that just happened

Woah. My last day as a Peace Corps Volunteer.

After a week in a hotel in Peru, an obscene amount of paperwork, and more tears than I've shed in all of the last five years, we are now just normal citizens. Just good old Americans on our own. Of the 113 of us evacuated, 30 have decided to transfer their service to another country. I applaud them. We considered it, but with just nine months left in our service, we were dubious we'd be able to integrate, assess our community's needs, then start and complete a project. Plus, what I really wish we could do is go back to Okinawa and continue as we'd planned. To me starting over in another country, another village would be trying to fill a hole with the wrong substance. Like your car just got a flat tire, so you pump it full of water. (would that work?)

So we and 81 others have decided to end our service and carry on. Some hope to re-enroll and start the whole thing over in a few months. That is awesome. As for Tom and I, we've got babies to make, school to complete, a house to renovate, and a good life in VA to get back to, so we plan to go back to Oki for a few weeks, then travel for a while, and probably be home for Christmas.

What a week it's been. I turned 30 somewhere in there -we had a great big toga party and laughed a lot, danced a lot, ate delicious ceviche; I got spanked 60 times and hugged many more. It felt good.

So, how strange. What now? Our Peace Corps service came to a close so abruptly. I guess we always had a hunch this could happen -the political situation has been so volatile, we've activated our Emergency Action Plan 18 times in the last year and been consolidated twice. Tom said so many times that we were about to get the boot. I'd always say no way. We'd sit in bed so many mornings, mugs in our hands, looking at the world map and talking about where in the world we could go if it ever happened. And now, whoah, we can go.

Our plan is to go back to Bolivia, try to hand off our projects to our work partners there, give away everything in our house, and give a proper goodbye to our friends. That's gonna suck. Then we'll head to Buenos Aires on the 10th of October for the marathon. This evacuation business has put a damper on our training, so it might be more of a crawl, but we'll do it as best we can. From there, down to Patagonia, and then. . . nowhere to go but up! maybe a slow trip home through south and central america.

I'm so sad that our Peace Corps Experience has come to a close -mostly sad to leave our life in Okinawa and the amazing friends we've made over the last year. But there is so much ahead, so many good opportunities. We'll keep telling our stories and sharing pictures of the fun. So stay tuned.