the upswing

november 2008

the peace corps has compiled (perhaps it is better to say they're currently utilizing compilations of others) data on the mental and emotional journey of volunteers (and all people, really) who work abroad as it spreads over the time they are away from 'home.' they then feed it into our little heads that there is a curvy, bouncy, squiggly journey that our temperaments embark on when in unfamiliar surroundings and my assumption is that this fancy graph of sorts is intended to ease our troubled minds when we hit the point of,

"what in the hell am i doing here again?"

at this point, having been here nearly eight months, this magical little chart dictates i should be on the upswing, climbing out of a dark and ominous low point that hits folks around four months in. i recently returned from a pc meeting (which was most decidedly an irrelevant excuse to socialize and drink beer without the judgment of one's small town looming) and i was about ready to brush all the tedium of statistical data aside when i realized:

i am in an upswing.

i am on my third (or is it fourth?) good monday in a row and all of the rocky waves i was riding are slowly calming. as i wrote previously, there is an increasingly tangible number of moments when this really does seem doable and worthwhile, though there is always room for improvement.

i returned home yesterday after 5 days of travel and found that someone had carved my name into a small piece of wood that had been designed (and lacquered and the like) to look like a quaint little tree branch. whoever had done this also nailed it to my door.

unbeknownst to me, there was also a sign (slightly larger in size) nailed to my new mailbox in the downstairs entryway and a brand new lock system in place on that box. i have had this conversation with some of you about how my neighbors and people in other blocks often end up with my mail because i never had a mail box, and in the midst of struggling to get a box for my mail this was of course, the most pleasant of surprises.

this morning, groggy and just plain out of it, i stepped outside of my apartment only to find my sweet sweet neighbor waiting to give me the key to my new locked mail box.

i could not have been more delighted. i was overwhelmed with gratitude and a warm fuzzy feeling devoured my insides as i trotted off to school.

it never ceases to amaze me how sometimes the smallest gestures in life mean the most. never.

and after all, it seems suiting to have my attention narrowed to all of the things for which i am grateful this week, especially since i am not in the states to tell people in person.

the icing on the cake of today's wonderfulness: no classes tomorrow-- the school's 25th anniversary is tomorrow and instead of teaching, we're all going to lunch to eat and drink rakia.

awesome. the upswing has taken hold, no 9th graders will be subject to my wrath tomorrow and i have only 4 more tuesdays until my trip to london.

life is beautiful.


november 2008