Monthly Archives: April 2013

Making a Life-Long Project Better

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I’ve been doing the Everyday Project for six and a half years now.  I knew joining the Peace Corps would add a unique spice to my project.  Two years of projects with weird landscaped and veiled women in the background?  I loved the idea.  It will make my project stand out.  When I started getting used to being here in Morocco, however, I realized there was another advantage to being in the Peace Corps.  Time.

There is a lot to do in the Peace Corps.  I spend a lot of time hanging out with my Host Family, eating, and teaching kids.   But, inevitably, there is a lot of free time.  I knew this would happen.  As a result, I made a nice long list of personal goals I wanted to accomplish during my 27 months here.  Most of them were writing goals.  But there were a few random ones.  Genealogy was one.  Another, however, involved my Everyday Project.

I’ve seen a couple projects that aligned the eyes in their pictures.  They are some of my favorite projects.  If you can find a way to align the eyes of the pictures, you can go as fast or as slow as you want.  For me—without aligned eyes—I dare not go faster than ten pictures per second.  Even at that rate, my face bounces around enough that it is slightly disorienting.  So I put it on my list: Align the eyes in my Everyday Project.

I knew it was an ambitious project from the get-go.  To start, I wasn’t sure how to do it.  I tried several different projects over a week in February.  Finally, I realized the best way to do it was with the Ruler option in Powerpoint.  I did three months that week.  Later I realized I was making the pictures too large.  I started again.  It takes about half an hour to do a month—a little less than a minute per picture.  I’ve been doing this for six and half years.  That’s about 2,200 pictures.  Like I said…it’s an ambitious project.

When I started working, I thought it would be a rather monotonous project.  It is, at times.  But, more and more, I find that that is not the case.  I see my face and realize things.  I have a slight tilt to my head.  My eyes look better in the sunlight than in the faux light of the indoors.  I can see when I had been crying—eyes still red.  I can tell when I just got out of the hot tub—hair still wet.

More importantly, I look to the background.  This is the part that brings back memeories.  I like it when I am not home in the pictures.  It’s great to try to figure out where I was…and why?  Who was I dating at that point?  How long till we break up?  Who was I hanging out with?  What did we do?  These pictures hold my life in their pixels.  I’m loving this “monotonous” part of this fantastic project.

Here’s a quick look at what I am doing.  I am currently 300 pictures in.  If you are looking to start your own project (which I strongest suggest you do) or need any advice on aligning eyes, feel free to contact me.  I love spreading this project.

10% Done With Service

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logo (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

 

Today marks a 10% completion of my Peace Corps service.  80 days down.  720 to go.  As I settle into my community, I am having my fair share of successes and failures.  I feel comfortable walking all the streets of my gorgeous mountainside town.  Youth that will be in my English classes come up to me all the time to talk in broken sentences (Broken Arabic from me; broken English from them).

 

I’m enjoying going to the park on a daily basis and reading.  On my first full day here, I went to a park and read for an hour.  This 20 year old approached me and told me I was the first person he had ever seen read in public in Bhalil.  I was kind of in awe of that statement.  He said that, when it wasn’t time to study, all the students really cared about was soccer.  After walking around town, I believe him.  There’s always at least one game going on in some part of the town.

 

Before he left, he asked me about America.  He followed up by saying he was going to get there some day.  It’s not the first time I have heard this.  There’s this “Path to a Better Life” that most people in developing nations tend to follow.  Here in Morocco, step on is to get into University and become fluent in English and a European Language while studying something important—like becoming a doctor.  Knowing the language and the study will help them get to their European country of choice.  For my stranger in the park, it was Germany.  But Germany is not intended to be the final destination.  America is always the final destination—even in today’s world.

 

For my friend in the park, “I will die in Las Vegas, if God Wills It.”

 

These are the moments that I live for.  I’ve already had several.  Yesterday, I found a road that looped around the outside of the entire town.  After taking a wrong turn, I found myself at a dead end.  It was beautiful.  The road dead-ended because it reached a cliff that overlooks the entire town and the entire countryside around the town.  I stood there for maybe 20 seconds before a man approached me.

 

His English was perfect and he didn’t let me speak in Arabic.  We talked for half an hour.  He lived in the States for 18 years during the prime of his life.  His life story was incredible.  I wanted to keep talking to him all day.  His perspective was unlike anything I have ever heard before.  At the end of the conversation, he pointed to a building next to this beautiful overlook and told me it was for rent—and almost perfect for my budget.  I can’t wait to go back and check it out.  His business is right downstairs from the apartment.  I would love to be next door to a person who can tell a great story.

 

Things are going well.

 

Let’s keep it that way for the next 80 days.

 

 

 

A Feeling I Cannot Shake

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Something is off.  I’m doing well in my Final Site.  This is something else.  Not the strangeness of the place, the people, or the food.  This has to do with home.  I know most people would simply call it homesickness.  But that sounds to simple to me.  This is more.  To be honest…even if I Early Terminated right now and went back “home” to Colorado, I would have this feeling.  It’s an intense detachment.  I’m seeing all my connections fade.  I should have know this was inevitable…but was there even a way to accept it before?  I don’t believe so.

I don’t talk with friends back home very often.  When i do, I either feel a pang in my stomach or can’t find much to talk about.  The same, strange enough, is happening with my family.  Our conversations feel shorter.  Through no fault of anyone, all of the relationship’s I’ve built up for 23 years are fading.  I guess that is what happens when you are an ocean and and continent away.  It’s a pailful experience   I didn’t notice it until my kinda-relationship back home was put on hold.  This was also expected…but that doesn’t make it any easier.

I find myself relying on the support structure that I’ve built over the last ten weeks with other Peace Corps Volunteers.  Given, it is a strong support system.  I have no fear of going without advice and help.  It’s the transition of going from my usual support system to something entirely different that is getting at me.  I have these people who I regarded as immovable pillars in my life back home.  To know that I can not rely on the pillars in strange…and awkward.  I miss my friends.  I miss my family.  I miss my special someone.  I will always love them.  24 months and counting…

A poem I wrote today:

Inescapable