2012-11-14
I originally began writing this post about expectations, because let’s be real, who packs up their life for a year and moves to Africa without some sort of expectation as to what they are getting themselves into? Fall Training made everything seem so fun and happy all the time. Having spent the 10 days at Stanford living in the...
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You know that feeling of pure happiness? Where you feel a bubble inside you begin to light and spread throughout each cell within you? The light shines threw in the form or a smile and the sound of a laugh. That feeling of having pure satisfaction and being content within. Where in a single moment...
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2012-11-14
Before I came to Senegal, I was fairly detached from the floor, or as detached as gravity allows. The floor was a convenient place to keep chairs and tables and trash cans and other such useful items. It was a chore, always needing to be vacuumed, swept or mopped. I never gave it much thought...
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I woke up to the sound of roosters cockle-doodle-dooing and saw myself surrounded by little white strings woven together to create my mosquito net, but past that I saw an unfamiliar ceiling. The ceiling to my new room. I woke up at eight and was greeted by many ” A Finii e jamm?” which in Pulaar literally means,...
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2012-11-13
Upon coming to my community in Ecuador, I was expecting to be introduced to a world where women tended to the home all day whilst men set off to do manual labor. What I was not prepared for, however, was the reality of Alto Tena, where women are responsible for nearly everything. They are the...
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2012-11-13
When I walked back into my yard after delivering lunch to the workers in the field, BAM. There was a dead and bloody pig lying in the dirt. Golly I sure do love Ecuadorian surprises. My mom had told me earlier in the week that we were going to kill a pig although I had forgotten. “Just a...
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2012-11-13
Although I loved my high school, I always felt trapped in the confines of the classroom. I was living in a rut of text books and class discussions and research papers, and all I could think about was my desperate need to break out of that comfort, to immerse myself in a completely unfamiliar environment, and to see...
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