Tag Archives: Friends

Hope You Didn’t Miss Me, Too Much

Hey-yo! It’s been a long and intense few months and I have not been in the head space to write. My muse had run away, but now she’s back (she being my muse, Henrietta. She’s gender fluid, goes by Henri, but prefers the female pronouns.) I highly recommend getting to first name basis with your muses. It really helps the creative process. Anyway, things got a little too intense for her and she just needed a breather. I totally understand, but now she and I are back, bitches! And ready to tell you all about what’s going on! We’re back with a vengeance, so you’ll likely see a plethora of blog entries this week.

This blog entry will be more of an update and the following entries will be topic specific. So where to start.

Honestly, I haven’t really updated you all much since my brother’s visit. I wrote a blog about his and my vacation, but we were going to attach pictures and sorting through the over 2000 pictures we took got us a little distracted. Now I’ll just give you the highlights. Having Nick here was amazing. I loved being able to share my village with him, show him my home and school, and give him a glimpse of what daily life is like here. He’s the person I share the most with back home (besides mom, of course), so it was really fun for him to actually experience all the things I talk to him relentlessly about. We even stopped by my old village. It was my first time back since being evicted, so it was really nice to see all my friends and the kids. Kids would run behind the car yelling my Setswana name, “Kesaobaka, Kesaobaka!”. It was adorable.

We then went on my first vacation here! We went to Namibia where I got to see the ocean for the first time in a year. I didn’t realize how much living near the water keeps me centered until I lived in a landlocked state and then a landlocked country. I’m very excited to live so near the ocean again. We had amazing food. Nick spoiled me with food because he’s the bomb.com. Before we even went on our vacation we had dinner with my PC person, Bethany and ate strawberries that made us cry since we hadn’t had them in so long. While on vacation, I got delicious German food that reminded me of my mom, burgers upon burgers, delicious seafood (again landlocked places just don’t do it for me) and the most mouthwatering steak I’ve ever had. In retrospect, all of this amazing food is probably what sent my gallbladder over the edge, but it was already almost there. I’m just glad I didn’t have a huge attack while on vacation and I wouldn’t change a thing about the way I spent my vacation. We can’t live our lives on what ifs. And even though I’m an amazing cook, the food I eat here is nothing compared to what’s available in the states.

After Namibia, we headed up into the more north western part of Botswana, Maun. Maun is on the Okavango Delta. We went on a Mokoro boat trip and a bushwalk on what they call Tortoise Island. We saw lots of animals including an elephant that was only about 20 yards from us. It was my first time seeing any animals here since I live in the dry south. It was really amazing to see the animals in their natural habitat and to learn all the intricacies of the habitat.

Nick rented a car, and he drove us the whole time. It was very nice to be in a private car, but also a little challenging to get around in some of the sandier areas. Although the drives were long, I love road trips. I always feel really relaxed on the open road and I get a lot of great thinking time in. Nick and I are both pretty introverted and not really small talkers. So we would have hours of just silence and listening to music, or we would get into these great long and interesting conversations. I’ve always really loved our road trips together. I’ve never felt as comfortable on a long trip with anyone but him.

Even though having Nick here made me more homesick, it also made me re-look at where I am. It’s so amazing that I’ve already been here over a year and having him here helped me to see how much more I want to do here before I get home! It was so great to have him here and to hear his perspectives. The only thing that would have made it better was if my mom could have come as well.

After Nick left, my gallbladder flared up dramatically. I was in so much pain and so sick that it got to the point where I had to cut out eggs, dairy, gluten, fats, and most fruit. I was only really able to keep down oatmeal, carrots, and potatoes without being in more pain or feeling even sicker. I went in to Peace Corps about it a little over a week after Nick left. We immediately did an ultrasound and found stones, but then had to jump through the bureaucratic hoops. They sent me to a surgeon who said that yes, I had chronic cholecystitis and I needed surgery. Regional medical wasn’t convinced. They were so sure there must be something else wrong with me since I’m so young, but they didn’t put all the pieces together until I was in South Africa and talking to them directly. So it was over a month of me laying at home, unable to eat, work, or sleep because of the pain before they sent me to SA to take care of it.

Once in SA, I met with a surgeon one week, had surgery the next week, and was sent back to Bots a week and a half later. I immediately felt better. I was able to eat, I slept for days, and I just felt physically healthier. But I was still dealing with the emotional stress of being isolated in my house sick for over a month and then being isolated in guest house for 3 weeks. I felt so alone, stressed and frustrated that I had had to advocate so much for myself when it was clear what needed to be done. All I wanted was to come home, and get back to a more normal routine, (that honestly, I’ve never been able to achieve here with all the crap my service has thrown at me) and feel like a productive person again. I hate feeling unproductive and like I’m wasting my time and that’s what those two months felt like. I was so excited to be back in Bots and I thought that I would immediately be able to shift my mental state to a healthier place.

Both fortunately and unfortunately, I had two friends from America come visit me as soon as I got back. They actually arrived in Bots the same day that I did. I’ve known them since the end of my first year of community college, so five years. One of them and I have stayed in contact since then and the other ran in similar circles, but not quite the same. We have many mutual friends, but never really got to know each other. We’re like a Venn Diagram where our friend groups are the overlapping part, but we’re divide on the aides. Anyway, they are traveling the world together as a couple and I was a stop off for them. Originally, the plan was just for the friend I’ve stayed in contact with to come and another friend of ours was going to join him. I think things shifted when his girlfriend joined him and the time table moved up four months. This was a little inconvenient because A.) I had just had surgery and was in recovery and a slightly unstable mental state, and B.) I didn’t have the same kind of vacation time that I would have had in December. I was also only expecting them to stay a week or two. They stayed for a month.

It was great to catch up with them, but I’m the kind of person who shuts down emotionally around people I’m not extremely close with and so instead of processing all the emotions I had been battling with my surgery, I repressed them. We did have some great times though. I took them on a vacation with me and 5 other PCV’s to a place called Tuli Block. It’s on the mid-Eastern tip of Botswana and has a lot of wildlife. We went on three game drives (although I had to opt out of one because it involved a 5 K walk and I was still very much in recovery), and saw many animals including a giraffe, tons of elephants, lions, wildebeest, impala, zebra, kudu, etc. and a leopard that almost attacked our car. It was a really great vacation and a good time for me to not feel so isolated. Also, while my friends were here, I had a Peace Corps trainee shadow me for a few days. She’s really great and now lives just about 20 minutes from me. She attended my classes with me and we got to know each other a bit.

I’ve gotten very used to living alone, so it was strange having people in my space for so long. I expected that they might go out and explore some, but they really just stayed here and hung out. It kind of felt like I was married because I would wake up and eat breakfast with them, then go to work, and when I got back lunch would be ready. It had many benefits and many drawbacks. When they left to head to New Zealand, I had a group of PCV’s come over for brunch for the weekend, and then I had my house to myself for the first time in months for four days. After that, I went to visit Bethany the following weekend because she was heading to America for a vacation a few days later.

After Bethany’s house, I had to make another medical appointment because I’ve been having chest pains. I went in last Thursday and my doctor told me it sounds like I have a viral infection in my lungs. So now we’re waiting to see if it resolves itself and I’m trying to support my immune system as best as possible. Over the weekend, I met with a ton of new PCV’s and then Ashley stayed the weekend. So needless to say, I haven’t had a lot of time to myself lately. I’m still struggling to figure out my emotions right now because so much has been happening, but I’m doing a lot better then I was even a week ago. This post is kind of a testament to that because I am not good at blogging when I’m in a bad headspace. This coming up weekend will be my first weekend completely alone since before my surgery. I am so ready for a good introvert weekend and hopefully I can kick this virus out of my body.

So there you go, that’s what’s been going on with me.

F.L.Y. (First Love Yourself)

Since finally writing openly and honestly about my struggles with weight, I’ve opened the flood gates to my emotion and vulnerability and I really hope that there is no going back. I never really realized the wall I had up until I got to the Peace Corps and finally discovered that I had built this giant barrier to keep myself from becoming vulnerable. Maybe this seems like a surprise to people because I’ve often been told that I seem very open and honest, but I haven’t been. I’ve thought about emotional issues until they’ve turned into unrecognizable mush that no longer contains the emotional vulnerability which allowed me to talk about them impassively. I went through the skeletons in my closet and sucked the emotional marrow out of the bones so that I didn’t feel like I needed to hide them anymore. I didn’t need a closet, I could just leave the skeletons laying out for all to see because I could no longer be affected by them. And on the outside they still look like these crazy situations, but all the vulnerability was gone. I wrongfully thought that I was empowering myself by being emotionally disconnected. I was repressing who I was to fit the bill of what others wanted me to be. The opposite of empowerment. I did this because I was taught that vulnerability was weakness. Emotion was weakness. Sensitivity was weakness.

It wasn’t just the people around me telling me this, although, that often hurt the worst. It was society. To be a girl is weak because we’re emotional. “Oh, it must be that time of the month because you’re being an emotional bitch.” “You’re taking everything so personally.” “You’ll never be taken seriously if you’re so emotional.” We’re taught that emotions are to be kept private. I kept them private and I stuck them behind a wall to fester and grow until I realized that I was hurting myself trying to tuck them all away. I hid the hurt and insecurities that stemmed from years of being told that I was selfish, needy, attention-seeking, fat, emotional, sensitive, a bitch, controlling, loud, and annoying. I hid the hurt and insecurities of constantly feeling like I wasn’t good enough. I thought that there must be something terribly wrong with me to have this many faults. There couldn’t be anyone to love me because I was so flawed and also so fat (because only skinny women are attractive, of course). I was so caught up in all of these negative ideas about myself that I let them shape who I was. I let them seep into my very core and change how I perceived myself and the world. I stopped trusting myself because I didn’t think I was selfish, needy, attention-seeking, fat, emotional, sensitive, a bitch, controlling, loud, or annoying, but the people around me did, so I must not be able to see it in myself. I have trouble making the smallest decisions because I’m so worried about what other people would think of those decisions. Sometimes, I’ll even reach out to get input about a decision and then feel like I must be annoying someone with such a trivial concern and then I’m riddled with guilt for being such a selfish pest. It didn’t matter that most of these things were told to me by the same 2 or 3 people. What mattered is how much influence those people had and how often they would say negative things with very rare positives.

I didn’t want to share how I felt about it because it would confirm that I was selfish, needy, attention-seeking, emotional, sensitive, and annoying. I also never wanted to put anyone else in an openly bad light. I didn’t want the people that hurt me to know that they had hurt me because that vulnerability would be a weakness with them and they would poke and prod that soft spot in my armor until I bled out. They wouldn’t reevaluate themselves and see where they hurt me or were insensitive, they would just react defensively and I would be in an even worse place. I have tried to just learn how to roll with it when I get a fat shaming comment on Facebook or a message that picks at those old scabs. I try to just ignore the new hurt that they inflict because I honestly don’t think that they see what they’re doing. I don’t think they see that what they’ve said and how they’ve acted has affected me and I don’t think that they would be open to reevaluating themselves. Change can only happen if you accept it and want it.

So I’ll keep trying to ignore the comments. I’ll keep reminding myself that their actions reflect them and not me. They often come from a place of insecurity in themselves when they make these insensitive and judgmental remarks and I am sure that I have also been guilty of doing that on occasion. It’s hard to not lash out at others when we’re not feeling safe in ourselves. I’ll keep ignoring the comments and I’ll keep working on breaking apart my wall and not letting myself retreat back into a shell when I feel vulnerable. That’s only hurting me.

It’s no longer about the comments that other people make, now it’s about the comments I make. As they say, you’re your own worst enemy. There is nothing that anyone else can say to me that will be worse than what I’ve told myself. I have beaten myself down countless times and I’m done. I’ve grown, learned, and worked fucking hard. I now can look at all of those negative comments and see the amazing positives in them. I’m selfish because I recognize that the only person who will be with me my entire life is me and I have to be happy with the decisions I make. I’m needy because I recognize that I have needs and I go out to try to fulfill them. I’m not sitting around waiting for a shining white knight to save me, I’m taking care of myself. I seek attention when I need companionship. I’m fat, so what? When did the size of my pants become anyone’s business? All it measures is the vessel I’m living in, not who I am or my self worth. It’s a fucking number for god’s sake. I’m emotional and sensitive because I’m human and I have empathy and I care. I think that is a beautiful thing and I wish everyone could say that. I’m a bitch, controlling, and annoying because I’m a strong, opinionated female who isn’t willing to crumble to societal norms. I think that being motivated, driven, and knowledgeable of what’s needed in a situation should be praised, not belittled. I’m loud because I know that my voice deserves to be heard as much as any other. I also know that I am not alone in this. I’m not the only human trying to figure this whole life thing out and I take comfort in that. I never wish bad experiences on people, but if you’re trying to work through negative experiences, remember you aren’t alone. There are people all around you trying to find themselves as well and we can and should all support each other.

I’m angry that I have had to fight for this. I’m angry that we still have such discrimination and negative judgments towards others. I’m angry that we haven’t figured out how to live in a world of authenticity and acceptance of all. But more than that, I’m happy and proud. Despite all of the negative things life has thrown at me I can finally say that I love myself. I love my body for all the beautiful things it can do even if it’s not a size 2. I love my mind because I have been able to learn and grow in such amazing ways and I know that that will never stop. I love my personality because it makes me someone that I want to interact with and it attracts some of the most beautiful people in this world. I love me because I am a person deserving and worthy of love. I am enough.

Food ready for meal on table

A New Home for the Holidays

A lot has happened this month and I have yet to document it. First off, I had a training in Ghanzi and got to live a week in a malaria zone! During that week I learned that the rash I’ve been developing has not been heat rash, but is instead something called Dermatitis Herpetiformis (I just call it DH). DH is a rash associated with Celiac Disease. So this confirms that I got my moms genetics and now every time I get into gluten (even trace amounts) I get this rash. Celiac is an autoimmune disease, so my body is essentially attacking itself instead of the gluten that it can’t process. It really sucks to find out that for the next 80 years of my life (yes, I’m planning to live to 102 like my great grandma) I won’t be able to eat any gluten, but it’s also kind of what I needed to get myself to stop eating it. I have a nasty habit of letting myself cheat and I doubt I would have ever reigned myself in well if I didn’t finally have something show me the severity of my condition. Right before figuring this out, I also decided I was very allergic to chicken eggs and have since confirmed that. So I can no longer eat any gluten or chicken eggs (if only there were ducks here in this landlocked desert country!). So that’s what’s been happening on the health front. I’ve also officially lost over 50 pounds since getting here, so that’s another step toward a healthier me!

After my training, I went back to my village. I was supposed to stay there from the second week of December all the way to Christmas Eve, but that changed a little when I got back. There is no school in December (it’s their summer break here), so I was spending most of my days spending a couple hours hanging out with my tutor/one of my only friends in the village/one of the only people who understands and speaks enough English to talk to me, and then watching a couple movies and reading a ton. So I was essentially doing nothing and it was quite nice, but a week before Christmas, I was laying in bed barely awake when my supervisor and the village councillor came to my house. They told me there was a problem with my rent and asked how long it would take me to pack my things up and move. I was shocked. My landlord hadn’t said anything to me (although, there is a huge language barrier there) and my supervisor never once said there was a problem brewing either. All I wanted to do was call someone because I was really freaking out, but I was expecting to be able to charge everything that day at the clinic, so all of my electronics and battery packs were dead. I had to just send my phone and charger with my supervisor and hurry up and pack.

I got all of my things packed and ready in 2 hours and then my supervisor and a few villagers helped me load everything in a trailer and move it to the school compound into a teacher’s house. The house was currently vacant because all of the teachers were gone for the festive season and the teacher who had lived in that house wasn’t returning. But as soon as the new teacher comes in January, I’ll have to be out of that house. My supervisor just kept saying he didn’t think there was a house in the village for me and they were probably going to send me to a new site. I called my Peace Corps program director and he was very helpful, but said he wouldn’t be able to come out until the next day and I just needed to sit tight.

So I spent a night in an unfamiliar house, terrified of these little beetles that have infested the school grounds (They lay on you and essentially pee. Their urine burns your skin and you have basically a chemical burn the size of a quarter. It’s horrifying.), hearing noises that sound like my door being opened, and sleeping with the light on and a can of Doom (bug spray) by my side in case I was attacked by these flying beetles. Needless to say, I got maybe 3 hours of sleep that night.

The next morning, my program manager and the volunteer liaison show up to talk to me and my supervisor. It turns out that it was a huge misunderstanding between my supervisor, landlord, and the Ministry of Education who pay my rent. So my landlord was frustrated and decided he wanted a different tenant and my supervisor overreacted and pulled me out without considering options. Luckily, my supervisor was able to find a new house for me though. So we went to see the new house, it’s beautiful! Way bigger, it’s going to have electricity, and it has so much more privacy than I had before. I’m very excited for it, but it, unfortunately, won’t be ready until late February, early March. So for the moment, I will be staying on the teacher compound, but moving to a smaller house so that two teachers can share the larger one I’m in right now. They may not love me for that, but I’m not supposed to live with someone. I think this really was a good thing because I was very uncomfortable in my old house (mostly just tolerating it because I thought it was my only option) and this new house is going to be amazing. And because this all happened the week before Christmas, I got to go to Bethany’s house early!

So now, let’s talk about Yule/Christmas! So I got to Bethany a week early, and unfortunately a day before my holiday package from my brother and mom arrived, so I couldn’t pick it up. We have just been chilling and hanging out. I helped her with some stuff at her school the first few days and then we’ve been celebrating our holidays in little spurts to make sure we don’t get too homesick. It’s hard to celebrate winter holidays in the summer. It’s just too hot and feels very strange. It’s also hard to do some things that you’ve always done with specific people. I tried to sit down and watch Scrooge and the whole time I felt like I should be sitting with my mom watching it. It just felt wrong, but we did make delicious feasts. Of course, they weren’t as big as they’d be in the states, but when you normally make as little as we do, they felt like feasts. I made my favorites on Yule and celebrated my holiday and Bethany made her favorites on Christmas Eve to celebrate some of her traditions. Everything came out perfectly and I’ve probably eaten as much in this last week as I did all of last month.

Bethany and I haven’t tried to kill each other yet! So that’s a major accomplishment. Although, we still have nearly a week together, so you never know what will happen. I was granted a small extension to stay here through the 2nd because there were some concerns about my safety on the school compound alone since the other teachers don’t come back until the weekend of the 2nd. It’s all just a precaution though and I’m sure once everyone is back in the village I’ll feel much safer and things will go back to normal. It’s just been a big emotional mess.

I’m excited to get back to my site and start the new year though! I have a feeling it’s going to be a great one! As always, I miss and love you all back home. And I hope you had the merriest of Christmases and happiest of Yules, Hanukkahs, and all other holidays. My next holidays here are New Years and then my 22nd in a couple of weeks. Happy New Year everyone!

It’s a Village Life for Me

Well, I’ve officially been at site for nearly two weeks (probably two by the time you read this). It’s been an interesting beginning. With a village this small and underdeveloped, they’ve never really encountered a white person or an American before. So I’ve kind of become the village show pony. This week we had two major events: a Kgotla meeting with the Vice President of the country and a torch lighting ceremony for the 50th anniversary of Botswana’s Independence. Both of these events were opportunities for the village to dress me up, make me sing and dance, talk to me in lots of Setswana that I couldn’t understand, touch my tattoos, and make me sit right in the front of everything. Both events made me very uncomfortable, but I’m glad my village is trying to accept me as one of their own and hopefully my newness will wear off a bit and they won’t all be touching and grabbing me. Setswana is probably my biggest challenge though. I managed to test as intermediate high at the end of training, but that really didn’t prepare me for speaking it here. Everyone talks very quickly mixing all their words together making it impossible to differentiate them and when I ask them (in Setswana) to repeat what they said slowly, they just change what they’re asking to fit their limited English. So I don’t feel like I’m learning any and I don’t know how to respond to something I don’t understand. Since my village has an extremely low percentage of people who speak English, even the kids who are supposed to be learning it in school for up to 7 years already, I’m definitely going to need to keep working on my Setswana. They say it’s the easiest language to learn and I’ll be fluent in the next two months! We’ll see about that.

Otherwise I’m just in my community assessment, so my days aren’t very busy. Once my Setswana is better, I plan to visit every family’s home and interview every member of the village! I think that would be a great way to get the whole community involved and hear what everyone thinks of the village. Currently, I just go to the school every Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday. I stay long enough to charge all of my electronics and chat with the teachers. When everyone else is busy, I study my Setswana, read, or work on my community assessment. On Wednesdays I go to the clinic to help with anything they need and chat with the nurses. They disperse their HIV medications on one of the last Wednesday’s of the month. In the evenings and weekends, I do my chores like washing the laundry, cooking, sweeping, bathing, etc… and I do lots of reading (I’ve read 4 books since getting here). Sometimes I’ll write some letters (I’m trying to make that a daily thing) or watch a movie, but I mostly read.

I also hosted my first visitors this past weekend. Mike and Marcy who are volunteers I shadowed with in a nearby village called Thamaga. They came over to help me hang my bug net, some picture, fix a couple door locks, move my gas cylinder outside, and help with some other household mends. My house feels so much more like home now! I was very happy to have some friends over who are so amazing and kind to help me! The next step for the house is to have my landlord and a roof guy come fix the roof so that when the wind comes, it doesn’t blow off (right now it lifts about 4 inches with big gusts of wind).

Overall, I’m settling in very well and I’m extremely excited to start my projects! I really feel like this is the perfect village for me and I can’t wait to see how these two years go! What an adventure I’m on!

I’ve Metamorphosed! (But I really think the word should be metamorphisized)

One minute, we’re a group of 74 trainees and the next we’re 74 volunteers! Swear in was a blast! Most of us wore our pretty new traditional dresses or shirts in the case of men (I really thought they should have worn the dresses as well, but none of them went for it.) We took tons of pictures together before the ceremony. Then we sat through long introductions and thank you speeches to the staff and host families. Next came the fun part! We all stood, raised our right hands, and said the same oath that the U.S. president and every other official government worker has to say. We also recited the first ever peace corps pledge for Botswana that our country directer and other staff prepared for us. At the end of the pledge, we were instructed to say “I am a Peace Corps Volunteer” and some of us started to tear up (I didn’t, because I’m clearly more bad-ass than that, but I did give a little squeal, a very bad-ass squeal). Then we sat through some more long and slightly boring speeches. And finally we shook hands with all the officials including the U.S. Ambassador and our country director and we finally received our official volunteer pins! We did it! We’re official volunteers! And for life! When I return, I’ll always be a returned (not retired or ex) peace corps volunteer. Here’s to volunteer life!

It’s Getting Hot In Here, So Wet Down All Your Clothes

Well, we’re officially in spring. I wish it were like the beautiful Washington spring, but instead it’s days of 100 degree weather with no air conditioning or cooling systems. I only just discovered that my home stay has ice cubes, but I can’t get used to that because I most likely won’t have a fridge/freezer in my site. It’s also culturally inappropriate to wear clothes that reveal your knees (specifically your knee pits) and your shoulders and armpits. So I have sweat more this month than I think I have sweat in the rest of my life combined. I’ve started taking cold baths nightly and soaking my t-shirt to get some coolness from that. This is mostly why I decided to cut my hair.

I was trying to grow it out because I thought I would like to pull it back in a ponytail. That way I could go upwards of 6 days without washing it and it would be out of my face. That was a good plan until my sweat was making it so that I had to wash it more often, and I realized I don’t like just pulling my hair back everyday. So I asked Bethany and Evan to buzz my hair (Brenna came along to give support and suggestions). There was a little confusion on what I wanted at first and with how much hair I have, it took over two hours to get the first cut. So we stopped a little earlier than I wanted and decided we’d go back to it. Bethany cut a little more off the top a few days later. And about a week after that we went back at it with the buzzer. Evan didn’t feel comfortable cutting more off, so I enlisted Brad. He went at it happily and then Fatima joined in because she thought it looked fun. Finally we got it to a nice short length that I can not worry about for my lockdown period until In-Service Training in January where my friends will help me out again.

We’ll have to see how hot it still is in January. It will most likely be pretty terrible still as that is the end of summer/beginning of fall. It supposedly starts cooling down for winter around April. I’m not used to this weather, but I am adjusting slightly. We’ll see how it goes.

Three friends in front of peace corps sign

I get by with a little help from my friends

Well, I’m coming to the end of training and am about to go into my cultural immersion phase. The current and previous volunteers refer to cultural immersion as lockdown because you’re not allowed to really leave your village for more than just one day grocery shopping trips. So as I head into lockdown and all of my fellow PCVs and I go off to our respective villages, I think it’s a perfect time to reflect on the friendships I’ve made here.

There were 78 of us when we started and have since become 74. I have made many great friends who have helped me rejoice in my triumphs and supported me in periods of grief, homesickness, and frustration. My five best friends here even helped me chop off all of my hair; thanks Bethany, Evan, Brenna, Fatima, and Brad! There are a few who stand out, but I cherish them all. Training has been an extremely frustrating process because there has been a large lack of communication throughout the entire system and that has lead to a lot of chaos and disorganization. So it’s been extremely helpful to have friends and peers to commiserate with.

You’re most likely going to hear me talk about Bethany a lot. So I might as well give you an idea of our friendship. You’ve probably already seen posts and pictures of the two of us, may have heard me mention her in blogs, and if you’ve talked to me recently, you’ve probably heard me at least mention her. I would definitely say she is my best friend here. We of course get tired of each other occasionally and need a day or two without each other, but otherwise we are pretty much always seen together. People refer to us as soulmates, peace corps spouses, and besties. If we’re seen alone, we’re constantly asked where the other is. I’ve even had people tell me they didn’t want to do something with me that would make Bethany jealous because they’re scared of her. There was a joke going around that she and I were the only couple who got placed in villages near each other because all the other PST couples have been separated across the country (she and I are only about an hour and a half away from each other). She has been the most help while I was processing my grief and processing the changes I would need to make for my village, and she has been a huge supporter for me while I’ve been losing weight and trying to battle with some old scars that have come up with the emotional strain of this experience. I am really lucky to have her and we already have it planned that after lockdown, I’ll be spending a weekend a month with her. Today she made a joke that she bought us ice cube trays because I’ll be over so often. I know that she’ll keep me in check and I’m really lucky that our last names are the same, so we were assigned seats together on the 15 hour flight and a room together during orientation. Otherwise, I’m not sure we would have approached each other.

I could talk about my friends all night long, but I’ll save that for conversations we can have personally. I’m lucky to have so many people to reach out to here because it is a very stressful and emotional time. You never really realize how many emotions can bubble to the surface at a whim until you’re in a completely new and challenging environment. It makes the love and support I get here even more important. It also makes the love and support from you all more important as well. I love and miss you all, but overall, I’m having the time of my life here 🙂