Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes

September 27, 2009

So, I’m not even a month into my service yet, and I think it’ll be useful for me to reflect on how much I’ve already changed/adapted down here. Here are the top 5, in no particular order:

Clean Living: I have had alcohol exactly twice since I came down here: two beers when I went to visit Santa Teresa the other weekend, and two beers with everyone else on the penultimate day of our in-country orientation. This summer, I had a beer with most of my dinners, and some of my lunches, and many a tigers’ game, not to mention going out and doing karaoke with Sam and friends sometimes multiple times per week, which required imbibing significant quantities of courage juice. Overall, I can’t say I miss the drinking part that much (though I do miss being ridiculous at karaoke). The PC encourages us not to drink at all during our two years of service, since doing so even in moderation tends to get exaggerated if people in your site see you doing it. It can damage reputations, make people less safe, plus is expensive when trying to live on a PC budget. I feel like I probably won’t drink much in my site, but that if I’m out for a weekend with other volunteers away from all of our sites, I wouldn’t hesitate to have a few.

Early to Bed and Early to Rise: I go to bed at like, 8 or 9 o’clock on weeknights. I wake up with the chickens and the sun around 5:30. I’m pretty ok with this. I feel good, I get enough sleep, and most importantly I feel like I’m not under the constant pressure that I felt during teaching then organizing then teaching for the past two years. I feel more balanced. It would be perfect if I felt I could go running at night, which I almost certainly will do come November, and might do sooner if I can remember to broach the topic with my host family before then. Also different for me is sleeping in pajamas, which I haven’t done since I was a little kid, but do here to minimize my skin-to-bed contact and to stay decent for my host family.

Spoon-Fed: It’s weird to have meals served to me again after twoish years of making or getting nearly everything for myself. Most of the food is really good, and I really have no quejas, since my family is being so kind and going out of their way to make everything more or less healthy and vegetarian for me. But I do look forward to cooking for myself again once I get to my site. Yesterday I bought ingredients and today I will hopefully cook dinner for my family for the first time (pasta with marinara sauce and sautéed veggies and soy meat, mmmmm). We’ll see how they like it, but I’m expecting to be overjoyed to taste basil and pepper and EV olive oil and real marinara sauce for the first time in a month. I also bought whole wheat bread, which I can combine with my mora berry jam and Liz’s peanut butter to make delicious sandwiches, hopefully throughout the week.

Hot Enough For Me Everywhere But The Shower: There’s no hot water in Nicaragua. OK, maybe there is in the big cities, but at least in Dolores, it’s all about Lake-Michigan-in-September cold. I’ve gotten used to just getting wet, then turning the water off while I soap up, and then rinsing off in about 7 minutes everyday. I use a ton less water for showering and for brushing my teeth as well, which I do with water from my trusty water bottle.

News Absorber -> News Generator: I used to spend an inordinate amount of time absorbing news and opinions on world events. There were a few months where I’d read every post on fivethirtyeight.com (an excellent blog combining politics, polls, statistics and occasionally humor), and would start all my days by checking the latest stories on slate.com and the opinion section of the New York Times. No more. Now, the precious little internet time I do allow myself down here tends to go almost exclusively to talking to people back home, whether that’s calling my parents, or skyping with Kim, or AIM-ing with old MSU friends, or of course updating this blog, and reading comments and emails and facebook wall posts. I got to thinking today, as I binged for the first time on an hour of Slate’s political gabfest (a constant companion of mine on weekends this past year), that maybe part of why I didn’t put many thoughts out into the world last year for public consumption was that I always prioritized taking in ideas instead of writing about my own. I feel like the reversal of this is a welcome change, to an extent. I still wish I knew more of what was going on in the world than just what Kanye West did at the MTV movie awards (which was the only piece of news a volunteer I was talking to could remember hearing about America recently); but I’m glad to be free of the burden of constantly checking on what NYT columnists are saying vs. what the cable commentators are babbling vs. what the writers at Slate are blogging about whatever tiny thing is happening in the political universe at the moment. It’s nice to step away from the echo chamber, and to have all that time to do other things.

On a completely different note, I got mail on Saturday! It made me so happy! Thank you so much Kim and Jeff for taking the time to send me things! I felt wonderful all weekend as a result, and sincerely hope the things I've sent (and are sending today) are eventually going to get to where they're going.