And the days go by…not just a line from a great Talking Heads song

I’m beginning to make a daily routine for myself, which is comforting.  My cat Dracula usually wakes me up (by biting my shirt or my hair) at about 6 or 6:30, which is before the family I live with.  I boil some water and coffee grounds and filter them through a tiny sieve, and drink my cowboy coffee to the sound of roosters, cows, barking dogs, wind (oh boy is it windy right now) and rustling corn.  Then I usually eat breakfast and read a bit while Dracula goes crazy around my room, biting and scratching things I’d rather he left alone.  By about 8:30 I go to the market to check if there’s vegetables or bananas (most likely not), and to see if I need to empty the compost (usually I do…too bad there’s no worms in the supposed worm bin).  The rest of my morning consists of activities in the schools (most days for about an hour right before lunch, lucky me!), preparing lunch, baking bread, visiting people, and occasionally checking in with my counterparts (they’re not usually there, but I think we are beginning to understand the others’ expectations a little more, so that’s nice).  After lunch is nap/relaxing time, Dracula can never keep his eyes open, it’s hilarious to watch him try to attack things but sort of fall asleep in the process.  Then I exercise (this I have found is my thinking/ideas time—so I guess we could call it “work”), maybe read more or write a letter, and/or play with the kids, or watch them play.  Lately I’ve also been preparing soil for my garden, but I try to leave that hard labor (it’s me and a pick-hoe type tool, ripping out grass and de-clumping the soil) until the sun is a bit lower.  By 5:30 or so I’m usually hanging out with the host family/kids in the kitchen or in our front yard.  I eat my dinner while the family has their milk and carb-cheese snack (I haven’t adapted this eating pattern, I doubt I will…I like real dinner).  Sometimes we read after dinner, but the kids go to bed by 8, and I’m not usually up much later than that because it gets cold and my bed is really the best place to be when that happens.

 

So to analyze this, I do still think I need to be working more, but as I’m learning more about the community, this is scaling up.  I’ll be getting much busier as time goes on, so I better not get too used to the chill-out routine.  It’s not horrible, but I know very well about myself that I like to have plenty of work to do, and thus have free time feel more merited.

 

My project director and the Ag project’s 3^rd-year volunteer (she helps us out with our projects) came to see me the other day, which really made me happy.  Not only did they bring me mail from home (it’s really hard to not open those packages until my birthday!) and mail from Peace Corps (2 whole Newsweeks to read…they were from April, but still!), but they reassured me about how I’m doing here.  The 3^rd year said that the first three months definitely feel lazy for many people, I shouldn’t feel guilty about it.  My director went around with me to see my counterpart and some of the people I’ve been working with.  Of course he spit out like a zillion ideas in front of them, and now I’m pretty sure they expect me to do all that stuff.  However, having him around for just the day really helped me be seen as someone who wants to do work, and who is accountable to someone to do work.  Both my visitors helped me out with how I can really get going on assessing the community, which I’ve been trying to do, without much luck.  It seems so obvious now, but the 3^rd year told me I should just start out really small, with even a group of 4 or 5, so now the task seems a lot more manageable, that I’m not thinking in terms of getting information on such a broad scale.  I did just have my first meeting with my "club de madres"--who were mostly teachers.  I would have liked more of the "campo" or less educated people to come, but I think the teachers know me and sort of trust me, so they were more enthusiastic.  We decided I could help a lot with starting a family gardens program.  SCORE!  Exactly what I want to do, so it was great to hear it from them.  Of course, I want to carefully plan (and I'm supposed to carefully plan and get suggestions from Peace Corps), and they are like, so when do we start???  Ah...love it!

 

Thanks for the letters, emails and packages…keep ‘em coming, I promise to respond to each of my many fans (joking…about the fans thing, not about responding).