Peace Corps: A puzzle

One year ago, I was a first semester senior, worrying about finals and papers and the like, as well as trying to forget that college was almost over; I refused to participate in the obsessive culture over what to do after it was all going to be over when the following May came around too quickly. I was about to submit my Peace Corps application. Applying to Peace Corps oddly mirrored my college process. Each times, I applied first to both Georgetown and Peace Corps, and while I submitted other applications, I did so with less energy and conviction, convinced as I was that I would get in. And although both choices were those of a different path than the vast majority of my peers (Georgetown is Catholic and I am from Jewville; Peace Corps drops its Volunteers in the middle of nowhere with nothing but luck, some phone numbers and a few thousand dollars a year), and many, if not most, thought these choices didn’t make sense or were simply crazy, I knew they would be right for me.
Over six months ago, I graduate from college. I walked across that stage a proud holder of a BSFS, but still without a job. Peace Corps, as any bureaucratic arm of the US government and thus notoriously slow, had yet to inform me of my invitation, or give any indication of wanting to communicate with me. A tearful goodbye in DC, and I was an unemployed college graduate. Still, I waited. It would come, I was sure.
Three months ago, I got on a plane in Washington, DC, my home over the last four years, and flew to a land geographically quite close to the US but in other ways far, far away. We were warned in staging: there is a lot to know, and you will feel lost. There will be many, many difficult times, but also the most rewarding ones of your lives. For two years. Pa’ que sepas.
So, I write this today. I have lived in my little farming village in the hot central valley of the Dominican Republic for two long, long weeks. I have met some truly amazing people, American and Dominican, and have met with some truly frustrating moments. Almost ten percent of my training group has left the Peace Corps. Now, I am more than just physically separated from my life in the US, but I do have my laptop here to keep me sane. I know that am in the right place, although I haven’t had a solid poop in almost four weeks. Two years is a long time for us – who knows where we will be in November of 2009? I know: I will be finishing up here in my little farming village and returning to the States, having achieved a certain measure of success as a development worker in my small corner of the world.