When I Come Back

I'll be real: shit will be weird. My friend, Bryna, has a blog (she's in the Peace Corps and way more of a bad ass than me). She had an entry that talked about how she was eating breakfast, and there was a monkey and her first thought wasn't "Holy shit, a monkey!" it was "That monkey had BEST not try to eat my egg". She went on to say that a year ago she eating breakfast with a monkey would seem absurd to her and now it's just...routine. 


I think a lot about when I first got here: who I was, how ready I was to experience something completely new, how naive I was, how immature I was, how CRAZY I was to do something like this. Then, I think about who I am now: how this has been like a pandora's box for me-only in a good way, how privileged I really am, how much I've grown up, how completely different from the me four months ago I am now, and I can't help worrying that all this good and scary change isn't going to last.

I often wonder if it would have been better that I went to some fashionable, first world Spanish speaking country. I could have even studied in a bigger city like Lima, Buenos Aires, Valparaiso, etc. and had a completely different experience. But this is the experience I wanted...this is the experience I needed. I needed to go somewhere that was dirty, and see young kids who were obviously malnourished. I needed to go somewhere that I had to walk or take a sketchy ass bus to school. I needed to go somewhere where men pee on the streets only two feet away from you, where dogs run rampant, where there are no laws about driving, where pedestrians don't have the right of way. I needed to have a Service-work placement in a clinic where kids with mental disabilities stay. I needed to be reminded of how absolutely lucky I am to have the life that I do regardless of the problems I have. I look back on how upset I'd get about stuff before I came here and just want to smack myself. I am so lucky.

I feel such a mix of emotion when I think about May 12th at 3:30pm. With just about thirty days left here, I feel an anticipation to go home and take advantage of things I always took for granted before coming here, but I also feel this pang of anxiety knowing that I'll never get to come back and do this experience over. I see myself returning to Peru, yes, but will it be with the same people who have become some of my best friends? No. Will I ever get to live with my host family again? No. Will I ever get to eat the amazing authentic food every day again? No. If I ever come come back here, it will be as a visitor and not as a resident. This is what makes me so sad.

I miss my family and friends so much. I miss my country. I miss fitting in and not being an obvious gringa. But at the same time, my heart already aches for the things I will never get to do again once I leave. My Mom once sent me a video that Louis CK did about students who study abroad. He spent his time making fun of twenty-somethings who don't really do anything THAT important while they're abroad, or in general. While there is plenty of the stereotypical beer drinking and nights out, I whole heartedly disagree with him. Maybe my service at the clinic won't have a life changing impact on those kids, but the things that I've done and experienced have forever changed my life in a profound and irreversible way. And for that, I am glad.