Sex: While the Peace Corps isn’t a particularly easy job, it does allow for a lot of free time. If you had two to ten hours to kill every day, what would you do? I’ll leave it at that.
Dates: Not to be a sap, but every night is a great date with Tom. We take turns cooking dinner –whoever feels like it or has a good idea for what to make- and we sit in our hammock chairs side by side with a beer (cheap, not tasty) or a tin cup of wine (also cheap, and kind of tasty) and enjoy each other’s company over a good meal. My favorite though is our morning date when Tom brings me coffee in bed (my birthday present this year was free coffee in bed for the rest of my life –excellent). We sit under our big mosquito net and talk about the things we hope to do and the people and places we love. Don’t barf just yet. It’s not all peaches and perfect. But really, I landed an awesome man, and I enjoy his good company.
We go into the city every month to get our mail, monthly living allowance, see some friends, and have a nice dinner. La Casona is our favorite place to eat. It’s a German restaurant in a beautiful 150 year old house with an open courtyard, and they have the best bratwurst and mashed potatoes in Bolivia (maybe the only brats in Bolivia, come to think). And bottles of wine or jugs of passion fruit juice for three bucks. Can’t beat it. Last week we celebrated our four year wedding anniversary with lunch there, followed by a swim at the posh hotel where we were staying ($10 a night for both of us), a baseball game viewed from our big bed, and dinner at a French restaurant where we ate spinach and beef stroganoff crepes and filet mignon. Amazing. This might sound like normal life to some of you, but you’ve got to understand that watching a baseball game and going for a swim is the kind of thing we spend weeks fantasizing about.
Tom at La Casona
Keeping the spirit and soul fresh: I think the first two questions answer a lot of this one: love, friendship, celebration –that’s what feeds my spirit. Our job here is very undefined and, it’s not easy to see progress or know when we’re on the right track. I can get pretty frustrated with our work, and it helps immensely that we do a lot of things for ourselves to be proud of and excited about. We cook up great meals (weird sometimes, on account of the available ingredients, but great nonetheless), go for long bike rides, read up on things of interest, play the guitar, write letters, think, talk, nap, exercise, build things, plant things, plan things. And always there is music in our house. And a fan blowing. Which, anyone who has lived in the 100 degree, a.c.-less tropics can tell you, is a spiritual thing.
Nature has always been my outlet, the thing that refreshes me, and it’s harder than I thought it would be for us to get out in the midst of it here. What was jungle fifty years ago is now farmland spreading out for miles in every direction, and our only mode of transportation is our bikes. There is a small lagoon a few miles away, which is home to a bazillion beautiful birds, a pile of crocodiles, and a few jungle mammals that I can’t pronounce. We bike there every week or so to feel like we’re somewhere far from town, and for the hour or two that we are there I feel refreshed.
The lagoon near our house
why we do not swim in it
1 comment:
Absolutely u got this one down right man.. Keeped me entertained for ages.
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