Some Things Just Take Time

This week has been an intensely difficult one for me. I couldn't seem to get out of my own head, away from my homesick thoughts. I hadn't struggled with homesickness here until our big Pre-Service Training (PST) group separated for 3 days, for future site visits. Before that, I'd had moments where I missed my family, but it was much more contained—easily taken care of with a phone or video call with my parents. 

This was different. Keep in mind that I've wanted to join the Peace Corps since I was in 7th grade, and have been seriously working toward it as a goal for the past 6 years. But this past week, I was questioning everything about my decision to be here, so far from home. 

It was nothing about Uganda or my site (my future home!) that brought this on. I love this country, many things are different here but I love getting to know the myriad of cultures and people here. I think my crippling homesickness was brought on by suddenly having time to be alone, with a great deal fewer things to keep me busy. At my future site, I had time to rest, to read, to think. And, as it is holiday break, there were few people to get to know. Just the sheer unfamiliarity of everything was also a bit overwhelming, as well. 

After my future site visit, I traveled to language training, which is in a town about 30 minutes from my site. I got to meet up with the three other Volunteers who are also learning Ateso, but I still could not shake this incredibly homesick feeling. 

Believe me, I was trying everything. I truly had to spend time every waking minute reminding myself of my reasons for being here:

I want to live in Africa, to learn from the people here. 

I have committed two years of my life to the people at my future site. They sincerely want someone to help teach the children there to read and write, and Peace Corps has given me the skills I need to be able to do my best at that task. 

I get to study language here, and use the languages I'm learning every single day! And studying language is one of my absolute favorite things to do. 

It sounds silly, but another reason I am here is to answer the call that Kennedy made in 1960, while he was still campaigning to become President. At 2am in Ann Arbor, Michigan, he greeted the crowd of 10,000 people who had waited up to see him—people he'd thought would have long gone to bed, as he was late arriving. Inspired, he veered from his usual speech, and instead said "How many of you who are going to be doctors, are willing to spend your days in Ghana? Technicians or engineers, how many of you are willing to work in the Foreign Service and spend your lives traveling around the world? On your willingness to do that, not merely to serve one year or two years in the service, but on your willingness to contribute part of your life to this country, I think will depend the answer whether a free society can compete." (source: https://www.peacecorps.gov/about/history/founding-moment/)

Even with all of these things running through my mind, and the determination within me from years of hard work... I missed home. I couldn't convince myself to snap out of it. It wasn't even the comforts of home that I missed, the Peppermint White Mochas or the hot baths... I just wanted to hug my mom and dad. 

But don't worry, I'm alright now! Because what finally made this all better for me was coming here and finding a beautiful, incredibly loving homestay family waiting for me. They call me their daughter or sister, I call them my mother or aunt or siblings, respectively. They have welcomed me into their home and have already spent hours teaching me about the language and culture here. It's so nice to have a familiar place to come home to after a day at school for language training, and to have people to spend my time with who really care about me.

 I facetimed my parents at home to introduce them to my family here, and everyone loved meeting each other. My parents showed them our Christmas tree, and my host family spontaneously burst into singing "We Wish You A Merry Christmas" which was amazing because, if you know my family, you know that that's our song. I feel like I belong here, and I have a renewed strength in my commitment to spend 2 years of my life here. And I know that my family is supporting me from far away, with their loving arms open for me when I return. 

Me, Myself... and 32 Other Trainees

In a few days, I'll have my own room for the first time in almost a month and a half! I've only had a few moments alone these past few weeks—when you live in a group of 33 people, there is always someone to talk to. If you're walking back to the dorms, someone else is going as well. Want to walk the 20 minutes it takes to get to the supermarket? I can guarantee you're not the only one who wants to go get yogurt. We've all had multiple roommates, and almost all of the girls have been living in the same dorm building together at both of the places we've lived so far. And not only are the walls thin, but the space over the door to each room is just a screen, so even if you're physically alone you can most likely hear someone else talking, haha! 

I've started waking up around 6 so that I can be in the dining hall around 6:45 and have time to drink my tea and eat my breakfast (a hard boiled egg, bread with margarine, and a banana) before most people are there. It's nice to sit quietly for a little while with the other people here who appreciate mornings. 

And then, at 7:30 (Uganda time, so 7:30ish, haha) we're all packed onto a bus to head to School Based Training and teach a classroom of 60+ students all morning!

Teaching my lovely P2 pupils

I'm surrounded by so many beautiful souls, and I've loved getting to know everyone. All who know me know that I am an extrovert (ENFP, to be more specific)... and that has been stretched to the limit here. But I have found a way to cope: I remind myself a few times every day that I will only be around this big group for a limited amount of time—we are all about to travel to different parts of the country. 

My language training group is small; there are only four of us. On Sunday we are headed to the East, while everyone else goes to their own regions—eight to the Central region, seven to the North, and so on. We won't be together again until the end of homestay, when we have a special workshop with our counterpart from site (the Ugandan teacher who will be working with us most closely), and then we will have Swearing In and become official Peace Corps Volunteers! After that we will part ways again, and meet up at our In Service Training (IST), which will be about three months after Swearing In. 

So, as overextended as my extroversion feels right now, I know that I will soon be missing these humans quite a bit. Luckily, our "burner phones" from Peace Corps allow us to call all of the other PCVs serving in our country for free! I'm grateful for anything that makes this easier, because the list of people in my life who I'm trying to "keep in touch" with is getting quite long... and I haven't even met my homestay family yet, or anyone at my future site! I love having so many wonderful people in my life, and I'm excited to meet so many more soon! 

On Saturday, our supervisor from our future site will travel here, to the Teacher's College we all currently live at, and there will be a brief workshop where we can get to know each other. On Sunday, we will leave with him/her and travel to our future site! I've heard it's about 6 hours to my site, by taxi (van that fits 14+ people) or coaster (large bus)—the main forms of public transportation here. We'll be there for three nights, but it's the break between terms, so we won't likely be able to meet many of our fellow teachers. 

After that, I will travel by myself to the town (also in the East) where the four of us will be learning Ateso. We will be living with homestay families while we do our intensive language training, and start the next chapter of this journey! 

I love these humans

Inside a taxi!

Getting down a jackfruit... our group gets into some random shenanagins :) 

School Based Training!

I had my first week of teaching this past week! I taught P2, which is about the equivalent of first grade back in the US. It was a whirlwind of coordination (between me and my fellow Peace Corps Trainee (PCT) teachers), crafting, and stories—so many stories! We used Bah Bah Black Sheep for our fluency passage all week, we read a different book each day out loud to the class, and we each took a small group of students for 45 minutes at the end of the morning and read another fluency passage (I chose "Pancake" by Shel Silverstein) and another book (a few pages each day, so we could really put the focus on comprehension). I never thought picture books would be such a prominent part of my adult life, haha!

There were five of us PCTs teaching this P2 class together, but never more than two of us were teaching at one time. The rest of us would be observing PCTs teaching in other classrooms. We taught a few lessons in pairs, we each co-taught a lesson with the Ugandan classroom teacher, and some lessons we taught as individuals.

One of our lessons was describing uniforms in English, and these were kind of like paper dolls. We had the pupils tell us the name of each part of clothing, and then they got to come up and tape it to the stick figure! :)

The P2 classroom we taught in had about 60 students in it. Some days a few less, some days a few more. This number of students in a classroom on the average to low side for a Ugandan classroom. There can be 70 or 80 students in a primary level classroom, or 170 in a class at a Teacher's College. So, please, take a moment to reflect on how amazing these Ugandan teachers are, to be taking on the responsibility of the education of 60, 70, or 80+ learners every day. 

The classroom teacher for P2 is Teacher Joyce and she is lovely. She's everything I aspire to be as a teacher. She's enthusiastic and encouraging, and she holds her students to the standard of behavior she has set for them. She expects them to be attentive, respectful, and participate—and from what I've observed, they hang on her every word. 

The way we taught this week, to get the best variety of practice possible, we coordinated our lessons. We started with phonics, and then one of us would teach a vocab lesson with words from the book that another of us would read later that day, for the read-aloud lesson. Before the read-aloud, one of us would teach a reading strategy (predicting, sequencing, making connections, etc.) which is what would then become the focal point for the read-aloud lesson.

Teaching about "making connections" before Ren's read-aloud lesson

I think I can speak for my cohort in saying that we all put out our hearts into planning these lessons. We got on the bus to the primary school at 7:30am, taught all morning, had mandatory Peace Corps classes to attend ourselves in the afternoons (topics like medical or culture), then an hour or so of free time before it gets dark around 6:45pm. After dinner, many of us remained in the main hall working on lesson plan materials until 11:30pm. 

So when I wasn't teaching, I was observing my fellow PCTs and they were STELLAR. I am blown away by how engaging each of them is as a teacher, and how creatively everyone has incorporated literacy into their content lessons. I observed 17 lessons this week and taught 5, and I feel so much more comfortable in the classroom now. I definitely need more practice, but I'm so happy to get to do this for the next two years! 

Busy busy busy

Another of Shel Silverstein's poems that I used for fluency

Our One Month Anniversary

How to say "Thank you very much" in just a few of the 50+ languages spoken in Uganda. Our group is divided into quite a few language groups, we have at least a few volunteers learning each of these.

I've lived in Uganda for one month today! 

It still doesn't feel real, that I live in East Africa. This has been my dream for so long, and I look around and here I am, with no return flight booked. 

We're kept very busy here with our training, so I don't have much time to think. But there are some things that just make me stop in my tracks and realize that I moved halfway around the world. 

Seeing my name next to a different phone number—especially one that begins with +256—in my contacts is strange. My Verizon phone number is suspended, I have an Africell SIM card in my phone. Data is bought on an as-needed basis here (instead of a monthly plan, like in the USA). Way back on November 14th, when we went to the mall to get our new SIM cards, buying two gigs of data to use for the next month made me feel a bit more settled. Data seems like such a small thing, but it's something tying me here—and it prompted a realization that for the whole next month, I'll be here, using this data to call my loved ones back home. 

We also received a "burner phone" from Peace Corps. It's a Nokia phone where texting is still done by pressing each number a certain amount of times (it actually reminds me of the phone that my dad stubbornly kept using until recently, when he finally agreed to get a smart phone so that he could communicate with me while I'm here, haha!). The point of this phone is that it can be used in crowded areas without fear of it being stolen. We're instructed to keep it charged and near us always, in case Peace Corps needs to contact us. So here, I have two phones, two phone numbers—neither of which I've had time to memorize yet. 

We also opened bank accounts here, and I have a fancy no-fees passport (different from my personal passport) with a diplomatic visa inside it, and a Peace Corps ID. I'm really here! 

I found out today that, for the next two years, I'll be living in Eastern Uganda, teaching at a Catholic school and living inside the Catholic compound in a house next to the house that the priests live in. My house was built in the 1930s, but I've heard that it has both electricity and running water, which is exciting because there are several sites that don't have these luxuries! Also today, we started our month of intensive language training. I'm learning Ateso, a Nilotic language spoken by the Iteso people. "Yoga noi! Ejokuna, aria ijo?" That means "Hello! All is well, how are you?" 

For the next week we will be teaching in the mornings, studying language in the afternoons, and lesson planning at night. Then, in two weeks, we have our future site visits! I will travel to my future home in the East, and be able to see the area briefly and hopefully meet some of the teachers. After that I will travel to my homestay family, who I will live with for the next few weeks to gain more cultural knowledge while I continue language lessons, as the other PCVs learning Ateso will be at with homestay families nearby. 

This past month has gone by so fast! But I don't feel pressed for time... It's slowly sinking in that I live in this country now. Of course, I feel like I want to observe everything... But I also have the feeling that if I don't quite notice every detail of what's around me, that's alright too. I have time. 

My favorite tree at the last training center we lived at! We moved last week to live at a teacher's college near the primary school where we're practice-teaching. 

Muzardi

Here's where I live right now! Muzardi: Mukono Agricultural Research and Development Institute

Muzardi has these adorable little gutters all around, which helps keep the path dry during the wet season. We're in the wet season right now, we've had quite a few thunderstorms so far, including one last night that caused us all to wake up and wonder if the windows were going to crash in. I loved it :)

This is in the girl's dorm. The blue barrel is always full of extra water for handwashing and such, in case we run out (which has happened a few times already), and that wonderful trough-like sink is where we do laundry!

There's this toilet, which I haven't been brave enough to use yet, since there are also a few western-style toilets.  This style toilet is what we'll most likely be using throughout the rest of the country, though. 

This water barrel is specifically for the toilet. Sometimes the water pressure is too low to flush it, so you just grab a bucket of water, pour it into the toilet, and it'll usually flush.

From what I've seen, Ugandans like to put little signs in random places, to prevent against any potential forgetfulness. 

And finally, where I sleep! Note the adorable turkey that my cousin Lucas gave me at my going away party, AND he has a matching one :)

My Life is a Chip (and that's alright)

Blinking at the daylight first thing in the morning and remembering where I am has been a beautiful experience. I even love hearing the Muslim call to prayer (broadcast over loudspeakers at a nearby Mosque) around 5:30 every morning, because every day has a new feeling about it and I'm enthralled with being awake. Today there was a beautifully powerful thunderstorm–I certainly couldn't have predicted that when I'd opened my eyes! (Maybe my weather app could have, but I'm pretty conservative about using data here, haha!)

I'm nervous and not nervous about site placement. I'm saying it that way because it depends on what frame of mind I'm in–sometimes I'm very worried... afraid of failure, mostly... and other times I'm calm, acknowledging that I trust the process. Some of these humans have been doing this for longer than I've been alive, of course I trust them to put me where I need to be.

Not in the sense that a place will "need" me–I'm sure they'd get along just fine without a 22-year-old Westerner asking them a zillion questions about what will probably be, to them, very mundane things–but rather, the place where my soul needs to be. To learn and try and fail and grow as much as I possibly can from this experience.

Site placement is on my mind (and on everyone's mind here, really) because the interviews for it were this week (I just had mine yesterday). Each interview was conducted by five people. One of those five was the Country Director himself, but most of the others were the teachers who've been guiding us through training. They asked us anything they wanted, all while paging intently through binders of paperwork. The questions they asked me ranged from "Tell me about ASL (American Sign Language, which I've taken a few semesters of)," to more pertinent questions, such as "How would you feel living with a homestay family for the entire two years?" and "Would you mind being a 'starter'?" (starter = the first Peace Corps Volunteer (PCV) to ever be placed in that particular village).

I'm open. I applied, at the beginning of this process, to go anywhere and do anything. It's a perspective that's worked for me at least up until now, so I think I'll stick with it. Let  the chips fall where they may.

We get to see the two or three options of sites that the interviewers have chosen for us on December 1st, and then we have until December 5th to put those options in order of preference. Peace Corps' final decisions will be shared with us on December 9th! I'll keep you updated :)

You Are Most Welcome

Kept my memorial bracelet on throughout the flight, to keep my cousin Tony with me. "Be Strong & Of Good Courage." 

Stepping off of the plane in Ethiopia was surreal. 13 hours on a plane was actually pretty fun, the food was great and we all spent a good amount of time wandering around the cabin area, chatting with each other and stretching our legs. The food was surprisingly good, and the airplane had one of my favorite movies—The Prestige! 

We deplaned onto the tarmac, which was a first for me. As soon as we landed, we heard the news... Trump was in the lead. 

The 33 of us split up to gather around two TVs, and I watched in dismay and awe as votes kept coming in for the candidate I had thought would never win. Already in the midst of my transition to living in Africa, I'd thought I might feel distant from the American election; as if it no longer related to me. It turns out that, while I don't feel as alarmed as I'm sure I would if I were still living in the US, I still feel a sense of trepidation because I'm not sure what Trump's opinion on the Peace Corps will be. In spite of the election, I feel proud to be a representative of America in a foreign country, because I don't believe that we'll allow everything we've built together as a country—all of the steps we've made toward equality—to be undone by one man. 

I have to admit, I was a bit nervous when we landed in Uganda. We'd been traveling for a calendar day and a half—there was no turning back now. What if I didn't fit in? What if I was too overwhelmed by the cultural differences to function? Well, I decided I'd just have to make it work regardless. I felt too comfortable in America, physically and emotionally. So, here I am in Africa, waving goodbye to my comfort zone and hello to a myriad of new experiences. 

The drive from Entebbe to Kampala was beautiful. The last time I'd made this trip, as a high school senior (almost five years ago now!) it was around midnight. That time I had been seeing a new country without really seeing it—our bus windows were open, I was experiencing all of the sounds and exotic smells of a new country, while surrounded by darkness. It was much friendlier to be able to view everything illuminated with sunlight and a bright blue sky in the background! 

We arrived at the compound we'll be staying at for the next month, for our initial stage of training. Everyone was waiting to greet us with tea, bananas, and samosas (fried pastries, filled with veggies or meat). They introduced themselves and each added, "You are most welcome." Their love and excitement was palpable, and I knew I would be happy here. 

Leaving for Africa tomorrow!

Hello All!

I've been in Washington, D.C. since Saturday, preparing to leave for Uganda! While I already miss my friends and family, nothing about this decision feels wrong. I'm a bit nervous, but this path that I chose really feels right to me. I wouldn't be doing this if it didn't resonate to the very core (get it?) of my being.

"Staging" (preparation for service) has been fun! The people who are embarking on this journey with me all seem incredible, and I'm excited to get to know them better. I had promised to bring a cat carrier for a PCV (Peace Corps Volunteer) who is currently serving in Uganda, but it was taking up a lot of space in my bag. So one of my fellow Volunteers here, Randy, offered to take it off my hands (after everyone laughed at me for bringing a cat carrier, of course) so that he could use it as a carry-on! Because of that, I was able to stop by a used bookstore during lunch today and pick up a few more children's books to bring with me!

Adding a few more books to my collection!

I'm especially excited to have found "The Mountain Gorilla," because it mentions Uganda specifically as one of the few places that mountain gorillas can still call home! We were encouraged to bring picture books featuring diverse characters, so I also purchased "Seeds of Change" about Wangari Maathai (the founder of the Green Belt Movement in Kenya), "Nelson Mandela: A Long Walk to Freedom," and "Mama Panya's Pancakes" (about a group of friends getting together in Kenya).

As you can tell, I'm overwhelmingly excited! We leave the hotel at 4:30 tomorrow morning, and from there a bus will take us quite a ways to the airport. Our flight leaves at 10:30, and then we'll get to Ethiopia at 7:15am on Wednesday (Ethiopia is eight hours ahead of Nebraska). We fly out of Ethiopia at 10:10am and get to Entebbe, Uganda at 12:15pm. Please keep your fingers crossed for safe travels for all of us! That's all I have for now, but I'll try to keep this blog updated as much as I can!

My family for the next 27 months!

Service Prep: Aspiration Statement

Do you think there was enough glitter on my grad cap? :)

The Peace Corps staff in Uganda has told us that they're eagerly preparing for our arrival! They asked each of us to write and submit an Aspiration Statement, as a way to get to know us beyond what our resume and application could tell them.

Part of the application was a brief (500 word max) Motivation Statement. The Aspiration Statement is meant to build upon that Motivation Statement, and give them a better idea of who we are and what we're expecting from service.

I have decided to post mine so that anyone who's interested has a little insight into my perspective on Peace Corps service. My hope is also that any future Volunteers who may be reading this while writing their own Aspiration Statements can use it for comparison. Of course, these answers will be very unique to each individual, and so mine might sound completely different from every other person's!

Rest assured, I plan on keeping the old adage, "A picture is worth a thousand words," in mind with my future posts!

ASPIRATION STATEMENT

Veronica Schinker 

Uganda 

November 2016

Now that you have read your Volunteer Assignment Description (VAD), please tell us about: 

A: Three professional attributes that you plan to use during your Peace Corps service and how these will help you fulfill your aspirations and commitment to service.

         I am resourceful. As an intern for Teach For America (TFA) for the past two years, I worked to recruit students in Nebraska who often had never heard of TFA. I had to develop many of my own strategies for this, as my manager was located a few states away and allowed me to make my own decisions while checking in with me once a week to ensure that I was on the right track. I was successful with recruitment for TFA, and plan to use my resourcefulness to bring a new perspective to the challenges faced by the community that I am placed in, and work together with the people in it to develop solutions.

            I am self-motivated, and am driven by my desire to see myself succeed in a position. I do not define success, however, as it typically relates to wealth or power. My majors in college are Anthropology, History, and Ethnic Studies because I am fascinated by and love learning about people; why we act the way we do, and how we form connections and cultures and find our passions. I define success as having positive relationships with the widest variety of people that I can, and having the peace of mind to be able to appreciate the little things in life. I am self-motivated to work hard to achieve my goals and also retain my own sense of stability and happiness.

            I am also curious. This contributes to my passion for learning new things about those around me and about the world in general. I hope to be able to employ my curiosity to seek out opportunities to build relationships in my community as well as branch out into developing aspects of the community that have not received as much attention as they need.

B: Identify two strategies for working effectively with host country partners to meet expressed needs.

            

            One strategy that will be crucial is that of truly listening to my host country partners. I want to be able to hear about their needs and contribute my own perspective to theirs, but in order to do so I will need a full understanding of the issue at hand, which can only be achieved through active listening. Another strategy is that of perseverance. There may be issues that take multiple attempts to solve, even with the combined efforts of my host country partners and myself. I will strive to be resourceful in my solutions and see failure as just another step toward an answer.

C: Your strategy for adapting to a new culture with respect to your own cultural background.

         Through my majors of Anthropology and Ethnic Studies, I have been extensively educated in cultural relativism. Of course, taking a class is much different from going through an experience, but the foundation is there. I have already worked to integrate this perspective into my daily life. My job working at a coffee shop may not seem like the best example of diversity, but I think that diversity can be defined in a variety of ways. The customers are mostly American, and thus from the same culture, but I have developed friendships with people who are a wide variety of ages and social backgrounds through simply serving them coffee and the daily short conversations that go along with that.

            I have also employed cultural relativism in the ESL classes that I volunteer with, as those have allowed me to interact with people who have come to Nebraska from all over the world. I have been able to both build friendships with them and learn about their cultures in a respectful manner. I believe that I will best be able to adapt to living in a culture that is different from mine by building strong relationships with people from that culture. I can say with confidence that I will be able to build many friendships, and learn to appreciate the culture through the perspectives of the people with whom I interact. This appreciation will allow me to participate in their culture, and change my behaviors, without losing my own inner values and perspectives from my own culture.  

D: The skills and knowledge you hope to gain during pre-service training to best serve your future community and project.

        I am most excited for the language training that I will receive. There is something very beautiful about being able to communicate with people in their own native language. I have learned this through the ESL class that I volunteer with, as I know a bit of Spanish and am able to converse with the Hispanic students during break times and I can clearly see that they value my attempts to understand them and communicate with them in this way.

            I am also looking forward to gaining perspective on Ugandan culture. My summer reading list is full of books recommended in the Peace Corps – Uganda training packet, but there is only so much that can be understood from books. I hope to learn as much as possible, as I know that will make integrating into a village at least a bit easier. I also am working to develop my teaching skills through volunteering this summer, but am anticipating many more opportunities to enhance my teaching skills while at PST.

E: How you think Peace Corps service will influence your personal and professional aspirations after your service ends.

         I cannot begin to imagine what I will be doing after Peace Corps, because I foresee that Peace Corps will have a strong influence on the way that I see the world. Being a Peace Corps Volunteer has been my goal since I was 12, and beyond that I just know that I want to continue to work with nonprofits and learn about the world through working with a diverse variety of its people. I am certain that Peace Corps will help develop my abilities to be calm in all situations, have strength through adversity, and be a better citizen of the world. At my high school there were five goals for students to develop, and my favorite of these is the third goal: “A social awareness which impels to action.” I hope to spend my life developing an intimate awareness of the world around me, but also to lend my passion to wherever I can be of service.

            I do not believe that people from developing countries need to be saved from their lives, or pretend to be certain that a 21-year-old girl can make much of an impact. But I do think that everyone can use a helping hand, and I know that I can go to a new country, connect with its people, and lend a hand to the absolute best of my abilities. If I better someone’s life in the process, then I will be ecstatic, but I’ll know that they have bettered mine even more for the experience.

Preparing for Service

The first thing you need to know about me is that I am a firm believer in Great Love. My parents have been happily married for 32 years, and are still head over heels for each other. My aunts and uncles and cousins are also wonderful examples of stable, beautiful relationships and marriages. I have grown up with the belief that love is the most powerful force in the world, there is someone out there who I was meant to find, and all of the adventures in my life will be better because we're together.

Well, I'm 22 years young, and I haven't found anyone. That doesn't bother me, and I've decided that I can stop searching, because I'm done waiting for someone to come along and take me on adventures. My life is my own adventure, and it's up to me to make the most of it.

One of my best friends, Holli, understands this about me. As soon as I told her that I got an interview for the Peace Corps, she said, "Ronnie. This could be your Great Love." And that statement has transformed my perspective. I knew then that I could take this opportunity, pour my heart into it, and that this experience and the country of Uganda could give so much to me in return. Give and take, the way love is supposed to be.

Love requires passion, especially in its beginning stages. One of the causes I am most passionate about is striving for access to quality education as a human right. In traveling to Uganda to promote literacy, I will be working for something that I truly care about. Passion.

Two years of my life is no small commitment. I'm sure I'll discover firsthand why Peace Corps is described as "The toughest job you'll ever love." I have already enthusiastically agreed to the Core Expectations for Service, one of which is "Serve where the Peace Corps asks you to go, under conditions of hardship if necessary." No one has ever claimed that love is easy.

I am ready and willing, overwhelmed with excitement about beginning this journey. Of course, I'm already reading as much as I can about Uganda and the lives of other Volunteers. I'm so grateful to finally be putting effort into the experience of a Great Love that will challenge me, inspire me, and be a part of my story forever.

As I continue to prepare for service, for leaving behind my family and friends and the only place I've ever lived, this quote has stuck with me: "You can have anything in life, if you will sacrifice everything else for it." -J.M. Barrie (author of Peter Pan)