minor victories

This is a little blog entry dedicated to all the small victories that help me get through my days here. Some days it’s tempting to get frustrated about little things like how my computer lab still may or may not be working, how again no one showed up for my English class (although after I gave up and left the school, a man at the colmado asked me when I was starting my English classes… I said Today, an hour ago, but no one came, and he said Oh I wanted to come, but I forgot), or how yesterday I waited two hours to talk to the nun about various projects I want to start and then she rescheduled for Wednesday.

… But instead of dwelling on those things, dwelling on my fears that I am not motivated enough to do this, that my town is not motivated enough to participate in my development projects, that I am wasting my and everyone else’s time, that maybe I am just not the right kind of person for the Peace Corps, (okay, maybe I’m dwelling a little), I’m going to focus on SMALL VICTORIES. Such as:

• Yesterday, while I was visiting the home of a woman who uses my visits as family therapy sessions and who reads aloud to me health articles about things like “The Uses of Broccoli” and “Fiber: Why It’s Important,” a woman who had previously (somewhat condescendingly) offered me Spanish lessons in exchange for English lessons, told me, “You don’t need Spanish lessons, you know a lot of Spanish! I thought you knew less.”
  
• I have scheduled a meeting for this afternoon with M., the student I’m taking to the Peace Corps ENCARGADOS DEL FUTURO youth technology conference, so we can talk about the video project we’re supposed to prepare for the conference. (I’m counting having it scheduled as a small victory although the meeting hasn’t happened yet and he may or may not show up; he’s a pretty good, reliable kid [which is why he gets to go to the conference with me], but still, it might rain or something.) Note: M. did, in fact, show up. Hooray!
  
• This weekend, a couple of very cool Youth volunteer trainees came to visit me. (As part of training, trainees go to visit volunteers to see what life is like. The visit is supposed to come earlier in training, and it’s supposed to be a 4-day visit, and they’re supposed to visit volunteers of the same sector, but this group’s training has gotten all messed up by the hurricanes, so they just got sent out for a short visit to whatever volunteers happen to be closest to their community-based training site.) It was a lot of fun to show off my town, and they were appreciative of both my awesome Disney Channel posters and my stash of American food.
  
• Last night I did a bunch of dishes that I’d been lazily leaving in the sink all day in the hopes that running water would come back. It didn’t, so I filled up my sink with a bucket and cleaned them right up.
  
• I fixed my greca coffee maker so it doesn’t leak out the middle when I pour it anymore!
  
• I just beat Burger Shop, this addictive Diner Dash-esque game I downloaded! Um, it gets pretty hard at the end, when there’s all kinds of sauces and really complicated sandwiches to make… and it was very vital for my development work. True story.
  

PS: Devon, I would love any and all gossipy magazines, regardless of date. Thank you x 1000!