acceptance

allow me to be excruciatingly honest today.

i am not thrilled by the prospect of having four weeks ahead of me to continue teaching. in fact, i've been rather bitter about this for the better part of two weeks. i am also not thrilled by having to teach on saturdays (not all of them). saturday classes invite an entirely new brand of unproductive time passage and frankly, i had a really tough time convincing myself to get up and moving this morning in time for my first class.

i made it, of course, but it was not easy.

the thing about this experience is that the working part of it never really ends. the teaching is part of the workload, sure, and it is by far the least amount of time i have ever spent at an official place of employment. the moment i leave the school building, i usually feel a sense of unbridled freedom because the rest of the day will most likely involve a lot of reading, running and keeping busy at doing nothing. until i remember i really never leave work. work follows me to uncomfortable conversations with pushy townsfolk and the grocery store (if you can call it that) and the cafe.

i spend much of my time, therefore, hiding. one of the primary reasons i'm grateful for my apartment is because of the amazing oasis of calm and silence and peace it provides me. i am not kidding when i say that my apartment is a large contributor to my ability to stay in this town and survive. there are more days than i will ever admit on this blog when i do not actually leave my apartment.

at one time, i felt really guilty about this. i do, after all, have oodles of free time to be 'driving' additional english courses at the municipality or playing with the kids or spending time over coffee and cigarettes with colleagues.

it's been 13 months now and i no longer feel any guilt.

what i am finally grasping onto one year into this is that my personality and its very unique interaction with this culture produces a result that looks slightly different than the peace corps expectations might suggest it should. the amalgamation and subsequent outcomes of who i am as a person, the incredibly tough site i've been assigned to, the culture, the nature of teaching and language learning plus many additional factors have been plaguing me for months and months and months. the resulting concoction is, to say the least, not what i had personally expected it to be, either.

expectations are menacing nuisances, ones that i am admittedly prone to creating. unlearning that wicked habit has been messy, infuriating and utterly exhausting.

the result of this inner battle, then, is me hibernating for days and weeks, often, in my solitude and in my running. the outcome is me effectively shutting out as much of the culture as is possible because i cannot muster up the energy to pretend i am 100% capable of fitting in. the outcome is me channeling every microscopic bit of energy inside of me to walk into my school building after the door has been blocked off from my entrance by a 9th grade boy. the outcome is dismantling, revamping, re-evaluating, scrutinizing further and then reconstructing the expectations that were set forth one year ago by me.

i have arrived at a new place. but the road has not been a smooth one.

so it is with this understanding of where i am right at this moment that i continue forward. this is what makes conversations like the one i had today with the only 10th grade student who showed up (who EVER shows up-- & i've written about him before) seem like priceless gold nuggets of joy in this place that, through its very different ideas of respect for women, for teachers, for one another can dampen a soul and quickly.


the student is a roma kid. i get strange looks when i talk about him with other colleagues. he is the student who flicked his cigarette at me before he ever gave my classes a chance. this is the same student who later told me to speak only in english to him.

during the most touching conversation i've had to date in this country, this student told me that every year he has been studying english (he's on year 7), he's ditched his english classes. he talked for nearly 45 minutes in english today, slowly and deliberately, about how much english he's learned from me. he wanted for me to know that he cannot believe he doesn't ditch the class anymore-- that he actually likes coming.

i was shocked. i'd heard teachers rarely, if ever, receive feedback of this nature. thus, my expectations effectively had me believing i would never, ever have a conversation like this while here.

i watched and listened to him speaking to me, speechless the entire time because everything inside of me wanted to cry. i wanted to cry because i was so happy- like i cried when i scored my first soccer goal as a litte girl and no one could understand why tears were running down my cheeks. i was unspeakably moved because the life i've been given is so strikingly different from the life this student has here and he understands that. he spent 45 minutes articulating how desperately he hopes to create something better for himself. he sees english as a way out, is working hard at improving and is getting it.


it has been one hell of a year. i finally can admit to myself that i will never be what the peace corps expectations dictate volunteers to be; letting go of this has been devastating, to say the least. however, letting go of such expectations has made room for new ones and allowed for such beautiful surprises like this conversation to completely move me.

i understand, after much time spent away from all things familiar, what it is i appreciate so much about the life i've been given, the people in it and all that i took for granted. most importantly, i am able to work my way through the slow days, harassment, disrespect, strange system, distant relationships and still see that a light exists at the end of the tunnel. along the way are kind people handing me flashlights to light my path.

if i have energy for nothing else apart from getting to the end of that tunnel, so be it. i will arrive at the end a different person as a result of having waged this war on my expectations and will be grateful to have completed it. perhaps this was my lesson to learn from this experience.

i accept that.