Every Accomplishment Counts

I'm sitting in the Peace Corps office counting down the hours till I leave for reconnect. The 4 volunteers that serve in the Arequipa, flew into Lima this morning so I've already had a chance to talk to some people from my group who I haven't seen in 3 months. I went to a conference this morning for international volunteers in the area. I had high hopes for the opportunities to meet other volunteers in Lima and learn what type of work they do. It ended up totally sucking. We did things like draw pictures about how we felt the first 24 hours we arrived in Peru. The activities were not things I wanted to be doing after having been here for 6 months already. And it wasn't very helpful to me anyways, because these were all people who lived and worked in the city of Lima and couldn't relate to my experiences at all. So I cut out early to spend the afternoon with volunteers I could really relate to, my fellow PCV's. The one good thing about the workshop was eating lunch with the group and chatting it up with volunteers from Australia, Switzerland and Italy. I didn't find the workshop helpful in anyway, but I'm happy I went cause it allowed me to see a new part of Lima and meet different people.

I have had a few mild success this past week. The first being that I was moved up from the intermediate step class at my gym to the advanced class. Now one would think, that it is the gym member who elects what level class she would like to attend. But one day I showed up for my intermediate class and they told me I wasn't allowed to be in it anymore cause I had gotten too good. This is an accomplishment that I am not terribly proud of, but it just reminded me of my personal strengths in life. While I struggled for months and months to move up from my "intermediate-high" language level in Spanish to "advanced-low", it only took a matter of weeks for me to be promoted in step class, a thing I had no experience upon arrival in Peru. Now if only sports could get me into grad school....

My second big accomplishment for the week was completing my Community Analysis report. I haven't sat in front of a computer for hours on end trying to make a deadline since college. I spent two full days at the Peace Corps office writing my report and making my power point presentation. Each afternoon I would take a break and go to Starbucks and walk around the mall. At the end of the day I felt a way I hadn't felt in long time, normal. Putting in a long day of work around familiar American commodities, English speakers and taking coffee breaks at Starbucks made me feel the way I used to back in the states. Only feeling "normal" felt weird and unnatural. Then the realization hit me that my definition of normal had changed and for the first time I recognized that I have changed. And it's not just my habits and day to day life that I have gotten used to. I do feel like a different person in many ways than I was when I left the states 6 months ago. I think and feel differently. But don't worry, even with all my newly gained maturity, I am still the same fun lovin Ali of sunny Cali.

I was nervous about turning in my report. Since I was in the office and my boss new I was going to be finished with it before the end of the day, she asked if she could send it out to all the other volunteers as an example for the people who were struggling. I didn't like this idea at all, but reluctantly agreed wanting to make my boss happy. After turning it is she called me up to her office to tell me she wasn't going to be sending it out to the group. Great, I thought. It was so bad not only is she embarrassed to send it out to the group, but I'll probably have to rewrite it. Turns out, she was really impressed with my report and didn't want to send it out because she thought it was so good it would freakout all the other volunteers and think they would have to live up to this high a standard. Obviously, this made me feel great and this is an accomplishment I am terribly proud about. The kind of accomplishment that might actually help me get into grad school. As for my Spanish level, I'm just gonna keep on trucking and eventually it will be one of my finest accomplishments.