Life moves on...

...and it's moving on here, and back home. We just celebrated our first anniversary, and we'll be celebrating two more before we leave this place. My brother just had a birthday, each of our cousins a child (congratulations and congratulations!), and the first of many friends' weddings is occurring as I write this post. Yet another just got engaged. Best wishes to everyone as these events occur. And Mom, in case we get caught up in craziness at site and don't make it to the internet in the next few weeks, happy birthday and anniversary!

We're sad to be missing all this stuff, but of course life here is pretty exciting. We're finishing training this week, and moving to site at the end of the week. The two of us are heavily involved in putting together the party for swearing-in, so between that and the anniversary, there's been some reminiscing back to last year. As a current volunteer put it, you need four things for a good party: Enough food, good music, low lighting, and booze. Of course, having great people there is a plus as well.

This last one won't be a problem, but we will have fewer of the great people. We started in the U.S. with 33 people; we're now down to 30. The bonds formed here are strong, and so the last week has been rough, as some amazing people have decided to return to the U.S. and pursue different paths. Of course, we're happy that they made the best decision for them, and I for one look forward to hearing about their different adventures in the next few years. I hope they didn't take too many worms back to the States as tagalong passengers.

We've already disclosed to our families stories about our site, which we visited a week or two ago. We're in a small farming community, just a bit off the beaten path of the country. Not far though -- no 17-hour drive for us, or multiple boat rides, as with some of our compatriots. Just a ferry ride; and by the time we leave, we won't even have that, as there's a new bridge being built along our route.

Our site village just got electricity (referred to as "current") within the last year, so we're coming right in a period of big change in our community. A businessman donated amazing computers (pretty much top-of-the-line, by any standards) to the secondary school where I'll be working, so I'll be spending some time helping students familiarize themselves with that sort of thing. Mostly, though, I'll be doing some counseling and community interventions. The school and village are having some issues with student retention (and resident retention), suicide, and other things, so we'll see what can happen. My partner will be working with multiple elementary schools in our village area (they all feed into the one secondary school), focusing on literacy.

Everyone at our site seems pretty excited that we're there (as are we), and it feels like we have a great deal of support. From the students and youth, to staff, community leaders and other organizations, people seem ready for us to be there and are ready to get involved in whatever it is we end up doing. We're also anxious to dive in, get to know the people and the community, and figure out how best we can serve the area. We may end up involved in some local business opportunities as well, connecting people and expanding infrastructure. The thing I love most about our organization is the freedom we will have to find how best we can fit into and change existing structures and best effect positive change at our site. Two years from now, we may be doing work that no one (ourselves, our organization, our community) ever predicted. If you like structure and clearly defined job descriptions, giggle yourself to sleep at night picturing me working with a local fishing co-op.

That's all for now. We've grabbed a lot of books from the organization's library; volunteers about to leave the country are giving numbers in the (many) dozens when recounting the books they've read over their period of service. With no TV and little social life, there's little to do aside from integrate, work, and read.

What a great couple of years!