TGIF--Thank God it's February

January is finally over! Hallelujah, February is here!

What a long, insufferable month it’s been. I don’t care if you’re in the midst of winter or the heat of summer; January just sucks. After months of build-up for holiday celebrations, January leaves you with little more to work with than your New Years resolution (which is always something really hard that you’ve been putting off) and the aftershock of having spent all your money on holidays.

This January has felt like the longest month of my life. When Justin left after visiting for Christmas, I literally had nothing going on in site. I couldn’t get vacaciones utiles (summer school) arranged before Christmas break, the only youth group I was working with temporarily “broke up”, and I had no other projects to launch since school is out and kids are impossible to gather, and many aren’t even in town anymore. During summer break a lot of kids leave to live with family members, mostly in Lima or larger cities. I no longer have a community diagnostic to work on, so I have had a lot of extra time on my hands. A lot of time to sit and think, “Why am I here?” It’s dangerous.

But, as life in Peace Corps is literally a never-ending rollercoaster (yes, I will continually refer to the “high-highs” and “low-lows” because they just never go away), I am slowly on the up and up. And, for the first time in years, I made a New Years resolution—to work on self-love. Anyone will tell you I beat myself up too much. I guess it’s something anyone who’s spent even a short amount of time with me can see. And being in the Peace Corps, a place where failure is an everyday reality, where no one compliments your work or says, “thank you”, and the idea of success is so abstract it cannot be graded or put down in numbers, pretty much eliminates my usual manner of reassurance that I am not, in fact, a complete and utter failure.

Well, part of loving myself is counting the positive things in my days, so I decided I would write this blog and tell you all the things I am proud of and happy about with my life in Peru right now. When I’m unhappy with myself, I let the things around me that I am unhappy about magnify and become bigger than they should be. Lord knows I could bitch for hours about the bugs, the heat, the food, the creepy men, the lack of commitment from community members, and the giardia I just got over (to name a few), but I’m just going to take a cue from my self-esteem charlas and be positive.

Things that make me happy:

• Cold showers (Seriously. Freaking love them!)
• Finally being able to run again, and training for the Pacasmayo 4th of July marathon
• The time to read books and practice guitar
• Calls from Justin/his never ending support (the other night I asked him what he’d say if I told him I wanted to come home and he said, “Tough shit.” HA! He knows it would have to be pretty serious for me to come home.)
• My french press. Right now it’s getting more use at night as I’m making coffee ahead of time to put in the fridge so I don’t sweat more than usual while eating breakfast. It was so worth every centimo I paid for it (which was a lot).
• My PCVL Nicole, who doesn’t get paid enough for how much work she does along with practically being my personal therapist
• Notes and packages from home; family and friends constantly reminding me how much I’m loved. A month hasn’t gone by that I haven’t received a package from home!
• The fact that I have to think of new routes to and from my daily activities so I can make it on time and not be stopped by everyone to chat. It can be a nuisance and overwhelming, but it means people know who I am and are genuinely interested in getting to know me
• Hearing “¡Miss Amanda!” or “¡Profesora!” or “¡Teacher!” everywhere I go, and just having to wave my arm in every direction and yell, “¡Hola!” because I have no idea who all is saying hi to me
• External hard-drive exchanges with other volunteers. I am never in need of mindless entertainment

Things I’m proud of:

Due to severe boredom and fear of going insane, in the last three-weeks I have formed a youth group, reactivated two “broken-up” youth groups, and am teaching geography, English, and self-esteem/personal development at vacaciones utiles (which finally came through after riding the director’s ass day in and day out). It’s six-days-a-week worth of stuff, and granted sometimes its only 2 hours worth of activities, but it’s better than nothing. 

However, I am most proud of the youth group I formed called Muchachas Poderosas, which means “Powerful Girls,” and is a healthy lifestyle/exercise group specifically for teenage girls. I literally walked around town going door to door inviting girls, asking mothers if they had teen daughters, putting up posters around town, putting advertisements on the local radio, and telling any girl I saw walking down the street. It was exhausting. But, I got about five girls around the age of 14, three of which come on a regular basis. We meet three-days-a-week, play games, do exercises, run, talk about nutrition and body image, etc. There aren’t many of them, they don’t own sneakers or a sports bra, and they have never done a sit-up, push-up, or a lunge before in their life.  They bitch and moan the entire time we do pretty much anything. But, they keep coming. It’s fun because I have to be creative and think of ways to challenge them without boring them. Games work best, because they’re running around and having fun without realizing they’re working out. A kind of surprising thing—they love yoga. They had never heard of yoga in their entire life and now they ask me to end each session with some yoga and meditation. We do the breathing and meditation exercises and they totally Zen-out, sitting with a blissful look on their faces. I think sometimes they come just for the yoga.

These girls get me through the week. Sometimes I have to drag them out of their houses, sometimes I run laps around the stadium waiting for their arrival only to end up waiting for an hour (or have no one show up at all), but more often than not, they’re there. I know it is becoming a part of their schedule, too, and little by little things are working exactly as I’d hoped. I am a broken record of, “¡Si, se puede!” and they are finally starting to repeat this affirmation to each other. And after all the constant moaning and complaining (Peruvians are so dramatic about everything) it is nice to hear them talk about how good they feel after it’s all over.

Last week for our workout I filled up a bunch of old water bottles with sand for hand-weights, and was touting about 4 sets of them in a bag. One girl offered to help me carry them home after our meeting and was surprised by the weight, practically falling over trying to carry it. Another girl had to help her carry it and it seemed so ridiculous that I told them I was okay to carry it by myself.

“No, Amanda, está bien. Soy poderosa,” one said. “No, it’s okay Amanda, I’m powerful.”

All I could do was smile and say, “Si, tu eres.”  

“Yeah, you are.”

I know I’m not the best person for this job, that I’m not always great with kids or super creative in my activities, and that I have yet to tap into my charismatic Spanish side which makes me 10X more awkward than usual. And when I’m down I tell myself that my town would be better off with a different volunteer who is more motivated and capable than I am. But, even the smallest things like a girl calling herself “powerful” gives me the slightest glimmer of hope and turn my days of feeling worthless around.

I think one of the hardest lessons of being a Peace Corps Volunteer is recognizing the face of success and changing the concept of failure. We cannot measure our success in numbers, and a job well done may look like a joke to our former selves. Our expectations have to completely change. And sometimes we don’t know what those expectations should be, whether we should get back up on the horse or realize that horse isn’t going anywhere.

Right now I’m all about the small wins and the silver lining. If I don’t see the positive in everyday things I’ll never make it out alive, in life or in the Peace Corps. 

Got this in an email from our Project Specialist. Seemed timely!