The World Changes Every Day

I've really enjoyed "day in the life" posts on other Peace Corps volunteers blogs, and I think I'll try to write several of them during my service.  Even though I'm not a volunteer yet, here's the first - a slice of my life here at Green String Farm in Petaluma where I'm interning until the end of May.  At the farm, I live in a house with 9 other interns.  The house is located a 5 minute walk away from the rest of the farm, where we work. Sometime before 6:30 - Woken up by a friend asking if I want half of the swiss chard fritata she's making for breakfast.  Of course I do! 6:30 -  Went down to the kitchen, said a groggy "good morning" to the others who were up.  Waited for the aforementioned fritata to be ready.  There is a bottleneck at the stove.  Fritata is delayed. 7:00 - Time to start chores.  I and another intern water plants at the greenhouse near our house and apply compost tea to them. 7:10 - I stop back at the house to eat...

I'm going to be blogging for the website time4thinkers off and on over the next few years, about my Peace Corps experience.  For those of you who don't know, time4thinkers is an awesome youth-focused website maintained by the Christian Science church with lots of inspirational resources - such as blog posts.  Here's my first post for them, published a little while ago, about my Peace Corps application process (and yes, rolling a kayak).  You can read it on the site at: http://time4thinkers.com/is-your-life-plan-on-course/.  Is your life plan on course? Have you ever done any white-water kayaking?  My younger brother started to teach me this summer. When going through rapids, a kayaker first plans his “line,” or route, around rocks and other hazards. But even if the line is well-planned, it is possible that something will catch the kayaker off-guard and he will find himself flipped over by the current. Life can be like that too, can’t it? One minute we c...

It appears that I'm not the most regular blogger...I'm a few months into the interesting transition between living and working in Boston to shipping off to Benin in June.  Although I'd been expecting to leave for Peace Corps in late November initially, I'm really glad that I've ended up having this extra half year.  I had a great Christmas with my family in our new home of Franklin, West Virginia - and then headed back to Boston with Mom for a week of packing, cutting back on stuff, and training my replacement at work.  The packing goal: to fit everything I own into our family's van and drive it up to the Adirondacks for storage.  Cutting my half of a fully furnished apartment down that much was an interesting adventure, to say the least.  In the end, I delivered a full car load of clothes and things to Goodwill, and recruited various friends to serve as "foster parents" for my couch, folding screen, glider rocker, painted wood rug, and guitar.  I may ...

About two weeks ago, I officially received my invitation to serve in Benin, West Africa with the Peace Corps.  It was a long application process; I first submitted my application in February.  But it looks like the invitation to Benin will be well worth the wait.  I will be part of their Environmental Action program.  My job title will be Community Natural Resource Advisor, and it could include working with environmental education programs in schools, helping to promote sustainable agriculture techniques, working with agroforestry...or something else!  I won't know exactly what I'm doing until part way through our in-country training.  Once the staff has had the chance to get to know each of the volunteers, they will pair us with an NGO or governmental agency in a community in Benin that has requested a volunteer.  My work will have a lot to do with what my NGO or government agency is focused on. There are a lot of unknowns when it comes to what my e...

The posts below this are from a trip I took to Africa for my work as International Christian Science Group Coordinator at The First Church of Christ, Scientist.  Posts after this will relate to my preparation for and service in the Peace Corps. 

"Blessed are the flexible, for they shall never be bent out of shape.". This quote, which I learned as an exchange student, seems particularly appropriate for this trip. This morning, we got up planning to go to Kinshasa. (The capital of the neighboring Democratic Republic of Congo.) We didn't yet have visas; all we knew for sure was that our co-worker had called the DRC embassy the week before and was told that they don't issue visas anymore to anyone who isn't a Congolese citizen. Having learned from our trip so far that nothing is impossible, we went to the embassy anyway. Painted in bright letters above the window where we had to apply for the visa were the words "patientez s'il vous plait.". How appropriate that the French have come up with a verb for "patient". We "patiented", and with the help of our stellar clerk's rep Angelique and a local CSO member we had met in one of our meetings we got our visas. Then we h...

I can tell I'm going to start sounding like a broken record in this blog, as I go on and on about how wonderful and inspiring and generous everyone we've met is. Today, after a meeting, a woman approached me and asked if I wore earrings. I didn't have any in today, but said that I normally do- at which point she pressed the earrings she'd been wearing into my hand. Later, I saw her remove her necklace and tie it around Lari's neck. Giving is done so naturally here- she didn't ask if the earrings were my style, or if Lari could see herself wearing the necklace, or anything like that. She didn't second guess her gift, as we so often do in the US- spending days agonizing about the right christmas present to get for someone, worrying if our offers are appreciated or not. This must be why Christian Science seems so easily shared here- people are confident in their gift. They seem to give out of love, not out of a desire to seem generous, or out of a sense ...