On something I'll never forget

I’m sitting in my Close of Service (COS) conference that marks the 6-week countdown to the end of our service. These past two days have been a wild ride of emotions - sitting in a nice, air-conditioned and hot-water-providing hotel with everyone (well the 28 that remain) all together again for the first time in two years. In memory of our 2^nd anniversary (tomorrow), we will provide you with a beautiful compilation of thoughts we all wrote down as part of an opening exercise for the conference. See if you can guess which responses are mine?

I’d like my community to remember me for:

Trying to stay positive

Brindaring baked goods

Compartiring well

Hugs and smiles

Standing up for myself and always dressing up

My banana bread and refusal to take crap from tigueres

For always being available to help others

Having manners and being okay with myself

My hugs and Zumba moves

Reading with kids, working hard and sharing

Buying garlic

My tenacity

My patience

Being a crazy dancer

Being a great cake baker and smiling

Insisting that children are people too

The ability to be sarcastic in Spanish

Smiles and providing a safe space

My persistence and vegetarianism

Keeping it real!

My biggest accomplishment:

Adding cement floors to houses and the community centers

Becoming a part of my community

Building relationships

Seeing my project partner lose weight and finally have control over her diabetes

Building a basketball court

The friends I’ve made

Being my own rock and learning Spanish

Becoming an adopted member of a Dominican family

Going from being scared of kids to “adopting” one and deciding I might want one someday

Helping girls NOT get pregnant

When I starting learning from my community, too

Deciding to extend, becoming an important person to influence youth

Being myself in my community (and getting’ work done!)

Leaving my groups behind as an NGO

Not leaving early

Making it to COS conference and working to bring a solar-powered library to the community

Making real friendships in my community

Living by myself and creating a life full of great, loving friendships

Finding a Dominican best friend J

Biggest challenge I overcame:

My site

To be okay taking risks and living 100% out of my comfort zone

Persevering even after lack of community motivation

 Coming out as gay in my community

Managing expectations and trusting I’m doing it right

Allowing my community to get to see me and not the double life I thought I had to have

Pico Duarte

Site change

Being myself in my community

Being insecure on what I could accomplish compared to others

Opening myself up to develop true relationships and friendships

Taking a posture of understanding Dominican culture

Learning to be okay with constant judgment, criticism and unsolicited advice

Lack of confidence in the beginning, worrying about possible judgment

Something I’ve learned:

Assertiveness and how to forgive

Tigeruaje

To be more resourceful

How materials are of little valuable compared to people

How to let go of the things I can’t control and how little I have control of

How to work with others effectively, even if the project doesn’t work out

How to trust in the goodness and kindness of human beings

Investing in the people who actually want to work with me

Opening myself up to others

Not accepting less than I deserve; help is given to those who ask

M’ ka pale kreyol

What I need and want out of life and the people around me

Letting go of the things I can’t control

Persistence, resilience and flexibility

Failure and tenacity

How to just be...

Something I’d like to forget:

Child abuse, verbal and physical treatment of animals

Feeling helpless and claustrophobic

Enduring endless sexual harassment

People that are just plain malcriado

The court building process

Being made to feel inferior for being a woman

Kids abusing my dogs

My experience at Clínica Abreau

The tigueres I made mistakes with...

Blaming it on “them”

The road to my site

Constantly feeling that I wasn’t good enough or doing enough

Racism towards Haitians

Always feeling different

Feeling unsatisfied with work even though I’m doing my best

Death of my dog, insecurities and my next door neighbor

The anger and frustration I feel thinking about my Dominican “counterpart”

Domestic violence/child abuse/dead dogs

Saying goodbye to my community

Something I will never forget:

Pico Duarte

Hammock time with the kids

All of you

How to say “YES!”

Helping plan my Dominican best friend’s wedding

You guys

Laughing at myself

One Year Celebration in Bahía de las Aguilas

The beauty of this country, the people, my horse and the love of my life

All the struggles that strengthened me

Every beautiful, romanticized moment

Going from surviving to living to loving

To my fellow members of 517-13-02, I love you guys. You’ve made me laugh, cry and helped me survive. We’re an impressive crew – go forth and set the world on fire!

On becoming a better you

Every Peace Corps Volunteer I’ve ever met has had a different reason for joining this big and crazy family. No two reasons are ever the same. For some, it’s timing, it just felt right. For some, it’s always been a dream. But deep down, there’s always an aspect of “it was right for me” or “it will help me find myself.” Isn’t that counter-intuitive to the mission of Peace Corps – to give, give, give? Give yourself to other people? Give 27 months to serve your country? Give you heart and soul for the good of another community? It’s an uncomfortable thought that we want to do Peace Corps for ourselves, but it shouldn’t be. There is such an incredible value in serving that of course you would want and hope to gain something from it. Here’s six things you will “get” out of doing Peace Corps:

1) Your eyes will be opened.

To quote Pocahontas, “If you walk the footsteps of a stranger, you'll learn things you never knew you never knew.” By living fully immersed in a new culture for 27 months, you will learn how to give speeches in new languages, entertain children for hours, invent crazy remedies for any malady, go days without water, or bucket flush a toilet. You will also relearn things you thought you already knew - like how to do laundry without a machine or the dishes without water. Putting yourself far, far, far outside your comfort zone will always end in an eye-opening experience.

2) You will gain a deep understanding of a new culture that you can never replicate through any other experience.

Peace Corps is perhaps the only program that places people on the ground, living with a totally new community where NGOs don’t or won’t go in an intense field work position for 2+ years. When else will you have two years to spend in the farthest northwest reaches of the Dominican Republic and gain a second family who will protect your reputation, defend your honor and gift you countless mangos and plates of rice and beans?

3) It will give you perspective.

When you’ve watched community members struggle to put food on the table, or give away everything to help their children go to school, you will learn that the world is a far more complicated place than you ever could have imagined. You will understand how fortunate you are to be able to live and serve in your community and appreciate everything you left behind to be able to do so. At times it will feel like you don’t matter and aren’t important, but keep yourself grounded and remember that drop by drop, the river rises.

4) It will make you appreciate the small things.

You will appreciate the phone calls you can make to home, the laughter of a child, the deliciousness of a homecooked meal, the beauty in human connections, the love of a family and the endless sources of joy in the world. After serving in the Peace Corps, nothing you look at can ever again be seen through the same lenses. When you milk your first cow for fresh milk, see your first live birth, and teach a child to say please and thank you, you will understand the simple things that make life so very worth living.

5) You will find purpose.

I didn’t know in August of 2013 that I would find a mission that I believe in as strongly as I believe in delivering emergency medical services to rural communities where there is no “911.” And yet over the past two years, I have dedicated myself to training local youth in first aid and coordinating an emergency medical dispatching system with the local fire station. And now that I’ve seen this project from nothing to something, I will never think about the world in the same way before. Every day present a new challenge, but when you believe in your work and find a purpose in your site, it is the best feeling in the world.

6) You might even find “the one.”

No, I didn’t find my future spouse during my service, but I found someone who fills my heart with so much joy it hurts. I found my “one,” the one person I was put on earth to find, the one person I dread saying goodbye to, the one cannot imagine living without. I found a little girl who has shown me the richness of truly loving someone and caring about them with all your heart. Gissaury is the one that made me re-analyze my stance on wanting to have children, now understanding how powerful it is to love someone with even the fraction of the love I feel for her. Had I not done Peace Corps, I may still be the child-fearing and baby-loathing person I was before. But not anymore, because I was lucky enough to find my “one.”

Peace Corps will change your life and every step you take after serving will be laced with lessons learned, values added, and morals cultivated during your service. You can never know all the ways it will affect you, but you have to trust that it will lead you to exactly where you are meant to go.

You will also:

Learn to appreciate moments of serenity.

Learn local traditions, like how to play dominos.

Learn to dance!

Eat fish eyeballs!

Make best friends like Ronand and Anny!

Lead meetings in another language.

Graduate groups of people learning wonderful things!