Rougher than most.
I can't explain why but I've found myself getting angry and annoyed with everyone. Colleagues treating me like a dumb child. My students trying to bargain their way into better grades than they deserve. Being a girl who went through puberty in New York, I have a thick skin when it comes to boys and the comments they make. It's degrading and upsetting to a point where I don't want to leave my apartment some days in fear that I'll hear someone yell "Kiss my penis"....and that's not even the worst of it.
I think part of this funk is that I also realized that soon will mark the longest that I have lived continuously anywhere since I was 13 years old. I went away to boarding school coming for holidays and summer, followed by college following the same routine. I never spent more than 9 months in any one dwelling. The same followed after college. I went from New York to Buenos Aires to New York to DC to New York and there I stayed for a year waiting for my Peace Corps invitation. Around that 9 month mark (about the same amount of time I've been at my site) I started to get that itch. That vagabondy-wanderlusty-itch. I started applying for other jobs, I looked into going back to South America or Spain. To have that excitement of going somewhere new and different is exhilarating and addictive.
I grumbled to myself as I went to meet my tutor. Where as my life was once exciting and fresh, everything seems so mundane and banal now. See I'm in a funk I know. Things turned around a bit when I met up with my tutor. As she was making dinner she gave me an assignment to write a postcard to her pretending that I was in America over Christmas and New Years the post card went something like this:
Dear Slava,
How are you?
I'm fine. Last night I decorated the Christmas Tree with my family and then ate a lot of food. My mom made a cake. I'm now the fattest woman in the world. What are you going to do for New Year's? I'm going to a party with my friends and we're going to drink champagne all night.
I miss you! Send my greetings to your mother, father and Vicky (the cat)
Kisses
Ellie.
This letter ,I kid you not, brought her mother to tears. She acted like I was leaving tomorrow. She made me promise to call and write. I told her I would, but that I wasn't even leaving until next July, She dried her eyes. I thought to myself as we were sitting around the table having dinner and watching the news "I'm going to miss Bulgaria" Well that was a first. I never thought I would miss Bulgaria. I thought I would live my two years here, look back on it fondly but readily and happily move on. I think about the time I spent in Greece, Argentina, Costa Rica, Italy, and so on. I love all of those places, but I don't miss them. When I was in most of those places I was more likely a glorified tourist. I had a place to live but it was only temporary and I knew that. 2 years is not temporary. At least not for me. The excitement that comes with travel is amazing but what I'm doing here and now is more than that. It's settling in. It's making friends. It's getting adopted by a surrogate family. While I think my life is anything but invigorating now, I think that one day in the distant future I will look back at this time as possibly being the most stirring event to ever have happened to me. I guess we will see....
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