How Quickly We Forget…

Lots of things. This Saturday I will have been in Bolivia for 4 months exactly and sometimes it surprises me how quickly I just dropped pretty much everything of my former life when I set foot in Bolivia. I realized the other day that I still haven’t asked about my car yet…haven’t checked up on Mommy and Daddy to see if they’ve been taking care of my baby in its first Rochester winter and if they got around to changing the license plates on it (and I totally forgot to leave the address for them to send my CT plates back to the DMV there…I’ll be expecting a nice property tax bill next spring in the mail if that’s the case). Sometimes when I’m getting dressed in the morning I also think about random articles of clothing that are packed away somewhere in my room in Rochester…I left behind at least 90% of my clothing and I wonder when I get back if it will still fit me and if I’ll even want to wear it. I don’t run here at all either…maybe once every two weeks if I get motivated to do it and it doesn’t happen to be raining that day. I always tell myself I really should get back in the habit of exercising…but around here it just doesn’t seem to be a priority for me. I guess running wasn’t all that important to me (I think I did it more so I could eat whatever I wanted without feeling guilty rather than as something that was actually an addiction). Around here my measure of whether or not I need to exercise is if my clothes still fit (and they do, although I could be getting fatter and they would still fit because drip drying clothes allows them to expand enormously). Then there are other things that I know if I were in the U.S. I’d definitely be up to date on such as the current pop and hip hop songs that are overplayed on the radio (Z100 of course) and certain TV shows like Grey’s Anatomy and Ugly Betty…but around here I’ve almost forgotten about the importance of keeping up-to-date on American pop culture. Anyone want to give me an update? In Bolivia holidays don’t feel like holidays either…I attribute that to the difference in weather. Semi-cold right now but no snow…so that means no Christmas or New Year’s in my mind. Thanksgiving and most of December have passed in a blink of an eye and the fact that it’s less than a week until Christmas has caught me off guard. My counterpart was asking me about what I do in the U.S. for New Year’s…and I was thinking back to last year’s Christmas and New Year’s. I remember for Christmas being at home and getting my plane ticket to Taiwan in a box…and Dad opening up a box of chocolates and looking like a little kid. And then when I was remembering New Year’s, I remembered the amazing awesomeness (but what other people would consider lame-ness) of it…cooking dinner with Steph and Evie in my place…then watching Little Miss Sunshine and someone falling asleep…and waking up in time to turn on the radio (due to lack of television) to hear the countdown…and then at approximately 12:01 am, snuggling into bed with Evie while Steph hunkered down on the couch and then receiving two drunken phone calls…one that I didn’t answer, and one from Burt. And I remember wanting to open the bottle of champagne in the fridge for New Year’s but then I knew Evie and Steph wouldn’t be much help in drinking it so I resisted.

I wonder when I go back to the U.S. if it will be as easy to fall back into the routine of life there as it was to transition into life here. Not that it has been a piece of cake to adjust to Bolivia, but PC definitely lets you adjust in phases and you pretty much get accustomed to things before you realize you are used to them. It’s like how my landlord keeps on telling me they’re going to put in certain improvements on my house…most recently putting an outside light that I can turn on and off from inside my house (kind of like a porch light) and I realize that I’ve just gotten used to bringing my flashlight with me whenever I leave my house after dark or when I’m going to get back after dark. There are things I already think will be noticeably different when I get back to the U.S. These include the expectation to shower daily (or at least every other day), the overwhelming convenience of not having to go outside to get to the bathroom, running water in your house (my current dishwashing apparatus is two plastic bins and 2L Coke bottles filled with water…I got the system down), washer and dryer for laundry (?!), and having a sofa to sit on. I also sometimes get nervous that I’m going to forget certain skills that are important to remember…namely driving a car, the minimal Mandarin that I know, and using Excel (hey, you can’t get a job today without knowing how to use Excel). I would also say that I’m afraid of forgetting how to type and use a computer at the rapid speeds that I’m known for that I developed as a scheduler, but then again, I type enough blog entries to maintain that…as for operating several applications at once on your computer, I’ll definitely need to brush up on that at the end of these two years.

My hair is growing out after 4 months of no haircut and, surprisingly, so far I like it. I haven’t had long hair since high school and I think this is my time to experiment with it. It makes me feel more feminine and although I’ve never been one to be vain or care about appearances too much (I am notorious for buying dressy clothes and high heels but stowing them away in my closet without wearing them once), around here I have enough free time that I enjoy general upkeep of appearances such as painting my nails or plucking my eyebrows. I haven’t gone as far as to wear dressy clothes yet (not that I really brought any with me) but that’s due to the fact that whatever I wear gets dusty or muddy the second I walk outside of my house so “no vale la pena” (it’s not worth it). I might be doing a little bit of clothes shopping while I’m here though since in my chats with my counterpart (who is a very stylish and trendy dresser) she has admitted that she has a tendency to spend all her disposable income on clothes. Plus I’m headed with her to the market where she’s showing me where you can buy makeup and accessories. Oy. Besides my changing physical appearance of longer hair, getting pleasantly plump (or fat and beautiful as Anna calls it), and losing any muscle I thought I may have come to Bolivia with, I sometimes wonder if I’ve changed in any other ways and I just don’t notice it. Every PC volunteer arrives with some crazy idealist notions (at least in their subconscious) about how they’re going to save the world (that’s the helping people part) and more personally find themselves and their path in life and become a better person and I can’t say I’m any different from that. But I don’t think I’ve detected any significant changes in my mentality since I’ve arrived here. Before you arrive in country, you send an “aspiration statement” that answers a few questions to the administration here and I was just reading what I wrote for one of the answers to the questions and thought I’d post it to remind myself of what the heck I was thinking…

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E: How you think Peace Corps service will influence your personal and professional aspirations after your service ends.

The honest answer to this question is that I don’t know how it will influence me personally or professionally but I have some hopes for how it will change me. One of my key motivations for joining the Peace Corps is to learn more about myself and discover what my passions are in life, both personally and professionally. Prior to joining the Peace Corps, I worked for 3 years at an investment bank in various roles in operations dealing with energy and credit derivatives. Although I feel like I still have unrealized potential in the financial services industry, I also feel that I am missing out on the other 99.99% of the world and I wanted to explore what else was out there. Keeping that in mind, my goal throughout my service is to remain open to where my heart and mind want to go following my service. Although sometimes I question my reasoning for joining because of the valuable years that I am giving up in building my career within my established network, ultimately, I know my service will open new doors for me and either lead me in a new direction, or make me stronger in my conviction that my previous role is a long-term career path. As for new directions, in an ideal world I would go to graduate school following my service, either for my MBA or international relations, and find a way to reconcile my background in business and my service in the Peace Corps into a new and worthwhile career path in the non-profit or public sectors.

Beyond my professional aspirations, personally, I am excited to realize one of my dreams of learning a language fluently which will allow me opportunities to work internationally, to be a part of an organization that changes people lives for the better, to challenge myself in the many ways that only Peace Corps does, to meet others that are like-minded, to inspire people that I know in the U.S., and of course to make my family, especially my mother, proud of what I am doing for myself and others. I hope to fulfill my desire to become very familiar with a non-American culture because during the time I studied abroad, I did not get to spend much time in any one particular place and have never lived abroad for more than two months in a row during my lifetime. I’d like to learn more about the outdoors and nature and learn about things I would never learn in the U.S. (llamas and Quechua?) and live in a way that I would never live if I didn’t join the Peace Corps.

I know that my time in the Peace Corps will be the most challenging thing that I have encountered so far in my life, both professionally and personally, but I believe I am ready to take on that challenge because the richly unique experience I will gain far outweighs the difficulties I may face. Of all my personal and professional aspirations, my greatest is the hope that the experience will change me for the better, and my greatest fear is that it won’t change me at all.

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I like the last sentence of that…because although some of the other rantings of what I’m going to do when all is said and done have fallen by the wayside, I still believe in that sentence that I want this experience to change the person that I am, but my fear (more than the nerves I had before I even set foot in Bolivia) is still that I’m going to finish this and say, now could someone explain to me what that was all for?