Waiting for PC-Invitation ..from 17 Aug 2006

It’s very late (or early, depending on how you look at it), and I’m bored, so I’ve decided to write a blog entry. I went to sleep last night at 11, woke up at 1:30, lay in bed until 3, and have been awake ever since. I know why I couldn’t sleep. I’m excited about finding out where and when I will be going to work in the Peace Corps—I should be finding that out very soon, I hope—but even more than that, I’m anxious about leaving again, this time for 27 months, and I find myself constantly needing to justify to myself why it is that I want or wanted to go so badly. My best friends and family never really gave me much flak about it, because they know how I am—that it’s not just sheer boredom that’s driving me. It’s great to have their support, because this is a big deal for me, personally, and I’d have trouble going without at least their implicit consent.

The most obvious reasons why I am so anxious and why I consider this to be such a big deal concern the distance and the fact that this experience will last 27 months. Yeah, I’ve spent over two years in Germany, but after having studied German for 6 years prior to going, I was in my comfort zone there soon after I arrived. When my aunts and uncles visited me in Germany in March and took me to France for two days, I was definitely not in my comfort zone, and I know that this is going to be 50x worse. The 12 countries where the PC could send me are: Albania, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Bulgaria, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Krgyrz Republic (I don’t even know how to pronounce that), Macedonia, Moldova, Romania, Turkmenistan, or Ukraine. My best bet would probably be an assignment in a Russian-speaking part of the Ukraine since I studied Russian in college, but even so, there’s no guarantee that they’d send me there, and I only remember how to say, like, 6 words in Russian.

And about those 27-months.. that’s going to be really tough. Every other time I went away, I knew that I would be home within a year, so I was never too home-sick. During the 27-months I might only be able to make it home for my brother’s wedding, and it scares the bejesus out of me that some sort of family emergency could occur, and I’d be in bumfuck kyrgryrzyryzryrzzryr. [Spellcheck is informing me that I might have meant to type “jumbuck” instead of bumfuck. I looked up the word on merriamwebster.com, but apparently it’s only to be found in the unabridged version. shame] I joke, but I worry more than anything else about how horrible it would be if somebody got hurt or died while I was away.

Another thing that scares me about doing this is that the experience could somehow make me a broken, dysfunctional person. For instance, I’d come home and be incapable of communicating with anyone (I already suck at it), and then I’d go and live in a dirty shack without electricity or plumbing like Ted Kaczynski, all the while bitching and moaning about how the United States is egregiously screwing the rest of the world. That’s a worse-case-scenario for sure, but I do know that I would fall out of touch again with some of my friends, not because I want to, but because, that’s what happens when you leave. The most frustrating thing about being home now is the communication gap which has grown between my friends, family, and I, where catching-up is too much like small-talk, and talking about my experiences teaching in Germany is difficult, because people seem too annoyed or disinterested. Even my mom, God love her, wasn’t really aware of what I was doing in Germany until I showed her a scrap-book from the school that a bunch of teachers made for me before I left. I don’t mean that as a bash—I love my mom, and she does have a very active role in my life—but, that’s the way it goes. Maybe I’m too proud—the world doesn’t revolve around me, afterall—but I want people to be involved in my life. On the other hand, I have trouble connecting with what people around me are doing, because I don’t have a full-time job, credit, equity, much debt, a car, much responsibility (other than remembering things like that a cheese-plate only gets 10 crackers and garnish on top of the mustard cups), etc. I still like to chat about things like that, but I’m probably asking the wrong questions, who knows.