I am going to fly to Baltimore tomorrow. I'm going out to visit some fellow Peace Corps dropouts. I didn't realize until just today how ecstatically happy I am to see them. As my friend Michelle (who I'm going to see) puts it:

"There's all these people here, you know, in our real lives, and they don't get it. I mean, they're great, and they know who you are, and where you come from and everything,
but they just don't get it."

The it she speaks of is an intangible thing. Though, like god and wind and love, you can't really see it, but you can feel it. I'm pretty sure that for us, at least, it has something to do with being closely involved with someone and knowing them at their very lowest, at their most helpless, at their least happy, and I'm pretty sure it has a lot to do with relief work abroad and language immersion.

An example of the it is the fact that I haven't seen Michelle since I left Nicaragua last June, but when she answers a phone call from me she says, "hey there" in the most conversational tone possible-- it's not that fakey noise that you make when you answer a call from someone you haven't even thought about in weeks. It is as if I carry a little piece of Michelle's life. A secret piece. And she carries part of mine. And fortunately (or unfortunately, depending on how you look at it) each of my fellow Peace Corps volunteers still has a grain of my life with them, and I have theirs.

Another example of the it, is my whole trip out there. I called Michelle several months ago and I said, I'm coming to visit, and we are going to drive down to see Kemp and Jenn (two other Peace Corps volunteers who live in the Outer Banks of North Carolina). There was about two seconds hesitation before she said, "Okay, sounds good. We should probably tell them that we're coming."

In the Peace Corps IN country, it was much like this as well. It was not completely uncommon for me to come home from a long day of doing everything and nothing at the same time all day at the hot box of a school down the street from my house in San Jacinto, to find some bedraggled looking Peace Corps volunteer leaning against my front door, talking to my landlord (maybe someone whom I'd never met, but knew the name of) who was there to spend the night because they were traveling, or maybe they just needed dinner and a shower before heading into the big city of Leon, and they'd heard that I lived there.

Imagine, stepping off the bus in a town and asking the first person you see where the white girl lives. Everyone knew where I lived. They'd bring them to my doorstep, and if I wasn't there, they always knew where I was-- at the school, at the vet in Leon because my dog was sick, at the river washing clothes with the little girls, out for a walk (that weird white girl used to walk under the hot sun without an umbrella, que locura), or in Malpaisillo checking email at the internet cafe and buying refresco de cacao from the lady in the bus station who walked with a limp. (yes, they'd actually know this many details... and I usually only told one or two people in the whole town where I was going for the day).

So, as you can see, I'm anxious to spend time in the presence of some of these friends who know me as a Peace Corps volunteer. They knew that I twice cried in Spanish class because another volunteer made such vicious fun of me. They know that I lived with functional diarreah for a year. They know that I loved my dog more than my host family. They know that I hated my town. They know that I wanted nothing more than to have an incredible Peace Corps experience. They know that I gave up fighting tooth and nail, everyday, for every little thing, always- and I went home. They know why. They did too.