When I first started this blog before I had even left the United States, I envisioned it to be an intellectual, reflective space where I indulged in my feelings and experiences and as a side effect stirred envy and admiration from my family and friends at home. I had read so many beautifully written blogs and loved the way they captured the most heartbreaking and heart-filled moments of the idealized Peace Corps life. But as my blog never turned out the way I expected, neither did my service. For most people, Peace Corps is not a collection of successes and moving epiphanies but rather 2 long years of quotidian life in a different reality.
When I look back on the things I thought I would "accomplish" here, I am shocked at my naivete and arrogance. Here at the end of my 2+ years in Paraguay, I am more proud of my journey of self-discovery, the cultural affection I have developed, my friendships that transcend all boundaries, and the relationship I have built with a person that I love. The tiny steps that it took to attain these triumphs were not blog-worthy stories or Kodak moments for a Peace Corps ad but a blur of days when this stopped being an experience and became my life. I have found my family, my friends, and my home here, and as I got into the pace of my Paraguayan existence, I no longer felt the need to justify the integrity of it all by publicizing their habits, flaws, and opinions, our arguments, jokes, and heart to hearts for the rest of the world to see. So just as with many of my community projects and my previous hopes and plans for my Peace Corps service, my blog posts found themselves in one of two positions: incomplete or on the back burner. While I regret having not been able to share and expose more of what Paraguay and my life here is like, I appreciate the small collection of somewhat poised memoirs that I have created here in my personal cyber space. As always, nothing turns out to be the masterpiece you had imagined, but I continue with my constant belief that the paint splattered just the way it should.
In less than a month, when I leave this precious place, I will be forever thankful to the path that brought me to this tiny point in the map of the world and to the people who have loved me unconditionally as I have them. And since in a month, that goodbye will be too painful to bear, I will now officially say goodbye to my blog and goodbye to Paraguay. Fue un placer.
Saturday, June 2, 2012
Tuesday, March 6, 2012
Being a Tourist in the USA
In November, I had the wonderful experience of taking a trip home to visit my gente and have a nice relaxing vacay in the glorious Estados Unidos.
Family and friends were visited; delicious food was consumed, and life in the easy, breezy United States of America was seen from a Paraguayan lens. And while I wasn't seeking answers or comparisons, some simple observations were hard to avoid.
1. Options! While I spend so many days complaining due to lack of options here, I was completely overwhelmed by the array of stores, brands, styles, colors of any and everything. You don't have to eat just the meal of the day; you can choose from this 300 item menu that can be adapted to your dietary needs AND served on your favorite color plate if you want! After stuttering and sweating through each selection process, it left me feeling like I just wanted to sink back into a cave and eat the meal of the day...
2. Convenience and comfort! Oh how I miss my car! I absolutely loved being able to drive, to go anywhere at anytime, to know exactly where to go to efficiently get exactly what I want. I loved taking lots of nice showers, being clean, doing laundry. So many of these conveniences make life so much safer, cleaner, less frustrating but the line does have to be drawn on what is useful and what is excessive.
3. Technology! So much everywhere you look! In the race for advancement and technology, so many things were created, people trying to "do." It now seems that people are trying to undo what they overdid... Trying to get back to the basics so that people, instead of computers, can have jobs, and they can eat clean food rather than processed packaged chemical-filled mush, and have kids that aren't fat, lazy and spoiled all the meanwhile trying to compensate for the harm done to Mother Nature through a new "green" routine and hybrid car. Sometimes medicines have their side effects... Come down to Paraguay where life hasn't been as much tinkered with.
After my trip to the US, I felt even more confirmed that my two worlds live at two ends of the spectrum, and the realities of each can be incredibly shocking. But when I look through pictures from my trip home, I see the same things that I see in my pictures of Paraguay - beautiful scenery, people I love, and weird things I want to show to someone else :)
I'll leave you with one of each.
Family and friends were visited; delicious food was consumed, and life in the easy, breezy United States of America was seen from a Paraguayan lens. And while I wasn't seeking answers or comparisons, some simple observations were hard to avoid.
1. Options! While I spend so many days complaining due to lack of options here, I was completely overwhelmed by the array of stores, brands, styles, colors of any and everything. You don't have to eat just the meal of the day; you can choose from this 300 item menu that can be adapted to your dietary needs AND served on your favorite color plate if you want! After stuttering and sweating through each selection process, it left me feeling like I just wanted to sink back into a cave and eat the meal of the day...
2. Convenience and comfort! Oh how I miss my car! I absolutely loved being able to drive, to go anywhere at anytime, to know exactly where to go to efficiently get exactly what I want. I loved taking lots of nice showers, being clean, doing laundry. So many of these conveniences make life so much safer, cleaner, less frustrating but the line does have to be drawn on what is useful and what is excessive.
3. Technology! So much everywhere you look! In the race for advancement and technology, so many things were created, people trying to "do." It now seems that people are trying to undo what they overdid... Trying to get back to the basics so that people, instead of computers, can have jobs, and they can eat clean food rather than processed packaged chemical-filled mush, and have kids that aren't fat, lazy and spoiled all the meanwhile trying to compensate for the harm done to Mother Nature through a new "green" routine and hybrid car. Sometimes medicines have their side effects... Come down to Paraguay where life hasn't been as much tinkered with.
After my trip to the US, I felt even more confirmed that my two worlds live at two ends of the spectrum, and the realities of each can be incredibly shocking. But when I look through pictures from my trip home, I see the same things that I see in my pictures of Paraguay - beautiful scenery, people I love, and weird things I want to show to someone else :)
I'll leave you with one of each.
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