Sooo, What Now?

It's a lazy Saturday afternoon. Currently I am sitting in my bedroom, enjoying the sunlight from my window, watching My Girl 2, and continuously procrastinating. My brother's playing Pokemon on the Wii (what in the world is so great about Pokemon???). And my nephew somehow stumbled upon the new We Are The World song on youtube and is currently in the middle of butchering Celine Dion's verse. I mean he sounds absolutely terrible. But I love him though :)  He's 9 years old and is definitely a future performer. He loves to sing and dance and show any and everybody within his line of sight. A coupla weeks ago, he asked me if I had ever heard of "the jerk" and proceeded to demonstrate it for me. He assumed that I'd never heard of it since i'm "old" and can't possibly know about all of the current dance trends. Little did he know that a few days before, I personally looked up the jerk on youtube so I could learn how to do it. You should look it up. It's not as easy as one would think. I mastered the "stanky leg" so I figured the jerk would be no big deal. But I was wrong. I tried in my room for a few minutes before I got tired and gave up. My goal is to have it down before I leave for Jamaica. I only practice when no one else is home though...can't reveal it til I feel like it's absolutely perfect, if that ever happens.

My brother is the complete opposite of my nephew. He's 11, quiet, and a nerd. He's a mini-me, except he's male and I lost my nerdiness my freshman year of college. I remember when he came to me a few years ago and told me that pluto was no longer a planet, but a dwarf planet...thats the moment I knew it, Jay you are a nerd. But again, I love him anyway. I actually like that about him. He always makes straight A's and is the top of his class. The achievement rate here in the Blackbelt, especially for boys, is pretty low, so i'm extremely proud of him. I hope and pray he can keep it up throughout high school. I'm really gonna miss my boys. I've been able to spend a lot of time with them since I moved back home and it's finally start to sink in that I won't see them for the next 2 years. How in the world am I gonna get on that plane in a couple of weeks and just leave them standing there? It will be hard. There will be tears. But I can do it. I'm hoping that my experience will inspire them to go after something they wanna do, no matter how abnormal or strange their pursuits are perceived to be. I want them to be able to resist the stifling attitudes around them that do nothing but suppress and limit their outlook and creativity. And I want them to not place so much value on wealth and material things, but to value education and hard work and use what they've learned to benefit others. I absolutely do not want to see them here 10 years from now, driving around the projects, bragging about what size rims they have on their car. I do not want to see them 10 years from now walking up and down the street all day and night, with no job or goals, except to get the new Jordans that come out this year. And if I hear one more dude walk past my house trying to rap, I am going to scream. Whoa, I got sidetracked...

Yesterday was my last day at work, so from now until I leave, I'll have a LOT of free time to organize and pack stuff. I need to make another to-do list so I can organize my thoughts, but I've been putting it off because, well, I just don't feel like it. And since I just found out that there's a Law and Order SVU marathon on, I doubt that I will get anything done today.

We've been getting a whole lotta info about staging and our first few months in Jamaica, and I'm getting really excited. It's like it's all becoming real now. After so many months of telling people that I don't know where I'm going yet, I finally have a country! Real dates! Itineraries! Plane tickets! Concrete evidence! I remember before I got my invite, how people would ask me where I'm going and when I'm leaving, and all I could say was possibly the Caribbean, sometime at the beginning of the year. And they would smile and say how cool it was, but I knew in the back of their mind they're thinking girl, you ain't going nowhere. Not everybody thought that, but I'm sure some did. Shoot, I started to wonder myself! I have a 6 am flight on March 17 from Birmingham to Atlanta, and then a 9:40 flight to arrive in Miami at 11:48. Registration is at 12:30 so delays can not and should not occur. Looks like I might be one of the last ones to get there since a lot of people are going on the 16th. I'm excited to finally meet everyone face to face and be around people who actually understand how exciting and frustrating this whole process can be. We're all from different parts of the country with different backgrounds and personalities, but what we all have in common is this decision to take a huge risk to go live in another country for 27 months and try to make a difference, while at the same time, growing stronger and learning more about ourselves and the Jamaican people. Only 18 more days to go!

6 More Weeks Til Departure!

And I'm getting more and more excited (and extremely nervous) as the 17th of March gets closer. Many of my coworkers are talking about it too. I just love how I'm getting more random comments spoken with a Jamaican accent. "Why does everybody think they can do a good Jamaican accent?" I asked this to one of my coworkers. She replied, "Dunno mon, mus be da ganja hahaha!" Ha. Ha. Cute. They like to joke about how I'm gonna go to Jamaica, get dreads, and smoke weed all day. And of course, EVERYBODY thinks I'm gonna find a Jamaican husband, which is probably one of the very last things on my mind right now. I'll be too busy trying to integrate and adjust to the culture, which brings me to another issue...

A current volunteer recently wrote a blog post in response to a complaint by another volunteer about the party posters that he designs for people in his community. Apparently they thought that his designs were counterproductive to their mission as Peace Corps volunteers. So he wrote a post basically asking for opinions about the posters, if they're appropriate, offensive, etc. Don't know if I should go into more detail...so I won't. Anyways, it got me thinking about how I'm gonna handle my "integration" process in Jamaica. I commented on the post basically saying that I thought the posters were inappropriate and why I thought they were inappropriate but that he should just pray about it (since I knew he was a christian) and make a decision from there. I already felt a little uncomfortable commenting since I don't really know the volunteer and haven't yet encountered the culture that he's in, but I'm trying to be more outspoken, so I figured this would be a good time to practice lol. Sooo, yeah, now I'm thinking about how my boundaries concerning what's right and wrong may become a little blurred, especially when rare opportunities to really get connected in my community present themselves. I guess before I thought of my integrating as simply coming in, observing the community, participating in things I didn't necessarily disagree with, and respectfully declining to participate in things that I did disagree with or that went against my personal faith or values. And that probably will actually be the case with some issues. But for others, it may not be so black and white. There really isn't a way to prepare for this, I just have to cross that bridge when I get to it, but I just wanted it to be known that I don't plan on imposing my ideas or beliefs on anybody. I'm willing to change, I'm willing to compromise, and I'm definitely willing to learn...I mean, it's one of the reasons why I joined PC!

My Tevas are here! I bought 3 pairs: the Omnium, the Ventura Cork, and the Mush. And I got that 50% discount...yessir! And you know what I've realized? Outdoorsy shoes aren't really that cute. But! They make my extremely flat, arch-deficient feet very happy. They are probably the most comfortable shoes that I've ever worn. Style has never really been a high priority for me, and I'm guessing that will be the case in Jamaica? I've heard that girls there like to dress to impress, but this might be one integration point that I'm gonna fail at, because it is highly unlikely that I'll be walking around my community in skinny heels.

Here is the Omnium and Ventura Cork, aka water shoes and comfortable flat dressy sandal:


And here are the Mush flip flops with the beautiful Jamaican colors:




When I saw these, I absolutely had to get them. It's like they were there just waiting for me come and search the flip flop section to find them. Is it too much, too flashy, too overly-excited-about-moving-to-Jamaica? Probably. But I like em, I've already paid for them, and I'm not sending them back :)