Te extraño

I imagined Peace Corps to be a rather solitary experience. I pictured myself in some remote village with little to no contact with other Americans. I envisioned traveling for hours to see the nearest volunteer just to have someone with whom to speak English. My mental picture was way off base. Maybe that describes some people’s Peace Corps experience, but it certainly has not been mine here in Guatemala.

I started this two-year journey a little over ten months ago with a group. Although we are vastly different, we have become like a family complete with the slightly odd but endearing members. After training we were scattered all across this country, which is the size of Tennessee but whose mountainous terrain makes it feel like the size of the whole of the United States, but we still manage to remain connected even if we see some people only once every two or three months or more. These are the people with whom I will attend my Close of Service conference in July of 2009 and will forever have a bond from our shared time here in Guatemala.

But during training and especially after arriving in my site, my Peace Corps family has grown much larger beyond just my training group. Through the PCV visit in training, department “Bienvenidos”, hurricane consolidations, meeting people in my sitemate’s training group, security meetings, sharing work ideas with people in my program, VAC meetings, and just free weekends staying in Antigua, the number of volunteers I know and count as friends continues to increase. These relationships outside of my training group, however, are more difficult given the transitory nature of Peace Corps.

Certainly there are volunteers with whom I have not connected, but also there are others with whom I have formed deep connections, and it is difficult to see these people leave. Every four months an old group finishes its service and a new group comes to take its place. People who have had a significant impact on my experience are suddenly gone, and it takes time to adjust to life here without them. While I will be with my group until the end, I feel like with others the time together has been too short. But, “así es la vida,” and this cycle will just keep repeating itself until it is my group’s time to leave too and perhaps those left will be missing us too.