Final School Break

It’s Tuesday morning, September 11, 2012 in Samoa.

 I’m enjoying the luxury of an air conditioned hotel room this week. We’re in week two of the school break between Terms 2 and 3.

I just wrote a boring and sappy piece about our Close of Service conference. Rather than post that, here’s a few high/low lights of the week.

Food was a big part of the week. I’m glad I had my COS physical before we started eating our way through a delicious week of Asian food (at our Country Director’s home); cupcakes and cakes during breaks at the hotel; and family style meals that offered enough food to satisfy even a bunch of starving Peace Corps Volunteers.

Ants were also a big part of the week. My bed was crawling with them the first night and I’m still sporting the bites. A tropical tip: never, ever put your bra on before checking to see if it is covered in ants. The results can be unpleasant.

Emotions were also high during the sessions. We talked about our 2 years of service- what we loved, what we’ll be happy to leave. We talked about moving forward and how we felt about that. We talked about leaving each other and how we expect to react when we get back to the United States.

Peace Corps keeps telling us that readjusting is often more difficult than adjusting to our country of service. I can imagine that might be true for a variety of reasons. That may be but I’m still looking forward to it. The hard part for me now is to get my head and heart back into being here. After a week of looking forward, it’s a bit of a challenge to focus on the present. I suspect the first day back at school next week will change that.