If
you had told me one year ago that…
1.
…I
would return to West Africa…
2.
…I
would feel wasteful using more than six scoops of water in a bucket bath…
3.
…I
would be teaching high school physics and chemistry…
4.
…I
would celebrate over the day we found a (sub-par) $10 bottle of wine…
5.
…I
would argue with a shopkeeper over buying a big bag of coal for more than $4
US…
6.
…I
would light a coal pot with a piece of plastic and one match in ten minutes…
7.
…I
would eat half of a 25-kilogram bag of rice in three months…
8.
…I
would be so excited to see real tomatoes or potatoes…
9.
…I
would lead an almost exclusively vegetarian diet…
10.
…on
the days we did find chicken in the market, we’d take it home and cook it,
never
minding the fact it was once frozen and is now warm from the heat…
11.
…I
would be “cold” on nights when it hits 75 F or so…
12.
…one
of my best friends would be a girl from Ohio with a completely different
upbringing, musical taste, and interests than me…
13.
…we
would laugh over the time we literally scooped the poop out of our toilet…
14.
…I
could brag I helped someone kill a mouse with a shoe…
15.
…I
would kill a cockroach I found in my room without screaming or freaking out…
16.
…I
would survive without Diet Coke…
17.
…I
would look forward to days we ate burnt garlic bread and spaghetti with okra…
18.
…I
would get so excited over tuna salad sandwiches for lunch…
19.
…I
would walk to school in the pouring rain to ensure my students had some classes
on a rainy day…
20.
…I
would learn to embrace my crazy mefloquine dreams…
21.
…I
would regularly wake up at 5:30 or 6:00 am without an alarm clock…
22.
…I
would grow to love my site so much that I dreaded coming to training…
23. ...I wouldn't be able to handle thinking about leaving the students I have already
grown so close to...
…I
would have called you crazy. Instead,
here I am. It’s still hard for me to
believe that I’m a Peace Corps Volunteer in one of the most beautiful countries
on this planet. Mama Liberia has
embraced me with open arms, and I am so grateful for the opportunity that this
has provided me.
Good Day Caitlin!
ReplyDeleteSorry to bother you. My name is Ray Blakney and I am a RPCV from Mexico. I am working on a 3rd goal project with the PC regional offices and the main office in DC to try to create an online archive to keep the language training material made all over the world from getting lost. I have created a sub-section on the website my wife and I run - http://www.livelingua.com - with all the information I have been able to get to date (from over the web and sent to me directly by PC staff and PCV's). I currently have close to 100 languages with ebooks, audios and even some videos.
The next step for this project is that I am trying to get the world out about this resource so that it can not only be used by PCV's or those accepted into the Peace Corps, but also so that when people run across material that is not on the site they can send it to me and I can get it up for everybody to use. I was hoping that you could help getting the word out by putting a link on this on your site at:
http://caitlin-pcliberia.blogspot.com/
so that people know it is there. There should be something there for almost everybody. It is all 100% free to use and share. Here is the specific page of the Peace Corps Archive:
http://www.livelingua.com/peace-corps-language-courses.php
Thanks for any help you can provide in making this 3rd goal project a success. And if anybody in your group has some old material they can scan or already have in digital form, and want to add to the archive, please don't hesitate to pass them my email. Thanks and have a great day.
Ray Blakney
blakney.ray@gmail.com