10 Peace Corps Anxieties

Most of the time I hide the anxiety I feel about my life as a pcv in albania under movies and hanging out with other volunteers. If you google anxiety everything you will receive is so mundane and unspecific. What about this angst? What about this merzit-ness? Why can't tell me what to do about pc angst?

What could be so angsty about receiving on a (semi-) regular basis funding to hang out in another country?
1- Mastering not only the language but the ability to cohesively argue, fight, make your point come across in another language, and convince others that it's worthwhile to listen long enough to get to that point. Fine, Language Performance Interview (?) (LPI) give me an Intermediate despite working and speaking only in this language on a daily basis. I guess that's what I deserve if I can't yell at someone. It's just comical the attempts in the past to yell back at-
2- The gathering of cuni boys on the street or anyone who undermines me. Huaj, huaj, huaj.. ya, that is correct. I am foreign. When you say it in question to each other after first introducing to me, I answer that question for you. Po, jam e huaj. Oh haha she speak she speaks. Ya, that's right I'm not...
3- An American doll, that opens her eyes when you sit her upright. I'm not a quiet, withdrawn person by nature. My experiences in Albania have made me this way. I have transformed from an expressive, artistically inspired, hard worker to a reserved, diplomatic runt in the corner. My communication habits are so minimal now. I take weeks to answer facebook messages that I look at every day, I don't answer calls from numbers I don't know or even ignore my close friends' text messages. Where is the confidence I used to have? It just makes me want to..
4- Scream and shout and let it all out. And find some way to display something unusual and unique. I just want to spray paint a building or just pick up the trash on my own.
5-  I feel so beaten by the system. The little devil and angel start debating on my shoulders and one says 'don't waste your time, be selfish' and the other says 'well, that's not sustainable. go find some happy little kids to do with this', and I realize these thoughts are saying the same thing, don't do it. So we think, well let's take the easy route that so many us have fallen into of..
6- Just passing the time counting the days to leaving. All PCVs will feel like this. That hey, our two years are almost over and why not vacay to the end? Because it causes that much more angst. Take the driven, educated, wonderful people that make it into Peace Corps (ya, that is what I think of all of you) and say oh hey, don't worry about coasting out these next couple months of this huge, life endeavor you decided to undertake. Amazingly frustrating, and actually not what I'm planning..
7- I'm seeking the opposite. Rock it out to the end! This is where I am right now. A third year, so I must have done exemplary things this past year? Well not quite, being that I left what I was doing and started over and went through the annoying PC bureaucracy to finally get the grant I've been seeking in January. With this project..
8- I know that some of the drawbacks are my own doing. That actually, all of the angst listed here can be overcome by discipline of mind and being, by following through and being diligent. That everything I want to do, could have been done if I had consistently been following up on everything everything everything because..
9- No one is really holding my hand and making sure I'm doing any of the work I'm doing. Peace Corps staff, occasionally (as in 1x/year) visit me and casually ask how things are doing. People in my office don't expect me either, I'm a goodwill floater. I float on in and do a concentrated amount of work for a few years. This is actually really lovely, but it also shows the flaws that exist are mainly my own issue. Which is..
10- Exhausting sometimes. It's not a 9-5 pm M-F job. It's an all day everyday job. Everything you want to do, may actually be possible. If you 1- learn the language, 2- integrate and let yourself be the foreigner, 3- assert what it is you want to accomplish. 1+2+3? A simple equation?

Well I can't focus it on much more to even give us an answer. Also, probably because there is no answer. Google dealing with anxiety. Make some to do lists. Lay in bed and make mournful noises. Wah, get over it. You've only got so much time here, and we all know what it is that we have to do. Ick, borrow some enlightened inspiration quote, rally and 'just do it'.

50 lek Meal

This is actually true.

Lentils and bulgur in the top left is this recipe. This is what happens to this recipe if you do a facebook look-over and leave it on the stove for a bit. It  was a good resemblance of the picture in the recipe the day before. A good thin soup, for a base with vegetables perhaps. In it's current state of being cooked down, it's a great goop with cinnamon and sugar. The bulgur came from Sarah C., who received them from Ian R. and have existed in the pc food cycle for far long enough. The lentils, were maybe purchased like a year ago. Time/over need, minimal overall cost.

The rest is pretty simple. Quinoa and nuts from a package from Kara, with a vegan bouillon cube. Pan steamed 1 carrot and a small head of broccoli, these plus 3 other carrots were only 60 lek, roughly then maybe 25 lek. An egg is 10 cents. The orange is from my nice landlord Kiço.

There you have it, a throw together meal in Albania. A combination of passed on items, care packages and some cheaply priced local produce. Overall I'd estimate it as fairly healthy.

COD Objectives.. or what are we actually supposed to be doing here?

Recently, I was able to help someone with a resume review and I was surprised by their gratefulness because.. well.. this is what I'm supposed to be doing. Resume writing is actually a skill I have, is something I enjoy doing and am actually meant to do as a Peace Corps volunteer. Even today, I dusted off my UP203 statistics knowledge to remind myself that oh hey, I can figure out how to analyze statistics from surveys.

Well, I'll be damned I have some skills or something. It came to me then that while we're attending our multiple conferences, we think we're learning, seemingly, a well known agenda to our work. Which we are meant to make aware to our communities through our actions and discussions with colleagues.

G14 COD Volunteers at our In-Service Training in Durres

Perhaps, though this is getting lost in the mess of finger painting, yarn or whatever it is that's happening in the shtepia's art room. Shouldn't a more transparent form of information be available? Yes, we current Community Organization Development (COD) facilitators know what we're doing but do we share these very exact specifics below to the nubes coming in with group 17, the parentals, or wherever the hell these 17 thousand blog views are coming from (um.. what? & pse?)?

Even I have to look at the COD objectives we use to fill out our Volunteer Reporting Forms (VRF), a quarterly program that we use to record the impact which we are having within our communities. I had troubles finding the document but that may be more due to my lack of understanding of the workings of sharepoint (still, after 31 months).

Yes, that's right fellow American friends who think we're just tokin' and layin' by the beach, we have paperwork to give your government to say what we're up to. Organized Hippies Unite! :)

I refer to our objectives document when filling out this paperwork because for one it is fairly new still. Last year we were involved in conferences where we reviewed our program's initiatives. We gathered in Tirana for some reimbursed debauchery, hard earned from our serious discussions of how we wish to reform our program and which breakfast cereals would be most important to import into Albania (cred- J.Budahazy).

The COD program after this seemed to evolve from more of a planning focus to include more broadly the secondary initiatives we found that we were more closely producing, such as youth development, social media and other more web based changes, among other things like encouraging people who are seeking employment.

I used to joke with Tani, my friend and Albanian teacher in Ksamil that I ought to make a little business card or a tshirt that lists all the skills I have that I'd like to share with the community. How far fetched really is that idea though? Of course, I had thought the headlining comment of the tshirt ought to be Free American Labor or Free American, or something equally comical and enticing.

New Years Resolutions, Lists and New Plans

On December 30th I tried to start a new resolution, I followed it well for a day and on the 31st thought of some better ideas. They began SMART and then just very general. I read articles and weighed the options I had about what it is that I most need to be working on.

The problem is just this, in an attempt to be continuously doing this for myself, making plans and seeing them through, I try many different ways of approaching it. Resolutions begin for me if it's the beginning of the week, at the three month mark or the sixth, post reaction to a closing of something, or just a daily markering on scrap paper that I might need to try to shower..

A resolution hasn't been forthcoming. I can't seem to decide what should be my initial resolve. Isn't that what we all experience? We have ideas of what it takes be to the ideal person that we are striving to be. Is the most important step to decide what that is before we begin? To have some specific tangible objectives?

That questions seems to be what holds me back. Where do I begin? Well a start is always the best idea. So, I'd like to resolve to more frequent blogs that may not necessarily have any clear decisions. These types instead of the more warm and fuzzy style of a build up of a peace corps achievement or the struggles and the solutions. Maybe also blogs may not always be clear in understanding or purpose, but offer me an opportunity for some writing and experience. Kaq