Today I read an article written by a Peace Corps member in Ethiopia. I was just snooping on Facebook when I came across it, and as I’m hoping to join the Peace Corps someday myself, I decided to check it out. To my surprise, I found that I could relate to almost everything he said.
One of the first things he says is “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…”
Beautifully sums up my experience her in Portoviejo. Especially now that I have summer vacation, I have almost unlimited free time. Whatever I want to do, I can do. If I wanted to read Thoreau all day and try to find meaning to life, I could. Or I could spend my afternoons in the shopping mall and my evenings in front of stumbleupon and 9gag. My time is mine to fill. For starters, I took a French course at the beginning of my vacation to take up some free time and start learning language #3. I’ve also been going to the gym pretty regularly, and sometimes I go running or swimming with friends. I try to help my parents out in their store when something needs doing, and I try to include family time in my days, whether it be watching a movie with my papi, playing Jenga with Luiggy or going out for icecream with Andrea. The rest of the time---a mix. Portoviejo is no Europe—we can’t go hang out in the plaza or the square. My parents aren’t big on me being outside very much at all. We do have a supermarket and a mall (pretty sure I go to both at least 3 times a week). I’ve been keeping up with the Portoviejo Supercine (movie theater)’s supply of films, and there are also unlimited pirated movies for sale right outside my urbanization in the shopping plaza. I’ve done a lot of reading—whether it be Spanish or English—about everything from dragons and fairy tales to religion and African cultures. I’m a 9gag fanatic. I write in my journal all the time.
It’s been a learning experience. There have been days that I’ve wasted away doing very very little—I’m learning work harder and be more motivated, but I’m also learning some patience with myself. I’m figuring out how and why I’m motivated and what it is that I want to spend my time on. I’m also learning that this is how life goes. Technically, in life, we have day after day of free time. It’s our job to fill it—jobs, school, kids, Facebook, cross country training—whatever that may be. It’s my job to do something meaningful in those hours.
Sometimes, the search for something meaningful to do makes us realize what exactly it is that’s meaningful to us. We start to realize how much we valued our friends and family back home (and how much we value the ones here). We learn what we really loved from our home country, what we really hated. We analyze the aspects of our host culture that we want to carry with us, and the ones we’d rather never see again. We start to rethink what we want to do with our lives---where am I spending my time now that I have so much? If I could do anything with it, what would it be? When I got here, I was planning on pursuing a medical career. But, I didn’t find myself researching premed programs or looking through biological studies in my free time. I watched documentaries on tribal cultures. I wanted to learn a new language. I read through my entire digital camera manual. I don’t think I’m going to be a doctor anymore.
I have 4 months left, and I plan to make each one better than the last. That’s the goal. When I’m feeling the exchange student nostalgia---wishing I could go outside without being stared at because I’m white, wishing I was somewhere with big museums and fantastic restaurants, or wishing I could be sitting around my kitchen table NOT eating rice and plantain---I remember what I’ve been given. I remember that my experience will be perfectly unique and this has been and will be and has been one of the best years of my life.
