This Day in History

One year ago today, I got up at 5 in Sumpango, stuffed my cat in a tote bag, and stood in the back of  a packed bus for over three hours with my training host parents as they accompanied me over the crazily curving roads to my site in Sololá. I had just recovered from a violent food-borne illness, and was both eager and anxious to start the chapter of Peace Corps Volunteer as I left behind my status as a Peace Corps Trainee. 

Since then I have lived in four different housing situations with two additional host families in two departments and have spent over 150 hours studying two different Mayan languages.  I have worked in a school, a health post, in homes, kitchens, gardens, and a cooperative.  I have been in turns lonely, bored, eager, cynical, frightened, euphoric, determined, content, pessimistic, apathetic, inspired, and a host of other states of being.  I have improved my tortilla-making skills, my cockroach killing techniques, and my ability to endure being the center of attention.  I have made new friends in my Guatemalan communities, have strengthened Volunteer friendships, and been incredibly supported by friends and family from home through calls, cards, and even some visitors.

It is staggering to know that I have [only / a whole] year left.  
What the next year of service holds, I won’t pretend to guess.  
There’s only one way to find out!