Two years is not enough...

Hello!  I know it´s been a while, so I figured I would send out another update.  Things are still going really well, now that I have my own house and don´t feel quite so much pressure to be busy every second of the day.  I still don´t have a cat (hopefully next week), but I have adopted my neighbors dogs, and two of my host family´s dogs.  At any point in time, I have at least one dog following me around – to school, to run, to random events – but one of the dogs, Mop (pronounced Mope), has my heart.  I have taught him to sit, and we are currently working on stay.  He hangs out at my house when I am not there and greets me when I arrive.  At night he sleeps under my window outside and barks at anything that comes near.  And in general, he´s just a really sweet dog.  I love him very much!  I am going to buy him flea shampoo soon.

Things are also going well with my service.  My activities and projects are evolving slowly.  I go to the school three times a week to help with agriculture class, and starting next week I will be giving an hour or so of environmental education to 4 of the 6 grades.  I had my first youth fun time – I brought Uno and invited all the kids to play in the community house after school (15 came!  That´s a lot.)  The First Lady´s Dispatch is working in the community teaching people how to have organic gardens by their house (although almost everyone makes a living here through agriculture, very few people grow or eat vegetables) and I have been supporting this project and learning for my own garden.  I am also working with a new women´s group that wants to start a bakery, and my group of men who make organic compost want to start a community vegetable garden.  And I am going to try to work more with the local cooperative, though that is still uncertain.  I am planning on having another meeting with the community to see which of the projects mentioned in the last meeting they want to work on most.  I´m hoping that once I get those projects started, I will feel better. 

For now, I still feel like I am in limbo.   I still say that I have two years left, but really it´s more like one and a half, and that makes me feel frantic.  Time keeps flying by, and I still haven´t done a dozen things I want to do.  I know I am the first volunteer here, so I am not expected to move mountains or anything, but I want to move mountains.  And two years is really not enough.  All the other volunteers say that the first year is practice.  You experiment with different activities, different levels of participation, different projects, and by the second year you really have your groove down.  You know what you want to do and what the community will do with you.  So I have about seven more months to experiment with stuff, and figure out how much I want to be in the school, in the different community groups.  One thing I have learned here is patience.  I have learned how to feel things out, watch ideas and activities evolve, and to nudge them in the desired direction.

For now, I am still enjoying my time with the people here.  They have a great sense of humor and are so generous.  I continue to receive gifts of eggs, yucca, plantains, cucumbers and fruit.  And now that I have my own house, people have started to visit me, so I give them coffee, juice and cookies.  Despite the bouts of homesickness I still feel for cafés, good pizza, brownies, and a night life, the people here make it so that I never really want to go home.  For now, my home is here.