oh spring, how you make me grateful

it is wonderful to report that spring has arrived. spring's arrival, in fact, marks the one year anniversary of my arrival here and that feels awfully strange and incomprehensible.

a year ago, i was dying easter eggs with members of my host family, having only descended upon them days before. i remember the sheer weight of the stress pushing itself down on me, my mind clogged with frustration and excitement and enthusiasm and exhaustion.

i hadn't thought ahead to this point in this year. i couldn't. the future was such a dark, abysmal stretch of time that to think about it too long would allow fear and anxiety to fester in the many, many, many open holes that had found their way into my life one year ago.

so there i was. and now, here i sit, pondering how spring is recognizable and welcome, and yet entirely unfamiliar and foreign. i notice how my runs on the forgotten dirt roads outside town smell of pungent manure and fragrant wild flowers. i am puzzled that there are beautiful cherry blossom trees here, or what suffice as being close enough in my brain to the actual ones. i notice, too, that the weather is just as cold and, alternatively, warm and sunny. i'm delighted that strawberries are getting cheaper as the weeks press forward, remembering and forgetting all at once how i didn't buy strawberries last year because i picked them from the garden. that was one of my favorite tasks.

it feels safe to say now that one year is no time at all. i can survive anything for one year and, WOW does it feel amazing to discover that. one year is no time at all in hindsight, even though the view backwards is scantly familiar and shockingly distant. it is strange the things one remembers in a year's time and what makes it feel as if it rushed by or, conversely, drug itself along at a painfully slow pace. this year has done both.

i can remember the way my host family's home smells, but i haven't made contact with them in months. months that feel like ages and eons ago. i remember the feelings churning inside of me as we hopped into the bus to meet our host families and know i might never put myself in that situation again. miming words with someone who does not speak your language, after all, is only so efficient.

huh. so where are my musings going? have i a point at the end of all this? no.

as i continue to struggle to reconcile all that still does not fit into its proper place, i observe that i still have no point. no profound conclusions about any of this.

i suppose i'm just trying to make sense of an experience that feels displaced and outside of the realm of measurable time, with one year being a significant marker on the time line of my two years here.

one goal i have for the upcoming year is to write more about the things i am grateful for.

so, i'll start off by expressing my gratitude for my lovely oasis of an apartment.

remember it? here it is...




it is a posh, clean, remodeled, heavenly version of the traditional apartments i've seen so far and i've got more space here than i had in my last apartment in the states.

BUT, what i'm most grateful for is the fact that i don't have these monsters crawling around...

and during all the free time i have here to ponder the intricacies of life, i do NOT have to spend it in this manner with said creatures...

these beasts live in an apartment of another volunteer who played host to me last weekend. her town is lovely and the opportunities for biking and hiking and running far superior to those available to me, but MAN. cockroaches are a force to be reckoned with... one that colorado, thankfully, never introduced me to.

waking up to one of these bugs crawling up the side of your stomach in the middle of the night almost makes you forget what a lovely view this is...


EEWW. no thanks.