back in suburbia.

Leave it to me to walk into an outdoors equipment store two weeks before I fly to Africa and expect to find sandals, here in Pennsylvania, in February. I guess I just forgot that it's 30 degrees outside here, has been for months, and will be for another month at least. It's 70-something in Dakar right now, and that's where my head is. Well, that's one of the places it is. It's also still in Portland, with friends I left last week; in Boston, with my sister I saw a few days ago; and in Philadelphia, with my other sister I'll see this weekend. I don't know that I've ever felt pulled in so many directions before. I must say it's easy to get distracted. But even if I still have to go to the eye doctor to get new glasses tomorrow, file my taxes, visit possibly both my grandmothers - who live on opposite sides of the state - and go to the AT&T store to talk to an actual live person to get them to stop my cell phone service (because I can't for the life of me find an actual number to call listed on their website), my major remaining concern is packing.

I went to the mall today to do some scouting: checking out things I might want to get to take with me, do some price comparisons, see what's out there. The whole idea of packing for two years is hard to wrap my head around. I think it will help if I can just grasp the fact that it can't be done. I mean, I won't for the entire two years only use what I take. I will inevitably add to it while I'm there, it's not like I'll be camping in the wilderness. So my paralyzing fear that I won't be able to find and take everything I need is one that can be gotten over. I will take many good and useful things. I won't be able to take everything I want to take. I can buy things there. It will be ok. Breathe.

The whole trip to the mall today, however, didn't help soothe my anxiety any. I stumbled around for a few hours, consulted the store directory several times, and narrowly avoided being trampled by oblivious teenagers only to return to my car feeling bewildered and slightly annoyed. I understand the mentality behind grouping many shops together for the easy consumption of shoppers, but standing in the center of that giant circus and watching the crowds hustle past, I realized that I feel less stressed about getting on a plane to go to a completely foreign country for two years than I do about trying to buy clothes at the mall. Ok, maybe not "less" stressed... but it's a different stress. A less artificially-created, evil-genius-masterminded, dehumanized one. But what can I say? Right now, oh Suburban American Shopping Mall, I need you. So soon I will return.

structural weaknesses.

I have a strange feeling that last night I dreamt I was filing my Oregon tax return. It is one of the things I still need to do before I leave the country, but I wish my subconscious would choose other aspects of my life to filter through my REM sleep. My brain has been in overdrive these past few weeks, and even at night I haven't been resting well.

There is something oddly comforting in the structure of taxes, though - rules to follow, steps to take, forms to fill out, a specific deadline. Maybe I'm just weird, or it could be a deeper desire for something certain and tangible in a time when for me, everything seems uncertain, and abstract. I can do a few additions and subtractions, fill in this line, ignore that one, and figure out how much money I made last year, and how much I owe. Nothing seems quite so straightforward, however, about what I'm about to do.

I'm down to two days left at work, and it's been tough containing my almost giddy level of excitement today. This morning before breakfast I called to make my flight reservation to get to staging, which I found out on Monday will be in Atlanta, March 10 - 12 (we fly to Dakar the night of the 12th). I spoke with a jovial fellow who asked me if I was with the group going to El Salvador or Senegal, and by the time I got off the phone, having confirmed my reservation for 7:30 am that Monday morning, window seat and all, I was practically bouncing up and down.
Airlines. Flight numbers. Seat assignments. Every detail brings me closer to the reality of going.

Rimsky-Korsakov did not live in Africa

As I stood at the bus stop tonight, hoping the #75 would come sooner, rather than later, since I hadn’t thought to bring gloves when I left the house this morning, I glanced at my hands, and the familiar calluses on my left fingertips. I had just left the last orchestra rehearsal I would participate in before leaving the country for two years, as I don’t expect to be playing much classical music in the desert - I don’t trust my viola to take kindly to the expected 110 degree heat. During the last half hour of practice, in between pages of achingly adagio eighth notes, it struck me how little I was dreading leaving, and how eager I was to move on. I felt I should be sadder to leave this company of friends, but my east coast family is calling my name, and impending visits are filling me with more elation than the prospect of Christmas vacation. That’s not to say that I won’t miss Tuesday nights, or the camaraderie that makes me feel at home since I’ve been playing in orchestras since the third grade. I remember that first elementary school orchestra - there were so few of us we all fit into a tiny classroom, short legs dangling off cold metal folding chairs. I don’t remember what we played, or who else was there with me in the room, besides our big teddy bear of a conductor with his fuzzy caterpillar moustache. But I remember how it felt to be there - special. I was proud to be there, proud to be chosen, and in love with the music. That thrill is something I’ve never gotten over - it’s what keeps me coming back. There is just something undeniable about bringing people together who are all so different, and making something beautiful out of those disparate voices.

Some people have sports teams or church groups, places where they feel truly accepted, welcome, and free to be who they are. For me, that place has always been orchestra.

comment away!

Please do leave comments and let me know what you want to hear about, as it's possible I've left big gaps in my description of this process, since I've been telling people about Peace Corps since I started the whole application last April. But if you want a good idea of what has gotten me to this point, I'll let you check out Annicka's blog - she's leaving with my group in March to be an environmental education volunteer too, and her description of the process to this point is pretty similar to mine.

top 10 lists are always fun.

I've got just one week left here in Portland, until I ship out to the east coast to spend 3 weeks with family and friends before staging. I'm going to miss this town big time, but I thought it might cheer me up to remember what I'll be coming back to in 2 years. For your reading enjoyment, 10 things that (in my humble opinion) make Portland a sweet place to live.

10. Portland public access TV channels, featuring such home video genius as Alex Magic, the Beaverton Elementary chorus, and Drinking With Jared, of which one 30-minute show I witnessed was devoted entirely to tasting and critiquing a limited-edition holiday pack of Jones Soda.

9. Sunday sample tastings at New Seasons. What other store makes grocery shopping so enjoyable?

8. The 7 am #17 bus driver, who always announces the stop after Everett and Davis as "Hoochie-Cooch Street." Thank you for brightening my morning.

7. Fearless bikers. I salute you.

6. Championship-level baristas. My weaning from caffeine will begin after my departure from Oregon, clearly.

5. The view of Mt. Hood on clear mornings.

4. Finding something new in the stacks at Powell's. It's a city block wide, so finding the friend you came with might be the bigger issue.

3. The rain.

2. Getting carded at Safeway for buying cold medicine.

and my number 1 favorite Portland treat:

1. Buying and devouring banana fritters with peanut butter and chocolate chip topping from Voodoo Doughnuts at 2 in the morning. They have hands-down the "best doughnuts of life!"

Sign in Pioneer Courthouse Square, SW 6th and Morrison, reminding me how far I've come, and where I still want to go.

in which I apologize for trying too hard and get some relief.

At this point I'll ask you to excuse me, and the first post, a bit, because I've come to realize that it's difficult for me not to wax poetic about this upcoming change in my life. It is something I have thought of, aspired to, planned for and dreamed about. All I know at this point about the experience I can expect is what I have read in Peace Corps published literature, seen on current PCV blogs or heard in person from encouraging RPCVS (that's returned Peace Corps volunteers - we might have to start an acronym index before this is all over). Hopefully (for your sakes) once I step off the plane these posts will become less philosophical and emotionally centered and more event-based and travelogue-ish. But since this is all about keeping you up to date on what it is really like to be a Peace Corps Volunteer, I think that I would be amiss not to include this key part of the process, the preparation for departure.

Tonight was fun, as I had the chance to see a high school production of "The Pajama Game", via connections of my roommate's. It did me good just to have a few hours solid where I wasn't thinking about Peace Corps at all, where my mental capacity was taken up only with the analysis of why one chorus member was wearing white dance shoes and all the others, black, laughing about the stereotypical high school drummer in the pit orchestra, just doing his own thing, and discussing whether one of the more diminutive male leads was, indeed, going to be swallowed up by his own costume. I've been ticking things off my list, slowly, methodically, to get ready for leaving, but even when I'm not actually in the midst of those things, they and other thoughts related to spending the next 2 years in Africa are occupying my mind. So it was a relief to drift away, relax for a while, and just revel in the absurdity of 40-odd modern teenagers dressed in relatively incohesive 50's garb marching onstage to strike for a wage increase (at a pajama-making factory) of 7 and 1/2 cents.

transplanting.

Sitting here listening to the comforting drizzle of rain against my bedroom window, somehow the night has slipped away. I realize I still have to go to work in the morning, though it seems almost superfluous now - something to pass the time as I wait to start the real business of living. One more week of it, then I’ll be unemployed until training officially starts, 3 weeks later. But hearing the cars on wet pavement outside, and the train whistle echoing in the distance, it seems easy to forget that these sounds are ones I may not be hearing very often in the near future. The rain, especially, is a sound I know I’ll miss. Living in the Pacific Northwest for the last four months has shown me that I love rain more than I ever thought I did.

It’s going to be a shock to my system to go from Portland in winter to Dakar in the dry season, but then again, I expect many things I’ll soon experience will be a shock. I can’t wait. I feel like this is the first thing I’ve been so excited about in a very long time. I know I wasn’t ready to take on this kind of challenge when I first graduated from college, but now I am.

I’m ready for this. I realize it will be hard. I want it to be hard. I want to be challenged, and stretched, and pulled to near breaking. I want to make a difference, to do some good. I also want to have fun, and learn an incredible amount. And for the days when the distance seems to stretch every inch of that ocean, plus the length of a continent, I hope this will serve as a shortcut to bypass a few of those miles - a portkey, if you will :) So here’s to sharing the amazing stories I hope to have to tell, and to helping further the third goal of the Peace Corps.

According to the Peace Corps website,

“In 1961, President John F. Kennedy established the Peace Corps to promote world peace and friendship.

The Peace Corps' mission has three simple goals:

1. Helping the people of interested countries in meeting their need for trained men and women.
2. Helping promote a better understanding of Americans on the part of the peoples served.
3. Helping promote a better understanding of other peoples on the part of Americans.”


More to come soon, I’m sure, as I spend the next month preparing to leave the country for 27.