Adjusting

Here's some stuff from the past couple'o days.

27 May 2008

Man, I can’t stop judging myself. Every little thing I do, from baking up some chocolate chip cookies to hiking with a colleague through one of the nature reserves to drinking tea with some new friends to getting out of town for the weekend, I keep the question “is this what it’s supposed to be?” in the back of my mind. One of the main goals of every peace corps volunteer is to integrate into their community, but just what does integration mean? I feel like I can survive here for two years, but does survival have anything to do with integration? And now that I think about it, just how integrated into Reno’s community was I? After living there for nearly 18 years, was I anything to Reno? It didn’t depend on me nearly as much as I depended on it and I doubt it’s taken any notice to the fact that I’ve left. Just one less car plugging up the interstate bowels.
Is community integration less likely to occur for somebody who relishes baking cookies “singura” (alone) and curling up with a good book in the evenings over someone who is happier hanging out in smoky bars with friends and snapping up new “contacts” every few minutes like they were gummy drops. Who’s more likely to fulfill the goals of peace corps? Me or Mr. Gummy Drop? Should I really worry about this or can I get the go ahead to live my life how I’m used to? I’m not saying I don’t like social contact, I thoroughly enjoy it, but I know if I get too much of it, I shut down. The occasional evening “singura” is necessary and if it doesn’t happen, I turn all icky and no-fun.

29 May 2008

I don't think I was in a very good mood on May 27^th, but it’s something I felt at the time (and, honestly, am still thinking about), so I’ll keep it as is and put it out there for the world to enjoy. Actually, this past week has been a bit rough mainly because I have not been feeling well. Ever since I got back from Onesti, my tummy has felt the need to cramp up every 20 or so minutes in a really weird, quite painful way, luckily without emitting any solid (or liquid) results, but still making me not want to smile at the clerks or even think about how to ask for a bottle of coke in Hungarian. Feeling just a little bit ill in an unfamiliar place is like being a kid who’s lost his binkie - a very minimal, no-panic-necessary problem that evokes nail-biting fear, a sense of helplessness, and a pinch of woe-is-me. Today, finally, I am feeling a bit more in line with my properly operating stomach and can once again smile at the lady I buy a coke from nearly every day.
Part of my heightened spirits may also be due to the fact that I just bought a kilo of strawberries that were grown in this region for 4 lei (somewhere around $2 – a kilo! That’s like 50 strawberries!). I also spent the day wading through water at the nature reserve (which I found out is where parts of Cold Mountain were filmed) looking for frogs (my sister should be here) and taking GPS points that actually, after hours of frustration and adjustments, lined up correctly on the map (nothing in this world will ever make me understand or enjoy working with projections. Nothing.), ate ice cream and drank tea with “the girls” from the office, had someone ask me if I’d like to go to a couple of plays with them, came home to a drying rack full of finally dry clothes and a bag full of sugar cookies that I forgot I had baked, and, last but not least, realized that the word “elephant” is phonetically the same in English, Romanian, AND Hungarian. It’s my new favorite word. This was a good day. I like these good days. And no matter how difficult it is for me to do, the busier the day, the better it seems to be and the less I feel like judging me and my volunteer abilities.
Something really cool happened last week. I was finishing up a tutoring session when one of the girls who occasionally helps out asked me where I was from. I responded with the usual: “Nevada, it’s on the west coast next to California. About a seven hour drive north of Las Vegas” (EVERYBODY knows Las Vegas…grumble grumble). She responded with “Really? Which city?” I said Reno and her eyes immediately lit up with a big smile across her face and another girl in the room looked astonished and said something high-pitched in Hungarian that I couldn’t understand and I suddenly felt my eyes water up a bit because obviously Reno meant something to them and usually people just vaguely smile at me when I tell them which city. Turns out she lived there for two years, all of 2003 and 2004, with some friends and worked at various places around the city and I probably crossed paths with her at some point. Funny thing, too, because she looked familiar the moment I met her, but I never even thought to say anything because it’d sound silly. We then proceeded to chat about different places around Reno and what we enjoyed doing there and how curious it is that our roles are now reversed and even though it was pouring rain outside, everything felt right with the world.

I think I’ll go for a walk. Pa for now.