Here I am, enjoying a very American thing: typing on my Mac at 30,000′. After a GREAT two-week vacation, we’re heading back to Guatemala for what will be the home stretch. It’s hard to believe that we’ve only got 8 months left… and so much still to do! There’s no time to waste; we have meetings in our site in less than 48 hours, and a LOT of hard roads and chicken busses left to cover.
Although tired from lack of sleep, we return emotionally refreshed and enthusiastic. How lucky we are to be born in a place like the US; safe drinking water straight from the tap, hot showers at a moment’s notice, walking outside at night without fear of thieves. We’ve spoken of these things before, but a trip like this also reminds us of the less obvious stuff: reliable, efficient transportation both between cities and within them; well-fed kids in clean, heated, comfortable classrooms filled with more books than they could ever read. When we gave presentations in schools, kids were blown away- people really live like we do in Guatemala? “Sure,” Emily replied, “more than half of humans alive exist without safe water or toilets, let alone Nintendo or TV.” I feel like the kids understood our message, and teachers and students alike wrote us notes thanking us for sharing our experiences and opening their eyes.
It was also really nice to spend time with our friends. Much like the first half of our trip, people traveled great distances to see us. Brian (who hosts this blog) and his family flew in from California to have Thanksgiving with us and “Belkar” in Portland. Emily spent time with Sarah (one of her Girl Scout buddies), we visited with our pals The Hoot Hoots, and we even got to have lunch with some old architect friends of mine in Eugene. Part of this reason we did this trip is to prepare a little for life after Peace Corps: it’s a big change, readapting to first-world living. To be honest, we’re both a little worried about finding a place to live and jobs in a sour economy, but Emily accidentally turned up two good job leads, and had a really positive experience speaking with staff at the University of Oregon, where she will likely be going to work on a master’s degreee in NGO and Nonprofit Management.
We got to the ticket counter in Chicago at about 4am this morning, manhandling our regular packs as well as two gigantic boxes filled with computer parts for the Computer Center project. I hefted them onto the scale, and one was 68 pounds. “I’m sorry, you can’t take that,” the lady frowned. Turns out, the rules have changed AGAIN. It used to be they charged you a penalty for a bag between 50 and 70 pounds; two weeks ago, they started banning overweight bags entirely. But we started chatting with the lady, and she found out that we’re Peace Corps volunteers. She got pretty excited about that, and grabbed some scissors and tape to help us repack the boxes to better even the load. “I was born in the Phillipines,” she explained. “I just took my kids there last year, to show them how I grew up, and how things in the world REALLY are. They just didn’t understand, so I had to show them. They were so moved, they came back with nothing in their luggage: they gave it all away.” She sighed. “What you are doing is so important.” She looked at the scale, which still read 56 pounds. “And that isn’t,” she said with a wink, sticking a baggage tag on the box despite still being too heavy. This is the third time in our service that Continental employees have taken it upon themselves to help us, just because they think Peace Corps is important. Fly Continental!
PS: We just got through customs in Guatemala, and they didn’t charge us an import tax on the computer parts. That was a pleasant, HUGE surprise- especially after the fancy footwork Devin had to do to get the last batch through. Yay Guatemala!