Fletch and I got married promptly, much sooner than we might have otherwise, to be able to serve together, and after a year and a half of waiting for a placement we received one only to have it taken away a week later due to a funny little conflict of interest rule…and Fletch supported and worked alongside me as we banged and shouted and beat down the door through their appeal process until Peace Corps let us back in. I didn’t believe we’d even make it to Guatemala, assuming that something else would come up to stop us from going, until we were sitting safely on the tarmac at the Aurora airport in Guate. For two years of chronic ailments, when I would find myself painfully doubled over in a latrine or with my head in a toilet (somehow I was always lucky enough to only throw up in toilets), or through ridiculous amounts of job related frustrations and thwarted projects, I would tell myself, “Hey, you asked for this. Remember, you wanted to be here!” And I think now I believe it was all worth it–I just hope my stomach goes back to a healthy normal once we’re home.
I want to thank you all for your time and comments and really just for caring. We started this blog mainly for our parents, but it turned into a project bigger than we ever could have foreseen, read not only by our families and best friends but also the ambassador and perfect strangers and former teachers and professors and fellow Peace Corps friends and RPCV’s and folks just invited to serve in Peace Corps Guatemala. Thanks, ComputerBrian, for pressuring us to do this.
I realize that I wasn’t exactly regular with my posts, not like the ever-faithful Jim/Fletch/Jaime. I also do not have a style as organized and concise as his. I had a lot of comments over these two years from numerous friends that they really try to read my posts, really, but it’s very difficult for them to get through the sheer volume sometimes. They pointed out that they have jobs and children and other things that require their attention in a day. 🙂 I understand, and I thank you for trying. The four people who were meant to read this blog, I’m fairly certain, have read every single word.
I struggled for a time trying to make my writing more Jaime-like and more singulary focused, but it’s just not me. In the end I’ve tried to relate to you all our lives as I experience them. Though we were almost as literally side-by-side through this adventure as we were figuratively, we’re two separate people. I do not believe that a marriage makes one. We experience the same things differently, sometimes very differently. And we express ourselves differently, sometimes very differently. For me this was an endurance experience with a lot going on, things blind siding you out of nowhere. That’s how I wrote about it. I hope that our different perspectives and styles made the blog more interesting, more complex, maybe even more fun for you all.
For Jim, this blog became his journal. He hasn’t written in his little leather book but two or three times in the last 27 months. I, on the other hand, am too attached to my uncensored personal opinions and filled something like 3.5 little leather books. fully detailing all aspects of the last 27 months as I lived them. 🙂 So my lengthy posts were really just a small, small sample of the volumes I write. In that sense, the blog was difficult for me, writing at length about things I’d already written at length about for myself. I found that giving you all a fair presentation without being too critical, or political, or iced over, or insincere here and there took a great deal of emotional energy and real time. For this reason I am very glad to be signing off of the blog once and for all at the end of this post. Fletch will take care of telling you about our decompression and anniversary, celebrating twelve days of vacation in and around Guatemala. To those of you who have suggested or in some cases demanded that I write a book, I’ll think about it, but I will make no promises.
While I have you all here, just one more thing. Thank you, for being part of this dream of mine, for supporting both of us through the best of times and the worst of times. Even if we’ve never met in person, your comments and well wishes buoyed our spirits on many, many occassions.
To our friends and families, we always liked you guys quite a lot. Now we’re convinced that you’re all the best, really. We love you beyond words, and we’re pretty much thrilled to be coming home!
To Fletch, after 4 years of a crazy marriage preceded by eleven years of the most unlikely friendship and noviazgo, what do I say to you? You were a great Peace Corps volunteer. Thanks for coming with me and making it your own.
El Fin.
Emily RR Fanjoy
Peace Corps Guatemala April 2008-July 2010