My Journey and Weekly ruminations

“Are you married?” Is a question I am prompted with here almost daily - since my training site is so small, you would think word would travel, butalas I am wrong to assume such things. Marriage is another part of this culture that is so different than what I am used to in the states. Romantic relationships are NOT, I repeat, NOT to be publically displayed. Also, pre-marital and extra-martial affairs are so taboo for woman but it is such a common place for men to do both those things. The only comparison I can make that my American friends and family could understand is imaginethe United States in the 1950s. In other news, I started teaching last week and I am coming down to the end of week two. Every morning (there’s a halo hanging from the corner of my girlfriends four post bed) it is a struggle to get up and out the door to class. However, onceI’m there I feel right at home - which is a weird feeling. I was very unsure, and honesty still am, about so many things - but if nothing else

  7.14.2019               This whole thing is like a roller coaster. Each minute my mood changes; one second, I am perfectly content spending the next two years in Ethiopia and the next I miss home like crazy. I think I am always in a state of missing home, but there are just small moments here that I begin to realize being apart of the Peace Corps is what I am supposed to be doing. Today, I was walking to my language class in the morning a group of kids in my neighborhood followed me to the end of the street saying “hi!” and “Bye”; one little boy even said “I love you!” probably not understanding the significance of that phrase, but I couldn’t help but smile. While not every Ethiopian is thrilled to have me in the country, it is these small moments that reinvigorate my motivation.               Motivation is something that comes and goes like the rain. Ethiopia is currently in its rainy season which lasts through what is the summer in the States. Sometimes it rains in the mornin