No really, I'm FINE

If you’ve ever seen the movie The Italian Job you’ll understand the meaning of FINE. It stands for freaked out, insecure, neurotic and emotional. As my time in Honduras is rapidly coming to an end and I begin to ponder what comes next, this phrase perfectly sums up how I’m doing. My parents have been asking me since November if I’ve started applying for jobs yet. My friends keep asking me where I’m going to move to. My co-workers keep asking me why I’m not staying longer in Honduras, don’t I like it here? Also, my birthday is coming up in a couple months and I’m going through a quarter life crisis. And so, I’m freaking out in my own way. Outwardly I may appear calm and quiet, but thank your lucky stars you can’t hear the incessant rambling going on my head. I think I’m going crazy. But if I say I’m going crazy, that means I’m not crazy, right? Isn’t that how it works? At least that’s what Catch-22 taught me.  But I find ways to make it go away, namely, chocolate binges. Let me tell you friends, my skin and waistline are NOT happy with me right now. 

Contributing to my stress is a CDC fellowship that I am applying for.  This application was intense, I’m sure they do it to weed out the lazy candidates. Sending all the documentation while living in a different country was tough, to say the least.  To make a long story short, I was up late finishing up my personal statement before the  12 o’clock deadline last night. I finished with 25 minutes to spare. I go to log-on to the website and submit my application and then something horrible, unthinkable happens. The webpage was down. But not the entire internet, not even the entire CDC website, just the submission page. I try a different web browser, I disconnect and reconnect from the internet. I restart my computer. Nothing works.  At this point, I feel defeated. I’m tempted to go home and curl up into fetal position on my horribly uncomfortable mattress.  Maybe it’s not meant to be, maybe it’s a sign, I think. But then I think about the 3 people I asked to write recommendation letters for me. They had to work for this too. One of them currently lives in Madagascar (seriously). I sent him an email asking him to be my reference, I also asked him if he could scan that letter, email it to a family member in the U.S. and have that person physically put it into the mail no later than February 1, since emailed letters are not accepted. That sounds like an outrageous demand, I know. I felt embarrassed to even ask.  But here’s a little secret, that’s the way stuff is done when you are living abroad and trying to care of obligations back home. It’s hard. It takes you at least twice as long to do things, with twice the effort, usually due to different time zones, slow internet connections, and expensive international phone call rates. But you still have to do it. I haven’t met an expat who doesn’t have their parents or relatives regularly do them favors. Thank God for family.

Anyways, back to my drama last night.  I decided that there was nothing else I could do that night. Maybe when they said the deadline was midnight, Feb. 1, they meant 12 A.M Feb. 2, not 12 A.M Feb. 1. So I reluctantly went to sleep. This morning, I connected to the internet and was relieved to see that the website was up and running and that I was still able to submit my application. So now all I can do is wait, it’s out of my hands. In the mean time, I will continue to look for other job opportunities and submit resumes.  

So the big question is, am I ready to go back to the U.S? It’s going to be hard to re-acclimate. This weekend the hospital had a visit from some VIPs. I was asked to lead the group on a morning hike. As I walked to the hospital early Saturday morning, I noticed 3 SUVs all parked next to each other in reverse for a quick getaway, they were also the same make and model and had similar license plate numbers. My first thought was  that we had drug-traffickers staying in the hospital, or at least the family of one. My suspicions increased when I saw security guards in each car. I soon learn that there are no drug-traffickers here, just security detail for the American crew. During that day I noticed two things always happens when American groups come to visit here.  First, I am filled with a sense of wonder and awe struck  by them. They come with their gadgets and smart phones, their fanny packs, trail mix, knowledge of world events, and they bring necessary equipment for the hospital. These are people that have seen things I have never seen, like iPads, Android phones and Kindles and know things I didn't know, like that California as a new governor (I know, I’ve been gone awhile)  Secondly, they eventually say or do something that perpetuates “The Gringo” stereotype and I immediately feel embarrassed. I find myself relating more to Hondurans than to the Americans. Is that normal? Am I ready to go back to living with Americans? My English has even gotten worse. It takes me much longer to find the precise word I’m looking for and my once advanced vocabulary is atrocious.  The other day I was talking to the other American volunteer at the hospital about the cups the cafeteria was using, I couldn’t think of the right word so I just said “throw-away-able cups”.  He just smiled and said “Do you mean ‘disposable cups’?”  I had thought of the word in Spanish first, desechable, and had back-translated it into the literal English phrase.   I know it won’t be easy to go back, a lot has changed in the U.S. … I’ve changed too.

This morning I received an email from a former professor whom I had also asked to write me a reference letter. I hadn’t heard back from him so I asked somebody else to do it. He apologized for not responding sooner, but he had been at the base-camp in Mount Kilimanjaro when he had received my first message and didn’t have time to respond before climbing to the peak. My mouth dropped when I read that. It was just so casual, nonchalant. No big deal, he’s just a middle aged man climbing one of the world’s tallest peaks, as if it were the most natural thing in the world.  It totally made my day and inspired me. I doesn’t matter what I do in life or where I live, I just have to keep finding new challenges and setting new goals for myself. Hopefully I’ll be able to do that without eating exorbitant amounts of chocolate.  

tuna fish, over and out. 

quote for today:

"Life's challenges are not supposed to paralyze you, they're supposed to help you discover who you are" -Bernice Johnson Reagon