a bit of reflection

Jan 16

I wanted
the words to come to me, I wanted
to speak the language
that everyone else spoke. I wanted
to keep myself and
become them
like the last hints of sun
against tide, rising. I wanted
to wake up and fit into the size
of my new life. I wanted
to be as graceful as the blue slivers of boats
that bow to the sea at days end. I wanted
to bounce all my prayers off
the hard stone of some cathedral, lose
my mind in Hail Marys and
wake up sure that
it was all as it was supposed to be.


Life Continues in Palmar

I have now been in Palmar four and a half months and in Ecuador nearly seven. An entirely new year has begun and what can I even begin to say about the strangewonder of it all. These past seven months have been chuckfull of triumphs and blunders to the say the least- all contributing to the great cycle of continued learning that I am always spinning in. I mostly focus on the bright shiny side of this crazy experience rather than the disheartening days or all the ways that I have managed to muck things up before I got them right. And believe me, I have got some pretty great tales to tell on the subject of How Hannah Screws Up Yet Again. Adapting to a new culture is full of failures, ( most of which are pretty funny and I’d be happy to tell you about them in person over coffee or I don’t know, scotch). But the triumphs, the moments of clarity and sense of purpose are what I want to share with you now- If you are nice enough to bother entertaining these ramblings, I would like to offer you something hopeful.
So here is my moment of reflection-
I realized New Years last year after welcoming 2007 with hundreds of beautiful children in Honduras that I needed to make a change and take a risk. I returned to the states and filled out the application to join the Peace Corps. I had no real intention of actually pressing that Send button- but the darn internet makes things so accessible that one bleak January morning I thought to myself, “what the heck”. Sometimes the first steps to change are as simple as taking a deep breathe and pressing a magical button. Of course all of the rigorous medical, dental exams/ legal crap/ selling my car/ moving out of my beautiful apartment/ saying good-bye to my family etc was, shall we say- a little less than magical. But I did it.
But first I cashed in my entire savings account to go to Spain for two weeks over Easter with a friend and his brother and walked 200 miles of the pilgrimage El Camino de Santiago. My two weeks as a pilgrim provided me with a clearer head, strengthened and better connected me to myself and God and gave me a swollen ankle, some serious blisters and some of the most beautiful memories which I am very privileged to have. On the day we arrived at the cathedral in Santiago, the destination of many pilgrims throughout history- Santiago where I saw the bones of Saint James, received my certificate of completion, drank the best glass of wine in my life and received the news that I had been waiting for: I was officially invited by the Peace Corps, Destination- Ecuador.
What did all that mean? I didn’t know. I just knew that my journey as a pilgrim, rather than ending at the bones of a saint, were only just beginning.
My mom took me to the airport. Plane from Appleton to Chicago. Chicago to Miami and then Ecuador. Physically walking away from my mom and my home was one of the hardest parts, just getting on that plane was hard... sitting down and putting on my seatbelt, fighting every urge to just run off the plane and go home.
Anyway— I stayed on the plane. I arrived in a new country. I survived 2 and a half months of intense training and the first months in my site. All of which were full of struggle and excitement. And now... seven months into my adventure, I feel that as my mother wrote me in a letter that she gave me as I boarded that first plane, that I am, “abundantly blessed”. And I feel very much like the photo that she enclosed in that same letter– a photo of this red-head on her tricycle, full of determination, fear and pure joy. I am ready to take on 2008.