Turkmenistan Closed or I Don't Have to Live in a Desert Anymore!

I hope my ominous title sends chills down your back, especially considering that I am now melting in the Arizona heat and would love to feel some chills.

August 9 I receive a call from the Peace Corps- that familiar 202 number that I so looked forward to seeing on my phone 3 months ago while waiting for my invitation. This call, however, is the opposite. Turkmenistan has closed, and I will no longer be going there.

Uhhh??????????

But I will go somewhere. Apparently in situations like this, when a country closes, the future PCVs are given a new placement, but they may have to wait up to 6 months, or even longer- you know how it is- especially considering the recent budget cuts Peace Corps has experienced. Luckily for me, though, this will not be the case...

I will be leaving for Tanzania, in Sub Saharan Africa, still as a health volunteer, only a couple weeks later than planned. Forgive the religious reference, but Hallelujah, because I don't want to wait any more! This does, however, mean that I will need to change some things, and the past three months of preparation have turned into only two months left to prepare for Africa, a place I never expected to go. My blog name will have to change, I won't need thermals anymore, the Turkmen that I haven't really studied will no longer be useful, my dreams of marrying an oil sheikh have been banished and I will have to depend on Sean and Meghan to pay for my vacations and lavish lifestyle in the future. Africa seems so much more outdoorsy than Central Asia.

I really was kind of disappointed at first. I was glad that I still got to go somewhere, and I didn't even have to wait too much longer than I had expected, but I had never wanted to go to Africa. I don't know anything about Africa. But I researched Tanzania and considered it more. Tanzania has a tropical coastal region, is surrounded my giant lakes on its inland borders, is home to giant national parks for all of its wildlife- including giraffes (my favorite), monkeys, and wildebeests- is not a desert, has an Arab influence, and I actually know a lot more about the health issues in Tanzania than I thought I did. Or maybe Tanzania just has more health issues than Turkmenistan does, so there is more for me to know. I think I can do this.

Now to start preparing....

Things I Love About the Bay, A Photographic Montage

Ride of Steel! or A Really Sentimental Weekend

I spent this past weekend visiting friends in So Cal and spending a day at Six Flags. There were five of us, including two of my beloved housemates, all of us preparing for two year stints abroad in the near future. One girl is leaving for Kenya in two weeks, another for Senegal at the end of August, I am leaving for Turkmenistan in September, and two girls are in the latter half of the PC application process.

The weekend provided an opportunity to reflect on our individual preparations with each other, and at the end, we said good bye. One observation made last night was that none of us are old enough to be saying these kinds of good byes. None of us have any comprehension of what it means to leave everything that is familiar for two years. We said what could amount to permanent good byes to people who have shaped our development over the past four years. I do not regret my decision to join the PC and I am excited for the challenges and opportunities for growth it will provide, but I was reminded of how young I am this weekend, and how little experience I have in the world. I have never left my friends and family for such a long time before. I do not know what it will be like to not see them for possibly two years. 

We also talked about how this is an experience that will force us to confront who we are. All five of us consider ourselves to be adventurous, exploratory people, but travelling by ourselves to a new country will test that, and we have to be ready to accept it if we can't make it, if we really aren't what we have always thought ourselves to be. Which would be a huge blow to one's pride.

But this is the point of going. To test myself, to see who I am, to grow, to be challenged, to have an adventure. I am little, I am inexperienced, and I will probably be scared, but I want this, and I am grateful that I have friends that are going through this experience with me, however far away they might be.

Also, thank you to Tiffany for being a pansy with me on all of the roller coasters, and to Rachel for making me open my eyes on Superman even though you were terrified, too. You should become a crisis counselor.

Family, Waiting, and Band Aids

I am leaving California for Oregon next Friday, so I am trying to see as much of my family and friends as I can in my last week and a half here. I went back to my hometown to visit my sister, niece and father today, which entailed Americanized Chinese food, playing skee ball at Chuck E Cheese's, and swimming in a blow up pool in my sister's back yard. As I said good bye to my father tonight- whom I will see in a week, granted- I realized how much I am going to miss him when I go to Turkmenistan.

We have had a turbulent relationship during most of my life, but over the past two years it has turned into what I would imagine constitutes a healthy father-daughter relationship. I ask him for advice, he gives me restrictions, I break said restrictions, and he adjusts his expectations in order to deal with me. Last summer, he explicitly told me "You can leave the state [for work, school, etc.] you just are not allowed to go to the east coast or leave the country." I was applying for the Peace Corps at the time. With time, he has grown to be surprisingly compliant concerning the plans I have for my life, which are so terribly different than the plans he had for me.

This lead me to consider how this experience would have been different had I accepted my other invitation option to leave in June. I would have been so busy, consumed in rapid preparations after finals and graduation, that I wouldn't have had time to reflect on anything, or think about my family at all. I would have had to be focused on my departure, and probably would not have even thought about my family or friends until I arrived in country and finally had some down time. Not leaving until September has allowed me to take time to visit everyone I love, but it has also given me time to fester over the changes that will ensue, like slowly peeling off a sticky Band Aid. I know that I already made my decision, and there is no going back now- and I don't want to, really- but which would have been better? Ripping the Band Aid off quickly by leaving in June, or this anticipation allowed by the slow peeling that is leaving in September?

This is my dad. If he ever learns how to use the internet and finds this blog, he probably won't love that I put this picture  of him on here, but he is such an adorable man, I couldn't resist.

What I Do As a Professional Bum Now That School Has Ended and PC Is Yet To Begin

With the end of May has also come the end to my lease on my apartment, but not my desire to stay in Berkeley, so I have subletted an apartment from a friend who is leaving for June, and have become the new roommate of my dear friend Fuh. Fuh is a brilliant film major who took a feminist film class last semester, so now we get to talk about representations of women in media and I can get all feministy and she doesn't mind.

This summer she is taking a class from the art department on creating film, but since it is from the art department, she has to make the really awful types of films found in film installations in modern art museums that make you want to plug your ears and close your eyes after two minutes. I have been serving as a sounding board during her creative process, validating her as she does actual filming, and acting as what I consider to be akin to hired muscle against the stares of  passersby while filming random things on the street. I also tend to overly provide input on the overarching themes in her films, even when she does not intend them to be there. I am like an English student who bullshits because I can do nothing else.

This afternoon, while reviewing her most recent addition to her film-in-progress, I made another such comment about how something in her film alludes to the theme of whatever I have projected into it, which lead to this memorable exchange....

Me: I think I would be stoned if I were to ever take an art class.
Fuh: I would think it would be better to be stoned while in an art class.
Me: No, I mean stones would be thrown at me.

Notes:
1. This is probably one of those times where this is only funny to me and Fuh.
2. I only said "bullshit" in my blog- which I think is a word that is potentially inappropriate for this medium- because it conveyed my intended meaning and Fuh said it was artistic, and the next month is going to be all about being artistic.
3. The overarching theme of this entry is that I have too much time and nothing to do now that I only have a part time job and am no longer in school.

99 Woods But a Brick Ain't One

After adding my blog to Peace Corps Journals, a current Tstan PCV found me on Facebook, and has been providing me with great packing advice. One of my questions for her was if it was silly to bring my favorite board game with me- would I have an opportunity to play it? Of course, she says, and actually, PCVs right now are obsessed with this one board game... Settlers of Catan...

WHAT! That is the board game I am bringing (and Seafarers)! Not only has Settlers taken over the Berkeley scene, but it is popular on the other side of the world, too! How does this happen?....

Thank you Rohan for introducing Geeti to Settlers, who introduced it to the rest of us, which lead to countless hours avoiding studying during finals. Miss you, D Unit!

Now I Have An Alma Mater

Grades have been posted and I have officially graduated! I am a student no longer, but, in Ric's words, a "vagabond." For reals, though, I'm gonna be "in between addresses" for the next two and a half years, at least.