One More Time With Feeling, Regina Spektor

I’m homesick.  The feeling is a strange one, but a familiar one.  I felt it after a summer in Yellowstone, a semester in Spain, experiences that at once shaped this one, but now seem as though they were a lifetime away.  I miss my people, my friends.  Things happen at home and I wish I could be there, to share in a triumph, to comfort a sadness, to be a part of the world I was once a part of.  My heart is stretched and I cannot wait to share my triumphs and challenges here with those up there.

In a fashion, that’s what I’m doing here.  I’m sharing my challenges, my fears, my successes, my heartaches with my people.  And with some who aren’t my people, who stumble upon this blog while looking for information on the Peace Corps.  They say that the first three months are the hardest, then it starts getting easier.  You start working, you start being a part of the community, you live alone, you control your diet, you live as you lived before coming here.

In your host community.  As I adapt to this lifestyle, I at once dread and look forward to returning home, for visits and for good.  I dread it because going home means leaving this place, a place I am already connected to - physically and emotionally, and imagine I will only be more when starting to work with the turtles in any and all capacities.  I dread it because leaving means leaving behind these people, who have already accepted me into their homes and hearts.  I dread it because I can’t imagine living the way I used to again.  Going home now, despite the homesickness I feel, is not an option.

I call my family and friends with regularity, but it’s my people here, both Peace Corps and community members, who keep me grounded.  Who remind me that these first three months are hard on everyone.  Hard because we can’t start working, we live with families who aren’t our own.  Hard because we’re still struggling with the language, the dialect.  Hard because we are living in a foreign country, basically all alone.  But we’re not.  We have each other, our family and friends in the US.  We are able to communicate – typically – with those far away.  Cell phone reception is far and wide in Panama, with inexpensive options to call within your network and with family and friends in the United States – when they answer the phone.

Whether these people are in or near your community, in Chiriquí or Bocas del Toro, or in the United States, it’s the support system that gets you through this challenging period.  To be homesick does not mean you will or even wish to go home.  To miss the people in your life is a natural thing, part of what makes us human.  But to be aware that when the time comes, you will miss the people here, in your community, that is what makes the challenge worth it.