Where I'm at.

I haven't blogged in a while.  I figured maybe this is a better way to express myself since I've been getting some flack for my new habit of posting to facebook.  To be fair people, I just uprooted my whole life and moved myself to a place where I am confined to about a 3 mile radius of my apartment (due to lack of a vehicle) and I don't know anyone here, and mostly, the people I am surrounded with every day are not people who belong to my normal peer group (i.e. they are undergraduates).  This is my blog, so if I'm not allowed to update about me here, I give up. haha

I woke up this morning to a skype call from Dany.  I'm really loving the fact that we are finally able to skype.  I wish I could say the delay wasn't due to the fact that Dany didn't realize he could just use his skype username and shouldn't put his email...but I can't.  He's not particularly technologically savvy but we're working on it.  Lucky for me he has a great learning curve.  Regardless, I'm so happy we are finally able to see each other on the regular and waking up to his face and his voice was lovely.  However, I could tell, after we hung up, that today was going to be a nostalgia day and I was right.

I've spent most of today thinking about Peru, about my Peace Corps friends, my host family, that pace of life, that job, and my fiance and wishing I could go back to it.  I miss that pace, I miss that lifestyle, I miss all the control I had.  I was talking to my friend Sam the other day about how I'm doing these days and I think more than anything, I miss the active involvement I had in making my own schedule on a day to day basis.  I miss that freedom and control.  Here, my life is dictated by assignment due dates, class schedules, and exams.  I don't get to decide what I'm going to do every day.  I am back to the lifestyle of planning down to the minute, taking advantage of every second I have because there aren't enough hours in the day.  I guess the best way to describe it, is that I used to feel like I had too many hours in the day and now I feel like there aren't enough.  I miss the old feeling haha

I sort of bumbled around this morning.  I was feeling low and sort of wallowing around in my nostalgia, which always seems to render me unproductive and unmotivated.  I watched an episode of Glee and then made some coffee.  The coffee helped and I got myself going on Physiology homework I have due Wednesday.  I spent forever on that homework and by the time I got through it and started studying for my physiology test that I have tomorrow, I had gotten myself through three cups of coffee.  My tolerance has still not really come back from pre-Peace Corps times and three cups of coffee have sort of done me in.  I kept drinking it hoping it would take away the weight I feel pressing down on the top of my head and shoulders.  Right about now, I realize that weight is just sadness and nostalgia for Peru and Peace Corps.  It is distracting, and exhausting to carry around.  I also was hoping that the coffee would somehow expand my mind and allow me to pack a whole lot more information in there, but all it managed to do was get me to a point where I have slightly less control over my hands because they are shaking a little.  Coffee makes me feel like the whole inside of my body is bouncing around, vibrating, and that my skin is the only thing that keeps all my cells from flinging themselves out into oblivion in every direction.  It's sort of disconcerting.  Definitely overestimated my tolerance.

The rest of this evening I'll be cramming physiology into my head, which is hard at this point because my mind has been so incredibly saturated with information, but physiology is SO fascinating.  It feels good to be studying this stuff.  I feel like I am finally studying what I should be studying.  I've always so admired my mom's passion for plant biology and her incredible ability to remember SO many details about plants, latin names, cellular mechanisms, etc etc etc.  Truthfully, I've found it a little irritating too (like spending an hour looking at glass models of plants and watching her cry and actually say "these are my friends" while she tenderly touches the exhibit case).  However, I've finally found what makes me shamelessly nerdy like my mother.  I am exactly the same way she is, except about the human body instead of plants.  It's exciting, really, because I'm settling into what I am supposed to do, what is right for me to do.  I'm finding my place and all the time I've spent agonizing over deciding what I want to do with myself, has luckily ended in me finding it.  I know where I belong, intellectually.  I don't think I was aware of how scared I was that I would be wrong, that I somehow wouldn't be able to connect with this material, or it wouldn't interest me, or I wouldn't learn it, until I loved it despite how hard it is. I never really understood people who found classes really hard but loved them anyway.  Best example I can think of are people who like organic chemistry.  I always just looked at them like they were crazy.  If it's so hard, why do you like it?  I get it.  Organic Chemistry, Cell Biology, Physiology...they're all a headache.  There's so much information, so much going on, so much to remember and organize and it all takes so much time, but it's FASCINATING.  Knowing why our body works like it does, how it does, is stuff I've always wanted to know and understand and despite all the late nights and crazy explanations about which voltage-gated Na+ channel works for which action potential associated with which neuron from which system, I LOVE IT.  Makes me crazy and I love it and I'm excited to think about and engage this stuff forever.  I've always hated puzzles, but this is one puzzle I am really really interested in piecing together (sudoku is my only other puzzle exception).

Honestly, I think my time in Peace Corps has had an even bigger impact on me that I ever thought possible.  I think it taught me to think more creatively and have more perseverance.  I think it got me away from the habit of thinking "i don't get it, so I quit".  It gave me a kind of confidence and determination I've never had before and a different and better developed ability to think outside the box.  I think differently.  Things I used to struggle to understand click with me now.  I just get it.  It's great.

I miss Peru and my life there and all the people involved in it so much.  I miss Dany all the time.  I am so grateful for that whole experience because it helped me grow into the person that I need to be now to push on towards my career.  Peace Corps made me so resilient and so strong.  Despite the fact that reverse culture shock and uprooting and attempting to reroot has been pulling me apart in a lot of ways, I'm resilient and smart and I know what I need to do to make everything I have planned and want for myself come true.  One long, overplanned, turbulent day at a time.