All I could think about on Friday was how one year on that same date I woke up early in a Holiday Inn in Georgetown to meet my Dad in the lobby with another suitcase for me to take with me later that day to Peru, in tears. Not just a few tears a lot of tears. I hugged my Dad and didn't want him to let go or leave. It was in those moments that I realized how big the decision I had made to join the peace corps was. I was suddenly overwhelmed with the feeling of leaving my family and friends behind and virtually my whole life to spend two years away from them in Peru.
I don't look back on that day and think how crazy I was for being so upset, I look back on it thinking how much one year in Peru has changed me. It has made me braver and stronger. I went from the girl who lived in Maryland her whole life, and the most exotic place she had been was a family vacation in a beautiful resort in Mexico for a week, to the girl who lives in a rural town in northern Peru, where everyone speaks a different language. Wow! What a change a year can make!
I think everyday how welcomed I was into the country, and more importantly into Chipillico. I love my country, but it is very rare that anyone in the United States would let someone live with them for 2 years or walk into their place of work and try and find ways to help the community. The people in Chipillico have done this for me. Along the way they have taught me an amazing amount of things, and as much as I have patience with the cultural differences I am not used to, they have an amazing amount of patience with me stumbling through the language at times and trying to make changes to their way of living (just trying to help out). I am also in shock sometimes as to how used to things I have never experienced before in my life.
Above all, one of the most important things that has happened to me is not a thing it's more of people. I know that I owe a large portion of getting through this experience to the friends that I have made. Brittany, Aman and BJ are my sanity sometimes. As much as my family is 100% supportive emotionally and with stuff, my friends here are the ones that "get it", when a peruvian says or does something crazy it's so easy to talk to them and know they will understand, or a meeting or a presentation goes bad, odds are they experienced the same thing in the same week. Then, when we have the opportunity to get together and be crazy and vent and just have fun it is always more worth it. And of course having Edgar has changed my experience for the better, I do not know what I do without him as well.
I think the most important part of finishing up the first year and starting to feel more accomplished. It has been a year full of trainings and now it is starting to feel like I am completely on my own and making moves to really dive into my own projects. So it feels good, I am a true volunteer at this point and as difficult as it at times to get things accomplished it is still happening and it makes me really happy.
So here goes year number 2, I can't wait to see what happens, and I look forward to what I will have to write about in these next months!
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