My Room

I lived in a very nice room in a nice house during my first two years of service. This is a picture of my room. My room was not just for sleeping, but for doing simple workouts, studying Spanish, reading, learning guitar (I didn’t get very far on that), planning educational sessions, drawing up project plans, crunching budgets for projects, talking to fellow Volunteers on the phone for hours at a time, writing letters to many of you, singing hymns and camp songs, taking post-lunch naps, and writing songs about hand washing. This place was my office, my entertainment center, my storage room, my place of rest, and the only place that I considered my own during those two years. At 5:30 a.m. the sun would start streaming in the windows pictured here, the tractors would start up as they took them out to the farm, the roosters would be crowing and the dogs barking, while the house would shake as a large truck sped down the Pan American, but I loved every moment of it. That was my natural alarm clock. Mornings were and continue to be my favorite part of the day. I would wake up in this room and look at the bright walls, and think, “All right day, here I come! Let’s do this Peace Corps thing!”