a friend of mine said she was preparing three sentences. concise. poignant. heartfelt, yet light-hearted. convenient sentences.

three sentences to take back home with her. three sentences to fire at will when inquisitive folks wondered aloud where in the hell she'd been for the past two years. three sentences to summarize a rather inconvenient experience. three sentences to bring the intangible within reach.

this got me thinking. what will i say? what if i want 5 minutes? what if people want me to give just three words? the pressure!

here's a post about where these questions directed me today.




i picked all my finger nails off this morning. picked, not chewed. i'm very particular about making this distinction.

people who know me well are aware this is a bad sign.

amanda with long fingernails = generally content / sufficiently convincing in making people believe she's content.

amanda with unkempt hangnails and nails picked so short they hurt = remarkably bored / anxious / discontent.

21 months of...this... and i can confidently say i'm not bored. i've mastered the art of keeping myself just busy enough not to go crazy.

it would not be a stretch to assign culpability for my ruined manicure to anxiety. three hours of sleep last night has left me feeling feisty which, could be translated to me feeling anxiety. i suppose.

more likely is that i'm simply discontent. discontentment, while not the end all of everything wonderful, certainly has my busy brain pondering.

and picking away at my patiently-grown fingernails.

discontent. a word that is decidedly one of my hypothetical three words when it comes to summaries. discontentment has, more or less, been a constant companion of mine throughout this journey. it hasn't always been an obnoxious travel partner, though.

in fact, i attribute most of the gratitude and appreciation i've garnered from being here to exhibiting various levels of discontentment. i will even be so bold as to say that there is a list of general things i would not be grateful for had i not had this opportunity to sit for such lengthy periods of time in sheer discontentment.

a few highlights that made this list:

1. discontentment generally gets me thinking that...i may never get this opportunity again. in fact, i'm quite certain if my conscious, still-intact memory has anything to say about it, i won't be returning to bulgaria any time in the foreseeable future.

2. discontentment reminds me that life here, in many ways, is actually quite comfortable. cases in point:

-i don't pay bills. well, no. that's not true. i pay my 20 dollar internet bill once a month which, when i forget, can be quite taxing.

-umm. oh! i've suffered through so many cultural blunders i feel a sense of "comfort" in being somewhere foreign. yes, this place feels foreign and breathes foreign...right down to the way it expects you to know (through osmosis? mystery!) when your next bus is coming from the non-existent schedule.

-i have oodles...no gaping voids... NO... mountains upon ranges of free time to utilize as i see fit.

-i live alone.

-i know i'll have a job until june 23rd.

-my apartment comes equipped with a sit-down toilet.

-and i can lie on my heated tile floors at any time i want.

-i've made a habit of traveling exclusively by temperature-controlled trains past the huge roma ghetto on my way to and from sofia.

-my kitchen sports a new(ish) washing machine.

-i do not sleep in a taco bed.

3. discontentment aids in clarifying the added bonuses...ya know, bonuses of the variety that relate to the future... of serving in the peace corps. life post-bulgaria has got to be better. eeee! i got excited just writing that.

for example: now, as opposed to 21 long months ago, i can safely draw big fat lines through pages of future careers i'll no longer be needing to research as a result of my recent devotion to "volunteerism" and "international grassroots development". while i may still not have a clue what i'll end up doing next, i am confident in the career paths i will not be pursuing. *happy sigh*

4. discontentment means i'll never (perhaps almost never) complain about gas stations bathrooms. ever. again.

5. discontentment also lends itself to ensuring it will be a long time before i take driving a car, owning a car, or rolling windows down while riding in a car for granted.

6. discontentment reminds me i have good friends who are (lucky them) stuck with me for years to come. there's nothing like commiserating with people who know exactly how miserable it is to travel for hours in dirty, dark, old russian trains across miles of desolation.

7. discontentment does not erase the fact that i have had the rare opportunity to see life in bulgaria on a broad spectrum. during this expansive grouping of months, i have lived:

*in a village of 1000 people
*with a host family
*and three goats
*in a small town of 5000 people
*alone, but with kind neighbors
*in a town of 80,000 people
*on the first floor of a giant block building
*where my neighbors are the trains and cars constantly whirring by
*with a community of almost entirely roma members
*and now with bulgarians
*who speak a very different dialect-language, even-
*than the people i spent all last year with
*who i hopefully taught some bulgarian grammar to, if not any english.

so, you see, being discontent for 21 months isn't actually all bad. it may have caused my head to buzz and swirl on occasion, but it has not killed me.

admittedly, i remain unconvinced this experience can be summarized. but, as i think of ways to fit 2 years into 3 sentences (or maybe wonderful conversations), i'll remember how feeling so discontent for this amount of time has managed to become an indispensable part of my character. truly, there may be no better way to explain something as intangible as a peace corps experience than to describe who i am as a result of it.

and how it enabled me to derive a big, happy, existential conclusion out of a day spent anxiously picking my nails.

=)