2 Weeks Out

Two and a half weeks until we report for staging.

One week left of work.

Wowzers.

Leaving for Africa is quickly becoming more real. Partly because in the last few days I’ve found the blogs of a couple current Maths/Science Education PCVs who have given specific accounts of what to expect (classes with up to 60 students, near-total lack of math education, teachers who often don’t show up for school, a steady decline in students enrolled as a function of grade level, and low expectations of students). There is clearly a huge need for teachers as well as teacher education, for development of curriculum and investment in students, teachers and parents. I want to respond with energy, focus and patience, but some of my initial responses were dread and foreboding.

How do you make a difference in a school of 600 kids where perhaps a third of them are orphans? It should have been more obvious during all the lead up to actually going overseas, but I think I am just now realizing how little of energy in Lesotho will actually be spent teaching the quadratic formula, or, more hopefully, projectile motion. But, at this point, it’s all unbounded conjecture, and it reminds me too much of an over-confident, uninformed, eight year old version of myself, ridiculously expounding nonsense, to continue. So I’ll stop.

5 Weeks Out

Five weeks from tomorrow I’ll be at staging for my Peace Corps service in Lesotho. I’m sure my feelings of excitement, anxiety and sometimes, usually when I’m about to fall asleep, trepidation, are normal. Right? No doubt my constant packing list revisions are typical. After all, it’s the only thing I have control over right now. All of my Peace Corps paperwork is in, there are so many things I’d like to finish at work that I’m resigned to the fact that it won’t all get done, and my To-Do list in LA will be closed out soon enough.

In less than four weeks I’ll be leaving Los Angeles after being a resident for over six years. I’ve come to view my relationship with LA like a medium-length arranged marriage. I was excited and nervous to move, but after moving did not like what I saw. After a while I grew to tolerate it, later found aspects of it I loved, but finally realized it just is not going to work. But Los Angeles is a lifestyle, and it’s a lifestyle that’s kind of fun right now.

So here I am, four weeks from moving from my home of the last six years and five weeks from moving from my country, trying to balance preparing for living overseas for two years and leaving LA with a sense of closure and completeness. We’ll see how it goes…