One year later

1.     At the beginning of my service, I was clueless about bikes and considered 10km to be a long ride. But since then, I have become a bike addict and I crave the feeling of being out on a long ride (30km +), the wind on my face and my legs aching but muscles glowing. If a road is really terrible, I would rather bike it than take a taxi-brousse, because biking is more fun, and often faster. Plus, I now know how to fix a flat, change a tube, and adjust the brakes.

2.     I wear shorts more than I ever have in my life, even as a kid.

3.     Consequently, I have more freckles than I have ever had in my life—on my legs, but also on my face, back, shoulders, and arms.

4.     My hair is sunbleached at the ends and so I accidentally have that ombre look going on.

5.     I can put away a massive bowl of rice like nobody’s business. In fact, I will never look at a bowl of rice the same way again.

6.     I’m able to navigate crowded markets-- both on bike and on foot-- that would have once given me claustrophobia-induced panic attacks.

7.     I consider a 4-hour taxi brousse ride to be a “short trip”.

8.     The colossal magnitude by which I miss New York makes me realize that I am never going to be one those people who just lives there for a few years after college. I’ve realized now that it’s my home, and I can’t wait to go back to it.

9.     I have mastered the public transportation of a massive African capital city.

10. I regularly conduct business in three languages (English, French, Malagasy).

11. Foreign travel will never again be the same to me-- serving in the Peace Corps gives you the ability to exist and move through foreign cultures with much more ease.

12. I’ve turned into a cat person--- by virtue of necessity in this country. (Hate rats? Learn to love cats.)

13. I’ve never appreciated things like toilets, running water, and refrigeration so much in my life. There is nothing quite like a cold drink when it’s 90 degrees out and you’ve just biked 30km.

14. Apples and peaches are “exotic” fruit, while coconuts, bananas, pineapple, corissol, pocanelle, sakoa, guava, avocadoes, and passion fruit are my everyday fare, depending on what’s in season.

15. Speaking of which, I have never before appreciated fruit seasons so much. For they are the bringers of the avocadoes. 10 cents each? I’ll take 5, thank you.

16. I have discovered just how much better a long brousse ride, or a long bike ride, is when you have a friend with you.

17. Uncomfortable, awkward social situations don’t really feel that awkward of uncomfortable. You get used to things always being weird.

18. Sometimes I feel like I could strangle a bear for a toasted bagel and cream cheese. Or a good cup of coffee. Or a decent slice of pizza. Or…

19. Internet is a luxury that I pay by the megabyte for. But when I do get to use unlimited wifi, I really don’t want to open the Pandora’s box of the internet, so I stick with just Gmail and Facebook as usual.

20. I’ve decided that listening to “I Found a Reason” by the Velvet Underground is like inhabitating a world of perfection for 3 minutes.

21. Without trying to sound sanctimonious, my eyes have really been opened to how the rest of the world lives. As a result, I have little tolerance for first-world-problem complaints. Your takeout order getting mixed up is not a problem. Neither is the fact that AT&T won’t let you use FaceTime with unlimited data.  (Sometimes the Facebook posts I read make me want to scream.) Those of us who are fortunate enough to have money to feed ourselves and our families, have access to medical care, and have a sturdy roof over our heads need to remember how lucky we are. I try to do this every day.

22. I fear that I will never again be able to speak English without peppering it with Malagasy words like mahay, fomba, simbasimba, azafady, and many others.

23. I am no longer afraid (or too clueless) to order a whole fish at a restaurant.

24. I physically cannot go to bed without scrubbing my feet. Parasy are no joke.

25. My adventurous streak has come out. When I hear about a waterfall, or a cool but inaccessible national park, my first though is “Let’s bike there!!! I want to explore!”

26. Now that I have to use a pre-paid phone, and find myself wanting to talk and text with friends much more than I can afford, I long for the days when I had a contract phone with plenty of minutes and text messages included. And I can’t believe that I would have so many unused minutes and texts left over at the end of every month. Why wasn’t I calling my friends ALL THE TIME? When I get back to America, I am doing that.

27. Also blowing my mind: the fact that I had UNLIMITED data on my iPhone plan. Again, now that I have to pay per megabyte for internet usage, the fact that an unlimited plan even exists is insane to think about.

28. I have become somewhat of an accidental vegan. About 65% of the things I eat just happen to be vegan, by virtue of the limited availability of animal food products here. Another 30% are vegetarian, and the remaining 15% contain a small amount of fish or meat. I get the majority of my protein from beans/lentils, peanuts/peanut butter, eggs, and sardines. And I’ve realized that I feel so much healthier eating this way. I mean, I’m sure the Paleo diet has its benefits, but it’s not really a sustainable way to eat, and it’s laughably impossible for non-Westerners to eat that way.

29. The things that I thought would be difficult before I got here—like health issues, feeling isolated, or having to use a kabone and fetch water from a pump, have not really been a big deal. The biggest challenges are actually ones that I’d never anticipated: figuring out how to have enough work, anxiety about not being a good enough volunteer/not having enough impact on my community, stress about interpersonal relationships with other volunteers (Peace Corps is a bit like high school at times), the constant fluctuation in my weight, and the worry that I spend too much time in my house and that I am not out there in the community enough.

30. For Easter Monday, my neighbor said she would cook for us if I bought a chicken. So I went to the market, negotiated a price, and then put a live chicken in my saddlebag and biked home. And I didn’t really find this activity to be all that weird. Also, the chicken was delicious.