First Round of Goodbyes

April 5, 2010 Lunes

I awoke today at 5:30. It could have been for multiple reasons: I had to pee, I went to sleep at 6:30 last night, I was nervous.

The first thought I had as I laid there was “I’m gonna miss my friends”. You see, this whole training process has been almost like a vacation with lazy days and fun mixed in. Most of the fun comes from hanging out with other trainees during our off time and so after a while, you forget why you are here. You see, I didn’t come here to make friends or have fun, even though I knew I would eventually.

Let me back up and explain a little.

The other day we had a session about resiliency, which I had no idea what it meant. Resiliency: able to withstand or recover quickly from difficult conditions. In other words, how you are able to cope with stress during the PC. We were given this tragic true story about other Volunteers who had been in Guatemala and how their decision to cross two flowing rivers of water in extreme conditions just to get to a party caused 2 fatalities.

The whole session had been sort of a joke since it was our last final session as a group before our 2 weeks of technical training. But this story struck a nerve and made me think. Our program manager gave this short speech telling us to ask ourselves why we were in PC and to think about our actions and their consequences not only in our lives, but in other peoples’ lives.

And so I thought, “Why am I here?” I knew why I was here, but it’s so easy to forget when you are caught up in the moment. La razon que estoy aqui is because I believe in what I am doing.

It’s so easy to take for granted your safety and security when for the most part we are always safe. But it is extremely important to always think of the consequences your actions will have on others. I think about my family. I made a promise to my mother to make it back in one piece if she were to take care of herself as well and I plan on keeping that promise.

Back to the present: (The connection amongst both stories will be made)

So I awoke this morning with a somber thought, “I’m gonna miss my friends”. You see, this morning we are leaving our training sites with our host families for good. We will not return and so the times we have together will be a part of the past. Of course, we will still see each other, but this is where the experience starts to get real. Today we all catch buses to specific regions of Ecuador where we will be doing technical training for the next two weeks. After these two weeks, we will return to Quito for our last week before we are officially sworn-in as volunteers.

So you can say this is sort of a preliminary goodbye: goodbye to our host families, goodbye to our sessions with all 54 of us in a room, goodbye to the nights out in Cayambe, goodbye to the pizza place, goodbye to the general beauty of Cayambe (mountains, hot springs).

We all came into the PC with different reasons and formed friendships based on our similarities. Through the process it was easy to forget the reasons for coming here. I was/am a trainee still so I didn’t have the responsibilities of a volunteer constantly reminding me.

But now, today, this is a turning point. This is where we actually start to learn about what we are going to be doing in our site more specifically. The beginning was all fun and games with language and culture learning. It was our mini-vacation.

So even though I am sad today because things are changing and will not be the same, I am looking forward to what the present holds. Yes, all 54 of us won’t be able to be reunited again until 3 months but we will still see each individually. And yes, we will not have the luxury of being on a mini-vacation, but we will finally be doing what we came here to do. We won’t have the beauty of Cayambe but we will have the beauty of our own site.

My sadness today is actually covered with excitement. Change is normal and the best way to deal with it is to look forward to the future with excitement. And that’s what I plan to do.