One Month

I am really in the Peace Corps now. I just returned from Immersion Days, where we head out solo and visit a volunteer in their site. I went to a tiny, rural canton called El Balsamar, which is the biggest producer of balsam. I lived with a family of 15 kids, no electricity, no water, dirt floors, communally bathing in a waterfall, peeing in the jungle. It was very National Geographic with all the breasts flying around. The family took me to a Novena, which is a celebration they have nine days after someone dies. They light these super tall candles and party until the candles burn out, usually about 3am. We sang and prayed and talked and ate tamales and drank coffee from the garden. We left at about 10pm (which might as well have been 3am considering my old-lady sleep habits) and we walked home. No, actually we hiked home. We hiked for almost two hours through the pitch black jungle, in incredible rain, through rivers and some kind of crazy bubbling mud that sucked in my leg. And most of the kids were barefoot and most of the women were hauling around babies (or me). The whole time I was thinking, "What the HELL am I doing here??? Why would anyone actually CHOOSE to do this to themselves???" But then I´d kind of step back and realize what I was doing and think, "I am so freaking cool right now."