Rainbow's Adventures: trees

Wednesday, May 6, 2015

Follow through, Challenge, love and Cambodia.

This has been a fairly transformative year or so for me.

At my birthday last year I decided that this year would be my year of follow through. I removed the word should from my vocabulary and instead followed through with the things I thought were important. Instead of saying I should eat healthier I challenged myself to eat healthier. Instead of saying I should exercise more often, I did it. Instead of thinking ‘ I wish I was one of those people who ran and did yoga everyday’ I became that person. This year I worked on transforming myself into the the person I have always aspired to be. Then after all that follow through I decided this next year (2015-2016) would be my year of challenge.

before I left Morocco in front of my house

in Cambodia with chips I ate in Morocco

picking up our boss

It’s been a long and a wonderful year and half or so. I didn’t do a response post to arriving in America after my Peace Corps service because it was hard. I didn’t really know what to write and on one hand I felt like my integration back to my home country was easy and fun but I had a rough and isolating winter last year. Luckily that ended and thawed into the best spring of my life.

After a winter of buying way too many bra’s and working at a gas station I took a position at Nature’s Classroom in Connecticut. I have worked seasonally for all of my adult life ( barring my Peace Corps service) and this past spring was truly magical. I have never worked a season where so many people got along so well for so long. So much so that we still want to be around each other even a year later.

You can call us Cultbrook but we prefer Soulbrook ;) I love my new Soulbrook family and they all made me a better person. I learned more about myself, I challenged myself, and I soaked in as much information as I could from their knowledge and expertise.

after a day of playing like children

Soulbrook on the stoop

As a community we challenged each other, supported each other and I know I’m better because of our time together. I didn’t know it but I had developed a mistrust of men from my time Morocco- the nature of my co-workers helped me shake that off. I found my way back into my own country and learned what I valued, and what I loved about my home after being away for 2 years. I dove deep into the forest without shoes on , held wild snakes, did acrobatic tricks, sang everyday, slept in a hammock city, truly saw the wildflowers, stalked bobcats, played like a kid, learned the names of the trees and made America my home again. I found my feet underneath me and I grew more confident. My new family helped me transform.

the beginning of my headstand.

When the ground finally thawed my friends would kick off their shoes and scamper into the woods and as I watched them pick lines through the trees I decided that I wanted to be able to do that too. So I started running and eating better and exercising, I stopped making excuses and I made myself stronger. I spent months figuring out how to do a headstand. All in all in the past months I have found so much that’s important to me. I have a new love for myself , for nature and for my country. And then I left again.

after months of effort- my headstand on top of mount lafayette in NH

Ha! Right now I am accepting a new challenge. Turns out I have never truly dated before and last fall while still at Nature’s Classroom I met this wonderful man Ox who wooed me but had already started planning this trip to Cambodia. When our time at Nature’s Classroom was over I still wanted to be with him so when he left at the beginning of this year I knew I would rather be with him in Cambodia then not be with him at all. It’s hard for me to leave the woods, and the mountains and the country I have fallen in love with again but I know it’s still there and I know this is where I belong right now. Cambodia and Ox are both incredibly wonderful.

Moroccan Market

Cambodian Market

Visually it reminds me a lot of Morocco- the store fronts, the traffic and the markets all echo Morocco’s aesthetic but that’s pretty much the end of the similarities.

Fruit in Morocco

Fruit in Cambodia

The food is so different and I love all of it- also I’ve started eating meat because even though it is a Buddhist country the majority of the food here relies on meat and I want to eat EVERYTHING. In my 2 weeks here I have not had a single meal that I haven’t liked if not loved- well besides the durian and the crickets I did not like the durian and I could take or leave the crickets- but everything else has been phenomenal. I feel much safer here then I ever felt in a Moroccan city, people smile a lot more at each other and I have had no street harassment besides a few kids asking for money at traffic lights and the tuk tuk (taxi) drivers asking me if I want a ride (because why would I want to walk anywhere ?!?! it’s hot out!). In the past two weeks I’m realizing I have some things still to resolve and process about my time in Morocco and how it made me feel. Being in Cambodia is helping me discover some of the things I learned during my time in Morocco because I obviously spent the last year learning to love my home and not exactly reflecting constantly on my Peace Corps service. Being in Cambodia makes me miss Morocco and I would be lying if I didn’t say I missed America a little- but mostly because I LOVE spring and I wish I could see the forest transform from a winters sleep into green and bloom. However I am so happy to be here and so grateful for all that I have experienced and everything leading up to this moment and all the new experiences to come.

Ox and I in NYC before he left for Cambodia

Ox and I eating jellied coconut in Cambodia

Next week I’m going to be starting a TESOL course through a program called LC- Asia then get a teaching job here ( fingers crossed I will be getting a job teaching science). But in the meantime I am trying all sorts of new things, hanging out with some old Kingsley Pines friends- Kelsey and Brandon- and being with the lovely man that brought me to this country. I’m going to try and be more diligent then I was with my Peace Corps blogging, but we shall see what truly happens. I’ve been saying I was going to write this post for about 3 weeks now. This blog is a new challenge, and this is after all my year of challenge.

Vietnamese Coffee with sweetened condensed milk

My first day in Cambodia

Trying Durian

SE Asian Kingsley Pines Reunion!

Crickets

Wednesday, September 19, 2012

AMURICAH!!!

So I figure it’s probably about time that I update my blog considering it’s been a significant period of time.

Part of the reason I have been so absent is I just returned from my 20 day adventure back to America. My trip to America in one sentence you ask? FUCKING AWESOME. And sorry I try not to swear too much here but it was just hands down great. You know that saying you don’t know what you have until it’s gone? Well nothing like living in Morocco for close to a year to help you realize how great your home is.

Things I love about the states:

- Family. There is no one who understands you better- it was wonderful to see my family again.

- Friends- they helped me remember who I was and who I like to be and just smiles and hugs and awesomeness

- The smell- America smells like heaven. Like a perfume I know it sounds weird but new England in august is just full of delicious natural smells. I could not stop obsessing about it.

- The way people talk about academic subjects and appreciate art and theater

- The sensations of pure joy- from things such as driving, being in a canoe, swimming, hiking, being able to dance and sing wherever/whenever I want, feeling liberated and free in ways I didn’t even realize I was limited in. etc etc. the list can go on

- TREES!!! I love trees so much. I feel like a missing piece was returned when I laid on the grass and looked at the trees of my backyard or heard the wind sway the leaves. I got to go on an amazing hike at Bartholomew’s Cobble back home and there is some sort of magic under trees. The way the light looks, the way you feel as a person. I definitely belong in the forest.

- Food and Drinks- something I said to people while I was home when I was asked what I missed most one of my first responses is always “a casual drink”. Which I now realize makes me sound kind of like an alchy… but for reals. When you live in a culture where the majority of people don’t drink and drinking is reserved for the seedy underbelly of society you always end up drinking straight crap behind closed doors. The relationship most Americans have with alcohol is so different then Moroccans and PCVs. So yeah. A beer that was brewed locally or a glass of wine with dinner that doesn’t taste like apple cider vinegar’s 3^rd cousin once removed is nice. Also coffee, there’s no 20oz to go iced blueberry coffee’s here. One shot of espresso with milk? Sure… but man. Latte’s iced coffee… yum.

I realize that the bigger paragraphs are not about the people I love, and mostly about random and slightly awkward things but it’s hard to sum up just how great friends and family are- sure I have friends here and a Moroccan family but to give you an indication on how different I can be here- a lot of Moroccans think I’m a quiet person. HAHAHAHA… you and I both know better. So what else…. Well you already know that my trip was great. At first I was a little worried that I had booked myself at home for too long but it was the perfect amount of time. I’m sorry that I didn’t get to see everyone but things worked out magically for those who I did get to see . It’s like the universe placed people up and down 95 just so I could see them easily. Also it was so magical to be part of my dearest friend Tina’s wedding- I realize while the whole events of the wedding unfolded that I honestly know more about Moroccan weddings then I do about American ones… ooops. I still had a lot of fun, loved seeing my lovely SMC people who I do not see enough and I would not have missed that wedding for the world.

Being back in morocco is… weird. As I told a few people before I left going back this time was WAY harder then coming here the first time. When I got here a year ago the world was my oyster I had no ideas of what I was going to encounter, I had no experience here, not a whole lot of expectations it was all fresh and new and exciting. This time around I knew what I was going back to… for better or worse. Peace corps hands out this graph in our medical book broken down into stages of our service and it doesn’t help my case that months 11-14 are called “mid-service crisis”. Not that I’m letting that piece of paper determine my emotional state, but just like when I was a roatary exchange student it’s not too far off the mark. So not only did I go home at the beginning of this ‘crisis’ I came straight back to it. (For those of you at home, don’t worry, it’s mostly a crisis of insecurities about my first year of service, uncertainty about the year ahead which it totally normal peace corps emotions. I’m all good- it’s just another step in the process). But since I’ve been back I’ve actually welcomed (for once) the back to back trainings that have happened. First there was the Berber/Tamazight language training where I finally got some formal berber undersanding which should hopefully give me street cred in my site. Now I’m in Marakesh, sharing some of my ideas for artistic projects that could be done here in Morocco. Being around Americans has been a great way to slowly ease my way back into my Moroccan life.

So that’s it for now. I don’t have anything exciting lines up for the immediate future. I hope you all enjoyed my little rant for the time being. Here’s some pictures of my trip home. Enjoy!