A Long Hiatus

My sincerest apologies to everyone for the VERY long absence. In early February my two year old Mac decided to self-destruct. For some reason the motherboard just straight up stopped working. We thought it was a hard drive problem and after three or four people told me I lost everything (music, photos, documents) I decided to bite the bullet and have my lovely parents send me a tablet so I would be able to do work. For the past four months I have only had my phone to use for emails and FaceTime. Any time I needed to do a report, write a lesson plan, respond to a long email, get caught up on work, or even just waste time on the internet I needed to take the hour long bus ride into the main city to the Peace Corps office and hope that one of the four computers was available. Then I would have to jump on a bus before dark and get back to site. It was exhausting and frustrating. I’ve never felt more disconnected in my life. And more than that was the fact that I was trying to muddle through very technical terms like “motherboard” and “disk fragmentation” and “what do you @#$@^*& mean I’ve lost everything??” with very unhelpful technicians at the “Apple Store”. It was one of those situations where I just shut down and looked around helplessly, hoping someone would magically solve everything. Enter parents. After several teary phone calls where I lamented that nothing was going my way they bought a tablet and sent to me.

Nothing made me happier than loading all my music, documents, and photos onto this tablet. I know it seems so material, especially for someone living in a rural Colombian village, but it’s less about having a tangible object and more about having a feeling of control and organization in my life again. I don’t have to spend a whole day travelling just to open an excel spreadsheet. I can save projects to come back to any time I want, instead of scrawling notes on random pieces of paper and hoping I remember them when I finally make it to the office.

And MOST importantly, I can work on my blog again!! I lost a few entries that I was in the process of writing literally as my computer died.

My promise to you all is that at the very LEAST I will upload an entry every single week. Getting all my thoughts out like this is very healthy for me. It’s different from writing in a journal because I have to organize my thoughts and present them in a way that is relatively introspective. I mean, there will definitely just be blog entries that are essentially 40 pages of me complaining about mosquitos but getting all this information out and presenting it helps me realize what exactly I’m going through. Having a blog is also highly encouraged by the Peace Corps. There are three main goals that frame your Peace Corps experience. The first goal is complete your primary project. The second is to share American culture with your host country. We are here to show them that not ALL Americans are the stereotypes displayed in the movies and on TV. The final goal is to share your host country’s culture with the United States, to promote a better understanding of other cultures.

Colombians are very concerned with their image in the United States. One of the first questions I always get asked is “What do people think of Colombia?” “What did you think when you arrived here?” “The people are so nice here, aren’t they? Please tell people in the US that we are nice and welcoming.” There is a saying here that goes something like this: “If you ask a Colombian for directions he will carry you there on his back.” Which is like two steps further than saying “He’ll give you the shirt off his back.” They want you to know that they are not all Pablo Escobars with drugs in every corner of their houses. They want you to know that they love to dance and laugh and smile. They will give and give and give until they have nothing. They want you to know they are people just like us.

Again, my apologies for my absence. You’re going to be hearing a lot more from me from now on.