more Peace Corps melancholy as we near the end

When we first joined the Peace Corps, they made us write a letter our future selves, to be given back to us at Midservice. I started the cleaning out of my apartment today (a huge undertaking after two years) when I found it.

Hello Future Self,

Right now I'm sitting in my bedroom in my host house in Ayora, feeling exhausted. I just completed my agriculture pre-test, and learned to do laundry (ripping my PJ pants in the process), and I can't believe that there are still eight more grueling weeks of training left. In fact, I can hardly believe that I've only been in Ecuador for 1.5 weeks. It feels like forever.

So here's the thing: I know that you remember this moment, poised at the beginning. I know that right now, as you read this, you are marveling that so much time has already passed. But for me, in the past, I know nothing about you. I don't' know if you are happy, sad, irritated, empty, complete, wishing to go home or wishing to stay, content or frustrated. All I have to say to you is: Have patience. Look how fast time moves, from now to you. We can't slow it down. Life passes blindingly fast. Smile. I don't know where you are, but I hope that you are still thankful.

I don't know what to expect from the coming months, except that I hope to work hard, not get too depressed, and maybe do some good. I want to write, a lot. I want to make compost, dig in the dirt, and relish the only time in my fast-moving life when I will get to be a farmer, when I will get to slow down.

I love you, you know, this future vision of me, working the land and speaking Spanish, skin darker than it is now, hair longer, mind more expanded. I love that you are still doing it, that you didn't give up. I love the dream of you. I am your biggest fan. You are, I believe, better than me. You have grown, of this I am sure. I am so proud of you just for trying, just for existing and being me. I cheer you on, across time. I root for you every day.

Don't forget that you have a duty to yourself, to me, to never give up, and never stop appreciating existence.

Love, Sarah

March 7, 2009



I started to cry, just a little. It's almost like I can feel her, in the past, fresh-faced and excited and hopeful, unaware of what the next two years would bring. She was so desperate to belong; she thought that this would be her great adventure; she wanted to change lives. She still had feeling in her thumb. She hadn't yet seen or lived in La Victoria, she hadn't yet witness true poverty. She hadn't learned to hate Ecuadorian music, or learned how to identify someone's region by their indigenous clothing, or how to haggle. She hadn't yet spent weeks trapped and alone. She hadn't met Old Adam, or New Adam, or Moderately Creepy Teacher, or Julie, or Katha, Natalia, Juan Carlos, Guillermina and Gustavo, Dr. Soria. She was dizzy with Ecuador, with its promise and potential. She loved it.

I didn't give up, yet I feel a little like I failed her. I feel cold and jaded now, angry, bitter, cynical. I never got to be a farmer, I never got to make a difference. If she could see me now, I think she would be sad, and disappointed. I would tell her, it's not my fault, I tried, I really did, and she would look at me with pity, maybe a bit of pride too, and say, well, at least you stayed.

And I did stay. Despite it all, I stuck it out. I stuck it out through loneliness and lack of work and knife attacks and improper medical care and amoebas and fear and irritation and dirty water and loud music and a bad counterpart and every fucking thing Ecuador could throw at me. I stuck it out. I stayed.

That is my Peace Corps accomplishment. Because I stayed, I got to have some amazing experiences. I got to travel a diverse country, swim in the Pacific ocean, raft in the Amazon jungle. I got to discover that my brother and I can co-exist for a month and not kill each other. I got to have my first fling. I got to sit barefoot on my roof with a box of wine and talk to a wonderful new friend for hours. I got to live in a place where it is always spring, next to an active volcano that rains down ash when it feels like it. I got to write more than I ever have, I found fandom, I found Show. I made new friends online, some that I now consider some of my best friends (you know who you are). I took night buses and learned Spanish and navigated a South American country all alone. I celebrated New Year's on the beach, birthdays in Rio Bamba and Quito, Thanksgiving with the Ambassador and in the deep jungle, the fourth of July with Americans and missionaries, Christmas taking long flights back home. I did it. I fucking did it.

I fucking did it.

Someone said to me the other day: "(Peace Corps) shouldn't be known as the toughest job you'll ever love. It's the toughest job you'll ever endure." Exactly. I endured it

I kicked Peace Corps' ass.

And now? Now is the end, finally, and that sweet, brave girl in the past can at least know that her hope wasn't entirely without merit. I didn't quit, and soon I can tuck this experience away in the back of my mind, where it will grow rosier with each passing month, until the sharp edges have been softened into something close to nostalgia and fondness.

Who knows, maybe I'll even cry when I leave this place. Just a little.

"Give me your address," I said,

in my still-broken-after-two-years Spanish, "so that I can mail you cards at Christmas."

The sweet Ecuadorian woman, my quasi surrogate-grandmother here, beamed at me. "Oh yes, and then you can let me know when you get married and I can send you something!"

"Oh, but that won't be for a really, really long time."

"Or not. It'll happen when you least expect it," she said. "It's unavoidable. JUST LIKE DEATH."



MARRIAGE.

JUST. LIKE. DEATH.

for Valentine's day I received...

...a group email from my Ecuadorian counterpart:

"Un abrazo cósmico a todos, rompiendo las barreras del tiempo y el espacio." A cosmic hug for everyone, breaking the barriers of time and space.

A COSMIC HUG, BREAKING THE BARRIERS OF TIME AND SPACE.


A COSMIC HUG, TIME AND SPACE.

A COSMIC HUG.


COSMIC.

Peace Corps 20/20 rant

So in a few minutes ABC's 20/20 is going to be on, with a segment on safety of Peace Corps volunteers. I haven't watched the whole thing, but they have clips online, and honestly, I'm a little aggravated.

It's HORRIBLE that some people have died and more have been sexually assaulted and raped -- that should NEVER happen to anyone. And maybe that particular PC program should have stepped in sooner. But don't blame the Peace Corps as a whole, or make the situation out to be worse than it is.

They say: "Over 900 PC volunteers have been sexually assaulted or raped in the last decade." That's sexual assault and rape put together -- the rape number is about 22 in the past decade. Yes, that's horrible. But let's look at the statistics. There are THOUSANDS of people joining PC every year, hundreds per country all across South and Central American, Africa, Asia, Eastern Europe, and island nations. There are young women living on their own in a third world nation where they clearly stand out.

Being assaulted can happen anywhere --in the US too. Actually, looking at the numbers, it's practically more likely that you'll get sexually assaulted or raped living in the US. The numbers, all things considered, are as low as they could possibly be, unless Peace Corps placed a guard on every volunteer's back. Shit happens, especially when you sign up to live this kind of life. It's not Peace Corps' fault.

Also, like I said, every program is different. One young woman who was raped said that PC ignored her warnings and didn't let her change site. That is terrible, and that program needs to be looked at, but I know that that would never happen in PC Ecuador. Part of the reason they let me move so fast is that I felt unsafe in my old site. You say anything, ANYTHING about feeling scared or unsafe and they move you immediately, sometimes so immediately that you're not allowed to return to site to pick up your stuff. You're just gone. Our housing safety standards are extremely rigorous, sometimes to the point of impossibility -- your house must have bars on all the windows, can't be located anywhere near a bar or club or hangout, etc. It makes it hard to even find housing half the time. Plus we get weekly updates on possible dangers and the state of the country.

Shit happens everywhere, and it's terrible. A volunteer was sexually assaulted in Ecuador by armed men in a cab, while her male volunteer friend had mace sprayed in his eyes so he was blinded and could do nothing to stop them. I literally went hand to hand with a man with a kitchen knife, and have the scars to prove it. I sleep with a knife under my bed. Ecuador is dangerous. So is Africa, Asia, and the rest of South America. So is the United States. It's a dangerous world; don't blame Peace Corps for not being able to prevent every tragedy.

I genuinely believe that Peace Corps does the best it can with an inherently dangerous line of work. Not even necessarily because they care, which I'm sure they do, but because it's a government organization that is very visible to the public, and it's currently expanding. They can't afford bad press.

So, yeah. Watch the 20/20 segment if you like, I'm sure it's very informative and my heart goes out to the people who have endured such horrible experiences. Just take it with a grain of salt.

PEACE CORPS: TWO YEARS IN FACEBOOK STATUSES

Written for my last edition of the Peace Corps Ecuador magazine. Still unedited, so forgive mistakes.

PEACE CORPS: TWO YEARS IN FACEBOOK STATUSES
(AKA: the recollections of a soon-to-be RPCV via an online social medium)

Facebook Profile

SS Evans

Volunteer at Peace Corps – Studied Writing at University of Pittsburgh – Lives in Patate – From Allentown, Pennsylvania – Born on June 7, 1986

Status:

February 18, 2009: Five days until Baltimore, six days until DC, and I STILL haven't packed.

February 23, 2009: I am joining the Peace Corps tomorrow. Goodbye America.

February 26, 2009: I am in Ecuador! It´s beautiful and I´m having a great time.

The night I arrive in Quito it is lightly raining, warm and lush. On the bus ride to the hostel I sit with my head half out the open window in the rain, listening to the chatter of people around me, hardly able to believe that I am in Ecuador.

When we arrive at hostal San Javier a horde of volunteers shake the bus, whooping and singing. They hand us roses; mine has a strip of paper tied with bright ribbon, that says Don’t Worry, Be Happy. After our very first merienda we sit in the open-air veranda, playing cards and drinking boxed wine. The rain has stopped, and despite the cool city night the sky is sprinkled with stars.

This is the start of something; I just don’t know what yet.

April 3, 2009: I´m a little scared shitless of my site!

The site visit is a disaster. The cluster of houses is perched on the side of a mountain, dirty, without clean water or proper sanitation. The people stare when I pass; already, in the middle of the afternoon, the town’s elderly are passed out drunk in the streets. A toothless woman hollers some unintelligible words at me. My future house is unfinished and lonely, accessed by a thin dirt path through frijole fields.

My landlord’s wife confesses to me in a hushed voice that he beats her. Her very young son is crying; his leg hurts, and when his baggy sweatpants are pulled up from his bare feet it reveals a purple leg, thick and infected from a festering cut, veins like bulging rivers under the skin. I say, this child has to go to a doctor.

Don’t cry, she instructs her son. Boys don’t cry. She rinses it with dirty water and wraps it in dry leaves and an old handkerchief. I beg her to let me take him to a doctor. Gathered in my arms, he is light and smells like a lifetime of dirt and smoke.

At the clinic, the doctor’s young son watches from the corner of the room as the doctor disinfects the leg and gives the boy shots of antibiotics. The difference between the two is startling visible: the doctor’s son is clean and bright, shoulders straight, interested and unafraid. The campo boy hunches his shoulders perpetually, like a dog expecting to be beaten. His skin is much darker, his clothes a mess of filth. My arms and shirt from where I carried him are smudged dark brown.

You saved his leg, the doctor tells me. You probably saved his life.

Two years in this town.

I return from my Site Visit composed, but break down hysterically two nights later, alone in my host family’s house. I wonder, for the first time, why the hell I am here.

May 3, 2009: Of course "your house is completely finished, I swear it´s definitely finished" in Ecuadorian means "you have no door and no lights and it´s filled with trash!" Just as well, means I get to rest in awesome Patate for a few more days.

Patate, the clean and safe town a twenty minute drive from my site, becomes my refuge. I stay with a family while my house is being completed; they become my pseudo-host family, and their house smells like jasmine and the surprisingly pleasant scent of Raid. Even when I move into my site, I take refuge here, staying in Patate for days at a time.

My community isn’t interested in work. They aren’t interested in anything but drinking and harassing me. I find jobs in Patate, retreating there two days out of the week like a dog licking my wounds. At my site, I do yoga, I read, I wander the streets in expensive hiking boots and try to build some semblance of a life. It doesn’t work.

In the middle of the night, a drunk pounds on my door, demanding to be let in. He yells curses at me, telling me that my landlord said he could use the extra room in my house when he has nowhere else to go. He tells me that my landlord has a key and can let him in any time. He asks me if I am afraid.

I leave the community shortly after that.

August 5, 2009: Watching ¨The Mummy¨ in Spanish, going to the weekly market, recuperating from Puyo and planning more fun for this weekend, house hunting, and generally shirking my responsibilities. Just another day in Ecuador! ..and yes, I said house hunting. :-)

I find an apartment in Patate. It’s nuns that help me move, old ladies in their black habits carting boxes and chairs up rocky dirt paths and into the back of a camioneta. They are joined by the one family I have become friends with here: young Estrella with her baby on her back, barefoot children, the cross-eyed grandmother and the mentally disabled brother who can’t speak but who helps carry my heavy dresser with enthusiasm.

We ride one last time down the mountain, the last time I will ever ride that road. I am squeezed in the front seat next to a nun, a fat-cheeked baby on my lap, the sky dusky with the dim oranges and purples of twilight. The lights from far-off cities are already on, the moon bright in a still-blue sky. I feel God in the road, in the moon, the chubby baby, the fading sky. I feel life.

September 13, 2009: Craziest. Week. Ever. As in, ever. As in, my life.

I meet him in a café in Quito. He is from Canada, a world-traveler, scruffy with messy dark hair and perpetual stubble, a silly wide-brimmed Indiana Jones hat, and a frayed rucksack. We talk for hours, until breakfast turns into lunch and lunch turns into dinner and dinner turns into an invitation for him to take me back to my site.

He stays, for a long time. He plays the guitar at night, strumming the same songs with careless ease, playing me “Sister Golden Hair.” We wander through town during festivals with two of the free boxes of vino that are being passed out from huge trucks in the parade. We go to communities and hike winding cloud-forest trails; he helps with my charlas and I help him speak with campo doctors to see if there is any need for volunteers with EMT training.

We make sushi on the floor of my new apartment, barefoot and cross-legged. We roll avocado and hot rice and prawns and crab in paper-thin seaweed, then eat it with our hands. He makes me crepes for breakfast. We take day and weekend trips to different towns and cities, just for the journey itself.

He leaves, eventually. I miss his presence, the displaced air of someone else in this small apartment, but my heart is not broken.

October 31, 2009: The continuing adventures of Sarah and her ridiculous stomach! See Sarah take the utmost precautions in food and beverage and still vomit all night, forcing her to miss the whitewater rafting trip she has been waiting months for! And as an added bonus, see her then have to ride 8.5 hrs on winding, bumpy Ecuadorian roads to get back to her site!

November 29, 2009: I have amoebas. Now that's sexy

I get sick during the big Halloween trip to El Chaco. I spend the night huddled over the toilet, no doubt keeping up my poor roommates, and the next day I bail, crawling onto a bus and desperately praying to get back to my site without blowing chunks all over the bus driver.

Sick and sleepless as I am, the road from Tena to Quito is astounding, and I am sitting in the ‘death seat’ at the very front, and like a movie rolling the credits, a string of Thank You’s wells up in my throat. Thank you for allowing me to be in Ecuador. Thank you for green jungle trees and hot blue sky. Thank you for mountains and winding roads, bridges so narrow and old that you feel thrillingly like you might fall in at any moment. Thank you for yawning gorges. Thank you for water tumbling over rocks and mud, clear, cool. Thank you for letting me be alive, for the blessing that is the sheer act of living.

I don’t know who I am thanking, but it helps. My breathing calms; my nausea subsides. I thank the universe for that, too.

December 31, 2009: Going to cold, cold Guaranda for New Years. Ah well, there's always next year for the beach.

January 4, 2010: Julie and I saw a man give a drowned pigeon mouth-to-mouth. It didn't work.

I watch the pigeon drown while waiting for Julie to show up for our lunch. I’m in a park in Ambato, and I see the pigeon flapping its wings in the water. At first I think it is bathing, but then it starts to sink, and its movements become thrashing and panicked. I wonder what to do. I could climb in the fountain and rescue it, wrap my hands around its disease-ridden little body and lift it out of the water. But I would get my sneakers wet, and then have to walk around in wet sneakers all day.

As I’m contemplating, the pigeon drowns.

A man sees it in its final moments and leaps into the water, sloshing to its side. It’s clearly not breathing. Back on dry land, he pries open its little beak and pushes on its fragile chest while breathing into its mouth. It would be funny, if it wasn’t so sad. He keeps trying, and trying, even after it is obvious the bird is dead. He won’t give up.

Julie can’t hide her disgust. How gross! she says, then looks over at me.

I am crying. I don’t really know why.

February 8, 2010: Attempted to fight off an attacker who had a knife. 12 stitches in my hand, no nerve damage. Stuck in Quito at the doctor's, all my clothing and my shoes covered in my own blood. Can barely type this. So...

February 11, 2010: Finally back in Patate, and determined to let nothing interrupt my well-deserved laziness. Also: functioning without a right hand is difficult. Can't write, or do dishes. Shower with a bag over it. Lighting matches for my gas cooker is abysmal. Wish I had someone who wasn't a fictional character here to cheer me up.

The night of the attack, after my hand is stitched up and swathed in gauze and pounding like, well, like someone just sliced it open with a kitchen knife, Julie and I go to a Happy Pollo, because it is the only fast-food restaurant still open.

It is eleven o’clock at night when we walk in. I am covered in blood, my jeans dyed a deep rust red, my sneakers saturated, splashes still on my face. My hair is wild and unbrushed, my hand a huge bandaged mitten. I can’t feel a huge chunk of my thumb. It is numb, dead, like it is made of wood instead of flesh; later I discover that I will never regain sensation in that part of my hand.

We get a meal and I try to eat it with one hand, but I am not left-handed and most of the rice slips from my fork before I can get it to my mouth. My toes are sticky from the semi-dry blood that has soaked through my socks.

When I finally return to Patate the town festivals are going on, loud and raucous. Music pounds through the walls, the beat shaking the very cement and rattling the windows. I drag my mattress into the kitchen and make a blanket fort with my plastic chairs, the lights burning all night, a knife under my pillow. The locks on my door seem suddenly very flimsy and ineffective. My right hand is still tender and useless, and I try very hard not to be afraid.

This is my lowest point in Ecuador, and it is very, very low.

Things get better, but it takes time. Even in Ecuador, life falls into routine.

March 6, 2010: found a biblical amount of huge, maggot-like worms in her apartment. This is how sexy my life is in Ecuador.

March 20, 2010: For mysterious reasons, no power on my block until "at least Monday." Looks like I'll be spending my time at the internet cafe...

March 22, 2010: has electricity! Woohoo! I feel like I'm livin' large.

March 28, 2010: More worms in my goddamn house! FML.

April 8, 2010: I feel like 95% of my Peace Corps life is sitting on my hands and wondering what I am going to do that day. It is seriously depressing to not have enough work.

April 29, 2010: One year of being a PCV. One to go!

May 1, 2010: The shop next door has been blasting the same 30 second commercial on a loop for the past two hours. Fuck you, Ecuador.

May 4, 2010: Apparently we are now entering monsoon season. I have two options to get the store: swim or canoe. Or a gondola.

May 28, 2010: Volcano Tungurahua just erupted. Roads are blocks because of ash fall. Airports closed. In Quito now, so I might not be able to go back to my site, being that I am the closest volunteer to the volcano. Peace Corps Ecuador: Causing me to type words I never thought I would type.

May 28, 2010: Just confirmed: Am stuck in Quito "until further notice."

I am the closest volunteer to a very active volcano. I have a clear view of it from my room, smoke billowing black out the top during the day. At night, low rumbles like far-off thunder disturb my sleep, and when it is clear I can see red shooting out the top, sparks flying, magma snaking down the sides.

I am in Quito when the big eruption happens. While roads from Ambato to Guayaquil are being cleared of ash I go to Cotacachi and Otavalo with friends, reveling in the unexpected vacation.

At the end of a long day we pile onto the hard bench behind the bus driver, crammed in side-by-side. I am pressed against the window, staring directly over the driver’s mostly bald head. It is raining, but the moon is hanging low, full and fat and yellow, the mountains shadowed like heaped blankets. New friends are packed beside me like they are old friends; I tell them secrets, and I feel like I fit into my own skin for the first time in a long time.

The bus rumbles through a dark night in Ecuador, headlights cutting through the night like beacons, and I am content.

June 5, 2010: Annndddd gearing up for midservice conference. Can´t believe it´s already here. Ten months to go!

June 30, 2010: Sign I've been in Ecuador too long: When, after finding a used condom on the floor of the bus, my first thought is: "Oh great, they're using condoms! Progress!"

July 15, 2010: I am moderately afraid of small children, never knows what to say to them, and finds the constant necessary peppiness draining. So of course, I decide to start working with disabled Ecuadorian kids. Comfort zone, I am now leaving it.

I learn to appreciate small blessings: Finding (after 16 months!) sour cream at the grocery store. One of the ladies at the weekly market saving me the last bag of fresh basil, its scent sharp and poignant. Hot, sunny skies. Running for the first time in a long time, legs sore and feeling like jelly.

I find work at Fundación Manos Unidas, helping disabled children and the beleaguered women who teach them. It’s a far cry from Agriculture, but my main projects never really panned out—lack of interest is my greatest enemy in Ecuador. The foundation gives me a sense of purpose, someplace to go several times a week, people who are happy to have me there.

At first, it’s overwhelming. The children are nervous of this strange, yellow-and-pink newcomer. The teachers don’t know what to make of me. I hover in the background, anxious.

After two months, I have small bodies hanging from my hips whenever I try to walk, clinging to my legs and screaming when I try to leave. They fling themselves at me when I walk in, faces breaking into huge smiles, and I smile too, because it just feels so damn good to be wanted.

One little girl is filthy, as are her brothers and sisters. They are a large family, at least six just in the foundation. They have been abused and neglected their whole lives; they can’t speak properly, they are violent, smacking each other and other children, speaking in cries and grunts, shying away from normal human contact.

This little girl, she sees me hugging another child. She is pretty, delicate, but dirt and snot is caked so thickly on her face that it is hard to see past it. Her hair a wild mess of filth, her clothing torn; she looks like a parody of poverty, a Dickensian archetype with huge, liquid-brown eyes. I smile at her, tentatively, and then she steps closer and wraps her arms around my waist for the first time.

I hug her back, and make a mental note to shower when I get home.

July 31, 2010: Dear God they've started to remix indigenous music. Oh. Just when I thought it couldn't get any worse.

August 12, 2010: Woken up by a 6.9 earthquake this morning and didn't even get out of bed. It's amazing what you get used to.

August 13, 2010: Found a dance aerobics class in Patate, only three blocks from my apartment. How did I never know this existed? Looks like I'll be shimmying my hips every night from now on.

August 26, 2010: Must. Study. For. GREs. Must. Not. Waste. All. Day. On. Internet.

August 28 2010: Ah, the life of a Peace Corps volunteer. Running around to give charlas that inevitably no one will show up to. Sigh.

September 4, 2010: Three weeks, bitches, until airplane rides and English-speakers and big family dinners and paved roads and dog/chicken/goat/pig-less cities and clean water and fall leaves and the sweet sweet joy of throwing toilet paper in the toilet. Ya'll know what I'm talking about.

While I am home for my sister’s wedding, there is a police strike in Ecuador. All airports are closed; the president is claiming that subversives are trying to overthrow him. “If you want to kill the President, here he is,” Correa proclaims. “Kill him, if you want to. Kill him if you are brave enough!”

We follow the news on the internet in between setting up the house for the wedding. While white square plates and delicate glass goblets are being carted to the backyard and garlands of fresh flowers are being set around the huge rented tent, Ecuador is rioting, the streets of Quito thick with the smell of smoke and the sound of gunfire. I fold cloth napkins and wrap huge silver bows around flower pots while Correa makes his impassioned speech to the world.

My family hopes that the country will fall into disarray, simply so that I won’t have to go back.

November 27, 2010: I had an amazing Thanksgiving, complete with Jungle turkeys and whitewater rafting. Now time to stock up and bunk down for the census.

November 27, 2010: The volcano, she's a'blowin'

December 11, 2010: Tomorrow starts the long journey of buses and taxis and night flights home. Christmas, here I come!

There is a moment, right before I go home for Christmas, when I am sick and steaming my head to clear out my sinuses. Maybe it’s the illness, maybe the prostrate position, the Christmas music playing softly in the background, but again that strange swell of Thank You wells up in my gut. I move from the pot of hot water to the floor, press my forehead to the tiles, and allow myself to be happy.

December 29, 2010: First bus company I went to was sold out. Second one I tried: Tonight and tomorrow are totally booked, except for one last seat left on a bus tonight, which I snagged. Lucky? I think so. Looks like I'll be celebrating the New Year on the beach! Could my life be any more of an emotional rollercoaster?

January 1, 2011: Best New Year´s of my life. Well, I´ll be damned.

I end the year in Puerto Lopez, sand between my toes, blue sky above, new and old friends showing up when least expected. I have only three months left of my Peace Corps service.

When midnight comes we count down, howling at the moon, fireworks lighting up the sky with red and gold. We dance in the street, gringos mixing with Ecuadorians, feet bare and hair unbound. The munecas burn to ashes, burning the past, leaving the future a clean slate.

I dance. This is the start of something; I just don’t know what yet.

January 1, 2010: I have to say, 2011 is going to be fabulous.

apparently the volcano is in the Christmas spirit

"What is on me?" Sitemate asked as we went running through the mountains today. I looked over; his black shirt and hair was coated with tiny white dots. I shrugged.

"Dunno. It looks like baby powder exploded on you."

We kept running. I started to notice flurries, which quickly picked up, covering my clothes and glasses. But it wasn't snow.

It was volcanic ash.

"So...are we gonna die?" Sitemate asked perkily. My mouth started to taste like grit.

"I certainly hope not. But let's get inside. And, uh, find a mask."

"Instead of running, let's watch Supernatural," he proclaimed. "I want a beer."

I laughed. "Exercise and then beer?"

"I know, I'm bipolar with my health."

"How about box wine instead?" I asked, giving up any pretense of a healthy lifestyle. "We'll make Christmas cookies."

"Deal," he said, as we walked through the gently falling ash, sucking some in with every breath. "God, I do not want to know what the inside of my lungs looks like right now."

things I never thought I'd say

Dude, this volcano is starting to seriously freak me out. The rumble is constant, as is the lava and it sets all the dogs in town howling.

As Sitemate said: "It's gonna blow."

Little nervous, tbqh. Last time it blew all the roads were blocked with ash and the airports were shut down. And that was a small eruption.

This is the volcano: