Right now, I’m going on about 30 hours panic attack free. I’ve had one full day of no freaking out. It feels good to be a stable person again. I know that I will have many more panic attacks over the next two years, but in my one day of clarity, I have been able to see that one day, I will truly love my site. I have loved my peace corps experience thus far, and Ive basically just been screwing around. I can only imagine what it will be like, for once in my life, to feel like I am actually doing something that's making a difference. However, I'm still pretty afraid of the kids, although I'm getting more confident everyday, I just have no idea what I'm supposed to be doing with them. At least I know that's pretty much how everyone feels.
I can’t wait to make friends. I’ve always boasted that I make friends easily. Not just that, I’ve judged people negatively for being unable to make friends new environments. This is the first time in my life I haven’t been surrounded by people to automatically befriend. I work with kids….and nuns. All of whom, go to bed at 8 o’clock at night. I think I’m going to start doing dance classes at my gym and there’s an English school in Lurin so I’m going to try to start some intercabios and hopefully I will make some friends that way. Unfortunately, my family has not been an automatic source of friends. They are really nice, don’t get me wrong. But they stay in the house a lot and have not introduced me to the neighbors at all. I blame this on the fact that I am a replacement site. The last girl was kind of a homebody, so the family treats me like a homebody too. So my family just leaves me alone and doesnt really talk to me. So many other volunteers have host families who take them around and introduce them too the entire community, often times throwing week long parties upon their arrival. Being a replacement volunteer is harder then I thought, and in a completely different way than I ever would have imagined. I could write an entire entry about the challenges of replacing a volunteer who is the complete opposite of me.
Like I was saying, I need friends. Not only am I not supposed to do things alone, for safety reasons, but Peruvian friends will show me things I never would have discovered on my own. Going back to what I said before, in my exploring, I’ve realized that one day I will truly love my site. But, I need friends. I NEED them. I have friends, some even close by. But they are Americans. When I lived in Spain, I never really had Spanish friends, and I regret that. And I know, to truly integrate and become part of the community I am living in, I need Peruvian Friends. Then, I wont feel like such a prisoner in my room. I will have the option of calling up a friend and hanging out with them in the evenings, instead of sitting alone in my room or watching horrible Peruvian telenovelas with my host family. This is where my patience will be tested. What they call "confianza" here takes time. Getting to be excepted as part of the community will take time. And its hard because it doesn't happen over night, I feel like doing something wrong, that nobody likes me. I have to remember its only been 8 days. Just gotta keep on truckin. I think that's the theme of the first few months they call the integration period....