But now, inexplicably, I feel like I should take that peaceful moment and deposit it in the nearest toilet bowl.  Apparently my body, as well as my mind, is determined to make me miserable today.”

Now, just for the record, I would like to say that I am not quite halfway through this single glass at this point, so don’t start thinking it is the alcohol that has me nauseated.  It’s not.  It was more a factor of a salad that was more than I could eat and anxiety that had been building up over time.  So this was the last bubble of panic before the wine kicked in.

“Nauseous feeling is gone and has been replaced by the sincere conviction that I should drink wine a lot more often.  I’m peacefully relaxed, content and soothed by my own presence, leaning into my own fingertips as though they belonged to the world’s most celebrated masseuse.”

Bad day has been successfully eliminated at this point.  Now, I am not advocating alcohol as the means to solve all your problems.  But somedays you need a little help focusing on the good parts of life.  Sometimes it’s a friend making you laugh that snaps you out of it, other times it is throwing yourself into a project.  That day though, it was healthy food, a relaxing atmosphere, and a glimmering glass of wine.

Cheers.

 

Parallels

“As for whatever other changes may have occurred within me during these last few months, perhaps I can’t even feel them yet.  My friends who have been studying yoga for a long time say you don’t really see the impact that an Ashram has had on you until you leave the place and return to your normal life.  ‘Only then,’ said the former nun from South Africa, ‘will you start to notice how your interior closets have all been rearranged.’”                                            – Elizabeth Gilbert, Eat Pray Love

Granted, I haven’t been living in an Ashram, but there are many parallels that can be drawn between my time here and yoga.  You do spend a lot of time in silence or in study.  You learn to live a little quieter, a little more peacefully, a little more patiently.  You find yourself in strange and uncomfortable positions, and then you find that you have become stronger because of them.  You learn and you grow and bit by bit you move from who you were to who you want to be.

As you pass through your Peace Corps experience, you at times notice the ways in which your time abroad has changed you.  The way you no longer go insane waiting for people to show up to meetings.  The time you find yourself spending in conversation with complete strangers.  The priority you place in watching the sun set.  However, for the most part, you don’t really notice the difference between who you are now and how you were when you came.  The switch has been too gradual for you to really see the difference.  That’s why I liked this quote so much.  I can say without any doubt that my time in the Peace Corps has been worth it, but I think it will take many years for me to fully understand the significance of my time here.