We miss you

I started my day with a super wonderful skype call.  I got to talk to my brother, Jamey, his girlfriend, Lilly, my cousin Jeff, and his girlfriend, Courtney.  They all just moved in together and although I’m absolutely dying of jealousy because I think it would be so fun to live with all of them, it was so great to see their faces and hear their voices.  I got to see my brother’s dog, Murray, who’s absolutely giant these days and he’s still so young.  It kills me sometimes to be so far away, but skype really does take the edge off sometimes.  I miss everyone so much.

One of the things volunteers here talk about all the time, is how hard it is for anyone at home to really understand what this is like.  This isn’t like a group self pity session, it’s not that we’re all upset because we feel misunderstood, it’s that it can be so frustrating to realize that no one but the people you go through this with will ever really get what you’re life is like.  We all have the issue when we finally can get out of our village and get to an internet source, we want to talk to people, to hear how they are doing, hear their voices, see their faces, and so often people forget we planned a skype session or can’t talk.  What people don’t realize, is that sometimes, those skype dates are how we get through the week, they are how we stay sane when we are being driven crazy by our community partners who won’t lift one finger to help us, or host moms who need to take you on a whiney guilt trip every time you don’t eat every last bit of food they put on your plate, or when your host sister cries about everything and doesn’t have the common courtesy to say hi to you…ever, or the parasite that has been making you sick and giving you horrible stomach cramps, or just the fact that you had diarrhea into a horrible smelling hole in the ground for a week straight.  Every week is not like this, but plenty of them are, and I am always so incredibly renewed when I can hear the voice of a friend, or my mom, or my brothers just to say hi and hear that they miss me or that they love me.  Hearing someone say they are proud of me pretty instantly reduces me to tears.  Not sad tears, but really really grateful ones. 

I think the perception of people at home is that we are all on this amazing adventure.  That’s not false, but to us, this “amazing adventure” is just life now because we’re living it every day.  The idea of “amazing adventure” wore off in the first month or so of being here, and we remember occasionally, but it’s real life to us now and this real life is really hard!  It’s wonderful too, and challenging, and it is exactly where I want to be, but, what is an amazing adventure in the minds of people at home, has become a hard life for us here.  I am grateful to be here, but I am isolated. 

I think what is strange for people, is that for those who weren’t at college with me, I talk to them more now than I did then, but I was surrounded by people I loved all the time in college.  Here, I don’t get to see other volunteers all the time and I’m alone the majority of the time living a life that is somewhere between camping and what I’m used to…in Spanish.  It’s hard how disconnected I feel from my home, my family, my friends…everything familiar is now so far away.  I try to write letters all the time so that I’ll get mail back, to hear in detail about people’s lives, to feel more connected, to feel like I still have a place waiting for me back home, to feel like I haven’t been forgotten, and to have letters to put up on my wall so I can look at it when I get lonely or frustrated and remind myself how much support I have.  It’s so frustrating to write letters and not hear back.  I remember that feeling, like I had no time in the States, I understand where people are coming from but it doesn’t take that long to just sit down and write a letter, or an email.  I think people probably think we’re needy, but if you lived the life we are living here, you’d understand.  We miss you, and everything that reminds us of home, that's all.