Something like life

• I’m choosing to forgo a weekend of Halloween debauchery in favor of…sitting around and doing nothing. I know, lame me is lame, but this is Ecuador. The party is an eight hour bus ride one way, and will entail the same thing Peace Corps parties always do: drinking watery beer until people get too drunk to stand. Only difference is that they will be in costume. Hop on a bus for two hours to the nearest city to do this? Sweet, I’m in. Eight hours, having to deal with the logistics of a hostel and navigating my way through mazes of drunk people who I don’t really know? I’ll pass, thanks.

• Speaking of Christmas, I started downloading music! TWO WEEKS UNTIL I LET MYSELF START TO LISTEN TO IT. It’s the most magical time of the year, and don’t you forget it.

• Speaking of the time BEFORE Christmas, my most amazing friend Charlotte is coming right before Thanksgiving! THIS WILL BE EPIC, I AM CERTAIN.

• Twice now Sitemate and I have run into this perpetually drunk Ecuadorian who keeps rambling at us about heroin and AC/DC. I don’t understand. It would be funny if he weren’t so…persistent. Does he think we have heroin? Is he on heroin? Does he want to sell heroin? I don’t know, but it’s awkward.

• I was force fed guinea pig the other day. I wish this wasn't a commonplace thing. PS TMI: guinea pig makes your hands smell really funny for many hours after you eat it.

• I gave an on-camera interview for Peace Corps that might be used for recruitment purposes. That's right kids, my smiling face could be encouraging YOU to join Peace Corps. Somehow, I managed to be really enthusiastic about it. Don't know how.

• I had a meeting with a community the other day that actually went really well! I’m shocked and amazed. We might even start a composting toilet project there, which would be a godsend to the end of my service.

• I worked with the disabled kids at the foundation for the first time today in like a month. When they saw me in the door they freaked and jumped up to hug me. Some didn’t want to let go. It really made my heart grow three sizes. They really are sweet, sweet kids.

And that is my life in a nutshell!

Thinky thoughts

I'm taking my GRE on Saturday. I'm nervous, and I probably (definitely) haven't studied enough, but it's my second time 'round and I think I'll be fine. Biggest thing is getting to Quito tomorrow-- 4.5 hour bus ride, then waiting around until Sunday so that the Peace Corps Ecuador director can drive me back to my site. Why he wants to do this, why he's even visiting my site...I have no idea.

I'm freaking about getting into grad school, of course I am. I realized the other day that I've been sort of blindly assuming that I'll get in to American, or Denver, but there's a good chance I won't. I thought of how depressed I would be to not get into grad school, and how much that would suck to have a whole year of just working and waiting to reapply. And then I thought of a conversation I had with a fellow volunteer a few days ago.

We had both lived abroad before this. She said:

"It's weird, you know, all the places I've lived I have such a desire to go back to, to live there again, but with Ecuador..."

"You want to get the hell out and never look back?" I supplied. She nodded.

"I can't even put my finger on why. It's a perfectly nice country. I like it here. I just... I want to leave."

And all I could say was: "I know exactly how you feel."

I'm not unhappy. I'm not crying myself to sleep or pining away or drowning my sorrows in chocolate. The place I live is beautiful, the people are nice, the work...could be better, but whatever, I have internet and a great sitemate and a hammock. But I just want to leave. I want to board a plane and never come back.

By the end of my time in Spain I was calling it my second home, my second country. Ecuador never was, and never will be, my country. It will never accept me, and I will always be a foreigner, and outsider, a thorn in its side.

If I get into grad school, I will be the happiest girl on the planet, no lie. But if I don't get in...it won't be the end of the world. I'll still be happy. Because no matter what, I won't be living here anymore. I'll be living in the United States, in a big crazy city with water that I don't have to boil and food that won't give me amoebas and people who look like me and speak my language. I'll find a job, and an apartment, make friends, date, go out on weekends, apply to grad school next year. I'll start looking for an agent for my book. I'll be near my family, and see the change of seasons, and just be so wholly there and not here. And you know what? That's all I need.

My life, let me show it to you

People have been all "so what's life like in the Peace Corps?" Let me give you a typical rundown of a day lately.

Morning:

-Drag my ass grumpily out of bed sometime between 8-9
-Make enough tea to water a small army
-Drink all the tea
-Eat breakfast
-Go to the bathroom every five minutes due to all the tea
-Every time I enter the bathroom I do a sweep check for the tarantulas (yes, I do mean that literally) that like to hide out in my shower and eat small children
- Browse the internet
- Realize I have a class I haven't prepared for.
-That's ok. I just grab an old powerpoint presentation and my laptop and figure that if the teacher doesn't have a plan I'll just show that. Also, it doesn't matter because over 80% of the time class is cancelled anyway due to soccer or parties or something.
-Get dressed
-Walk the fifteen minutes to the local high school
-Realize all the students are in some kind of school-wide meeting. Again.
-Run into some teacher/employee/friend who tells me that I've gotten fatter since he last saw me.
-Find the creepy teacher I'm working with hanging out at a store/cafe instead of teaching class. We plan to have class the following week, but I won't hold my breath. Also, his shirt is unbuttoned down to his navel.
-Return home.

Afternoon:

-Internet
-Revise fanfiction chapters and read blogs
-Eat lunch
-Write entries like this
-Write some fanfiction
-Send out a few emails
-Try to convince myself to do something productive
-This succeeds about 25% of the time. Like yesterday, when I wrote an essay for the PC Ecuador newspaper.
-Keep writing/revising/checking livejournal and gmail compulsively
-Maybe study for the GRE's for like half an hour

Evening:

-Talk to my mom on Skype
-Internet
-Go to dance class. This will end in one of two ways.
- 1. I have the class and return home gross and sweaty to take a shower
- 2. I wait around with a couple other people for 45 minutes (like last night) while the instructor keeps saying the class will start "right now" until I finally get fed up and leave
-Return home.
-Cook dinner
-Internet until bed at around 12:00 am.



So basically.

I have no life.

*sigh*