During the PC application process there are three seperate instances when you need to describe your reasons for wanting to serve. The first couple questions are tailored specifically to your assignment (Why do you want to teach in a developing country?) and the others are more general. I only had room for 500 characters or so, but this is what I came up with. Maybe it will help some of you (mostly family, who think I'm crazy) understand...

A great friend once me what the most universal human emotion is, fear or laziness. I said fear. He then asked me what I thought the most prevalent American emotion is. I said laziness. There are reasons great and small which contribute to my want to serve as a peace corps volunteer at this point in my life; reasons which stem from a need to use my body, mind and soul in a way that reflects something much more than fearful or lazy American.
The physical and intellectual reasons seem simple enough. I am a healthy twenty-four year old college graduate with no outstanding responsibilities, other than to myself. I feel free financially, having paid the majority of my college loans. I am single and surprisingly, do not at this point of my life feel it urgent to find a husband and live the cliché American way. The only things I feel responsible for today are my happiness and my career as an educator.
The more emotional or spiritual reasons have been a long time coming. I have been fortunate to be able to collect inspiration from so many people in my life. My high school Art teacher, who I am still in touch with today, served in Bolivia as a small business volunteer in the mid-90s. I remember the day when she told us about her experience. Since that day, about eight years ago, I knew the Peace Corps was something I wanted to be involved in. After high school I started to research Eastern religions pretty extensively. Having been born into a predominantly Protestant family, and attending two private Catholic schools, I felt it was important to expand my world view and be more mindful of our intercultural differences. Beyond my Education classes at Plymouth State, I found myself signing up for classes like “Enlightenment, Love & Lit,” “Cultural Diversity,” and “Arts of the Far East” in order to fulfill my elective credits. Other influences have been my Grandmother, the most compassionate person I have ever known, my Father, who has been unconditionally supportive of every out-of-the-ordinary idea I have ever proposed, and my friends, the most original thinking, truth seeking people I’ve come to know.
J.D. Salinger summed up my attitude nicely: "Among other things, you'll find that you're not the first person who was ever confused and frightened and even sickened by human behavior... Many, many men have been just as troubled morally and spiritually as you are right now. Happily, some of them kept records of their troubles. You'll learn from them-- if you want. Just as someday, if you have something to offer, someone will learn something from you. It's a beautiful reciprocal arrangement.” If I can fearlessly help someone, or teach someone, or possibly inspire someone to also do these things, I will feel more successful as a human being and if I am not lazy and can 'be the change I want to see in the world' then I will undoubtedly feel more successful as an American.

While attempting to clean my hard drive and sort through old writing and whatnot I came upon the piece I coupled with my Photo II independent study project. The photos explore the extreme impact technology is having on our natural world, and more specificially our American souls. The author shall remain nameless unless otherwise requested, though his prose was/still is greatly appreciated:

Half-ghost, Half-Earth
The delicious torment that is life, steeped in paradox and rhythmic like the flows of jazz is no more than a fleeting conscious glimpse of the ephemeral beauties and all their privies. The human; no line between the inside and outside, no boundary between the self and that of breezes, suns, rivers, spruce trees and mountains, no line between the absolute infinite and the sorrowful temporary- a culmination of facets and conditions and energies and matter and metaphysical forces, flowing and fluxing, all part of sacred link in the unbroken chain of illuminated life in which the perfect conscious source manifests itself through all phenomena. We live in two worlds, but are rarely aware of that which sits just beyond our minds: we are the source, the force, the infinitely serene and the imprisoned human, born into the dream of life where we struggle and long and feel and love and fuck and wonder and only seldom glimpse the immense suchness. Like a transparent stream of energy, we are the conscious eye of the godhead, the universe, witnessing itself in the constant becoming; birth, death and time all essential but irrelevant. The passage of time simply being the mind’s perception of cause and effect, an infinite regress not characterized through the individual but rather through the chain of life which acts as a single unified mother earth-mind. There is only one moment and it is right now, time, like a dream is ethereal. With one foot in this world and the other foot in the next, we all share the same dreamtime, we walk the same dreamtime. Its just a dream and its sad and somehow beautiful but we hold on to it anyways. Show me something real, something concrete, something stable and lasting, I want to scream sometimes… but alas, nothing in this dream is anymore real than any other dream you ever had. Maybe that gives you comfort to know we are hopelessly inconsequential in this void, maybe its comforting to know there is so much more beyond… or maybe its scary, terrifying even, to realize that our solid little microcosms of reason and stability mean almost nothing. Fuck that, it is liberating to walk this earth and know I’m not important- monkey with a brain. I can dig. Embrace the chaos? Perhaps. The illusion of a separate self is the price the human must pay to be alive. Maybe even aware of the rules, but still subject to them, everyone must play a role in this comedic tragedy.

Nomination!

"Nicole, Congratulations on your nomination to the Primary Education Teacher Trainer program leaving for the Sub Sahara Africa region in November 2008!..."

I only had my interview up at UNH last Friday so to hear back from the Boston office so soon was a nice surprise. I'm guessing that many of you are relieved to hear that I'm not being sent to Asia, as requested. The only teaching program leaving for Asia in the fall is in August and I obviously can't miss both Jill and Kate's weddings! The other Fall placements were either the Pacific Islands Sept. or Oct., or Africa in November. I sat at my computer for a couple hours with Ryan researching and reading PC journals from the Pacific region and staring at one beautiful tropical picture after another before I replied to the email with "Africa please!" Here's some of an article that helped make my decision pretty easy:

"Finding places for millions of new students is one of sub-Saharan Africa's most overwhelming and gratifying missions. After two decades of sluggish growth in enrollment rates, the region's 45 countries find themselves with an embarrassing number of eager schoolchildren.Nearly 22 million more students flooded classrooms between 1999 and 2004, increasing the enrollment rate by 18 percent, more than in any other region of the world, according to Unesco. More than 6 out of 10 primary school-age children are now enrolled, and that ratio does not even include older students, like 14-year- old second graders, who have also streamed into schools. Not since the 1970s has sub-Saharan Africa made such strides. "The whole climate has changed," said Nicholas Burnett, who produces an annual global report on schooling for Unesco. "Resources are becoming available. You can definitely see the attitudes of African parents changing. Africa is starting to move in such a positive direction." Two trends have converged to produce such change: One is a willingness by international donors and African governments to spend hundreds of millions of dollars more on basic education. That has fed a rising demand for education by the region's parents, who for perhaps the first time see a chance to give their children a future they were denied. The challenges, however, remain staggering. Foremost is a flood tide of school-age children in a region whose birth rate is nearly twice the world's average. Forty-four in 100 sub-Saharan residents are under age 15, the highest percentage on earth. By some estimates, the next decade could increase the school-age population by another 28 million. The region must absorb those newcomers while trying to lift itself from the subbasement of global education. Sub-Saharan Africa is home to barely one-sixth of the world's children younger than 15, but fully half the world's uneducated children — the legacy of poverty, colonialism and historically inadequate schools. Those who do make it to primary school are more likely to enroll late, repeat grades and drop out before sixth grade than are students anywhere else, according to Unesco. The pupil-teacher ratio, averaging 44 to 1, is the world's highest; the percentage of trained teachers among the lowest." -Sharon LaFraniere, Herald Tribune

The next step is medical/dental clearance, which from what I hear, can take months. After the PC approves the paperwork I will receive an invitation to a specific country and be given a specific departure date, so stay tuned. 10 more months of pizza and hot running water!

This drawing was given to me by one of my 7th graders last year after a month dedicated to the idea of compassion. This was at the center of my bulletin board the entire year. I love it and it's been a bit of an inspiration to me during the past few peace-corps-deciding months.

This rant from June (Inspired by The Killers) and the promise that I've made with myself to Join the Peace Corps in the Fall of '08 are the reasons I've started this blog:

Mom told me today everything will be ok, 'look at all these things that you've already done! Write all these things down- the things the crashing tide can't hide.'

So here come my confessions for some Mr. Brightside King:

1. I want to be on top,

2. not give a shit,

3. smile like i mean it,

4. make it go away without a word,

5. rewind the river to when we were young

6. and watch us all be the stars that we are.

Believe me, I can't hide these things I know. I was away in the 5 year mystic midnight college show lost in my indie rock and roll when i was told, 'Someone let you go, you know, when you were very young. The man who introduced you to the river wild and painted enchanted scenes all over everything.'

I'm sick of telling myself to refocus my mind. 'Just stop wasting time. Let everything rhyme.'

We're all under a gun I know. I know! I know? But I wont become a run down soldier to save my soul. It takes one American to see that all this fighting is doing is keeping us from becoming whole.

Someone must have unloved you, but not the way that I do. Before I go back to the river flow, the one that you helped me come to know, I just want to know, who before let you go?