Challenges

While Skyping with my high school Spanish teacher’s classes, one of the questions I was most frequently asked was what the most challenging parts of Peace Corps are. For me, the most challenging parts of Peace Corps have been: 1. Being away from family and friends and missing big events like my brother’s high school graduation and his football games, missing my sister’s college graduation, missing my cousin’s wedding, missing my best friends’ weddings, missing the birth of first children. I hate that I am not there to help celebrate big moments like that. Congratulations to all those who have graduated, gotten jobs, gotten married and started a family! 2. I have grown up going to church and being surrounded by a church family. I found a church to attend in Lima, but during my first two years, I did not attend church services. I would conduct my own little devotional in the morning, but I missed the community aspect, the music and the joy. This picture is of a re-enactment of the crucifixion we saw when we went on Holy Week vacation in Ayacucho. That vacation made me happy for a variety of reasons, one of which was that the origin of the holiday was a key focus. 3. Never feeling 100% at home. This is not to say that I don’t love Peru or haven’t loved living with my host family and hanging out with fellow Peace Corps Volunteers. It’s more that I have always lived in someone else’s home and someone else’s country here. I never feel comfortable enough to go take a nap on the couch or kick my feet up on the coffee table. It’s not my home, but it has been an honor to live here. Sure, there are other challenges, but for me, those are the main three.