The Future Is In The Future

I’m writing this entry from a very colorful hotel in the very colorful town of La Palma, El Salvador.

That means a lot has happened since my last entry. I’m officially no longer a Peace Corps Volunteer (PCV); I’m now a Returned Peace Corps Volunteer (RPCV), even though I haven’t actually returned yet. I rang the bell that hangs in the PC office in Managua to signal the end of my service on Monday with four of the best friends I made down here: Donna, Meg, Alex, and Liz. All of the people in the office, staff and volunteers came out to clap and congratulate us and wish us well. It was bittersweet, but a lot more sweet than bitter in the moment.

The question just about everyone I’ve talked to in the last three months has asked me is: what’s next? And I tell them that I know exactly what I’ll be doing until January 1^st, but that after that, I have no idea.

The things that I’m going to be doing until January 1^st are: travel through El Salvador with Meg, Alex, her husband Alex, and Donna (which we’ve already done); then, while Meg, Alex and Alex go ahead of us, Donna and I will go to the Copán ruins in Honduras before passing into Guatemala to spend almost two weeks in Antigua, Lake Atitlán, the Semuc Champey Caverns, and the Tikal ruins; then we’ll head up to Mexico and spend more than two weeks going through the Yucatán, Chiapas, Oaxaca, and Mexico City. We fly out of Mexico on December 20^th, and arrive in Baltimore, where we’ll spend the week before Christmas with my family, and hopefully see a lot of people that we know around there. On Christmas Day, we’ll fly into Chicago, and will spend the whole week between Christmas and New Year’s hanging out with Donna’s family and our Chicago friends.

And that brings us to the first. Which is as far as I could get, as far as planning goes, during the hectic last couple of months of my service. I’m going to live in the present for now, and enjoy the experiences I have lined up for myself. When I get back, I’ll figure out what I’m doing with my life. It’s not an ideal plan; I’d really have loved to have had a job lined up to go back to. But this is a unique point in my adult life, where I both have the time and resources to travel, and no formal commitments to hold me back. So, as they say in Nicaragua, “Hay que aprovechar” (you have to take advantage!).

And so! Even though my service is over, this blog still has a little life left in it. I’m happy to announce that Donna and I will be sharing blogging duties from here until the end of our trip! We’ve got my computer with us, and so we hope to post pictures, thoughts, and assure worried family members that we’re still alive, all throughout our month on the road. Tomorrow we cross the Honduran border (again) on our way to see Copán, where we hope to post our first blog entry about El Salvador! Until then, buenas noches!