The Warmth

"So don't let the world bring you down,

Not everyone here is that fucked up and cold,

Remember why you came,

And while you're alive,

Experience the warmth,

Before you grow old."

'The Warmth', Incubus, Make Yourself 1999

They say that a year into service one senses a lull, a dragging, a low point on the roller coaster of emotion that is being a PCV. After 14 some-ought months, work is routine, experiences familiar, cultural integration commonplace. For all intents and purposes, things are just less shiny and new. Thoughts steer away from immediate surroundings to ever-closer holidays and post-PCV life.

Now, I wouldn't say I've been completely enveloped by this state of mind, but I'm sure about 50% of my allocated active-imagination time most certainly revolves around the aforementioned topics. The thought of going home, being with my parents, seeing the beach, playing with my dogs, eating and drinking till my holiday heart's content - I can taste it. [Quite literally as I'm expecting to gain some serious pounds during Christmas - I'm planning on near double figures (ha, pun apparently intended).] Only 24 days until I'm free to be me. For three weeks at least.

Honestly, I don't attribute this case of cabin fever solely due to being a PCV. Being anywhere for 15 months, with only 4 days of taken vacation, will drive anyone stir crazy. As lovely a place as St Andrews was for Uni, I was itching to go home both at Christmas and summer alike. Never mind the fact Scots speak English, that I had a Starbucks in town and that some of my closest friends were at hand - I still needed out. And obviously a girl who went to Uni abroad and swiftly joined up with the Peace Corps soon after gets sick of home just the same... this roller coaster of emotion Peace Corps warns you about apparently applies to my entire life, not merely my two year stint in Morocco.

However, during a rather testing bus ride this past week - one that included a near-eighty people in a fourty-something capacity, two drunks, one crazy, ticket checkers, two fights between ticket checkers and said drunks, crying children, livestock, and an hour late, two-hour time-span on a usually one hour bus - I was truly about to lose it as homeboy in front of me would not stop turning around and unsubtly staring. Luckily, Branden Boyd and Co. came to the rescue on the good old ipod random shuffle (a serious life saver future PCVs readers) and reassured me that I shouldn't let crap like this get me down and I should, indeed, remember why I came and enjoy the warmth around me while I'm here. There are so many here who have showed me so much love and care and who are more than worth the sacrifice. I just need to recharge my batteries at home it seems and return refreshed and anew. [Shaking it off.]