Less Than A Year To Go, The Halfway Point

It finally happened. A significant milestone occurred in my Peace Corps service on December 8th.  On that day the AZ9s swore in as volunteers and thus began my 'last' phase in the Peace Corps.  Thus, today is my last December 11th and Friday was the last time I would have to teach the 7th form traveling lesson.  I'm in the middle of my last December, and soon the North Finger Crew will be holding our last Christmautakah Holiday Celebration.  If Peace Corps service has been a seemingly endless hill rising in front of me, I have just crested and am now on the downward slope.

Swearing In ceremony is a dramatic halfway marker for current volunteers, I mean there is literally a ceremony.  Even if you aren't consciously looking back and seeing what you've accomplished, you can't help but put yourself in the shoes of the newly sworn in volunteer.  Only one brief (or endless, depending when you ask) year ago, we were in the exact same place.  I remember all too well not feeling comfortable with the language, the soul-sucking prospect of living with a host family for another 4 months, and the anxiety, exhaustion and fear felt while in the taxi ride up to site.  I empathize with each of these new volunteers.  They're doing something incredible and site will eventually be amazing, but I'm thrilled to be beyond it.

Compared to now, being a new volunteer sucks.  You're constantly in fight or flight mode and your brain is actively analyzing every little thing it encounters.  I remember trying to figure out how long I should let it slide that the shop keeper just took my 10 manat and walked out the store.  Now I understand that he first told me 'I need to get change'.  I'm happy to be in Peace Corps, but I am even happier to have finished that first year.

This midway point is a unique perspective in time.  All of us have accomplished a lot since arriving in Azerbaijan, both for our organizations and ourselves.  And that was just a single year.  Now, we still have one year left but we have the connections.  We have the language ability and we have the momentum.  If this first year was devoted towards clearing our the obstacles to create paths, this next year will be all about using those paths as much as possible.  Talking to the right people first and being so much more effective in our time and our energy.

Looking forward to this point last year seemed like it was going to take forever, like looking down a deep deep well into complete darkness.  Looking forward to our COS, a year from now, has the opposite experience, it seems like it will rush by and is already completely scheduled.  Recently a volunteer and I were drafting a potential schedule for a grant we were working on and we found that if we kept a strict, but reasonable, schedule we would wrap up the project in October. Thats only a month before people will start COSing!  And it feels like that for most things I'm doing.

Last year was a filled with accomplishments that allowed me to say 'I can do this'.  This year I'll be working on those accomplishments in which I'll say 'I did this'.  Last year built confidence, this year will build resumes.  Last year was about 'service,' this year will be about 'my service'.  And I'm pretty excited for it.