Our Little Group

How nice it was to have a group to go through orientation with! There are five more PRCVs coming this fiscal year, but I think they will all be coming separately (and then there will be 15 next year). We had so much fun! Everyone had a similar sense of humor, and we laughed often. I don’t know how much I’ll be seeing of them, but I hope it’s a lot! They’re all great.

Some details (but hopefully not too many details…): Mary, the one I met in New York, is a mid-career architect. She was in Macedonia doing Community Development and she finished around the same time I did. She’s on an island, in a bamboo hut, two minutes from the beach. I’m aiming to visit her on our first holiday weekend (due to high seas, only morning travel is recommended). She’ll be designing a new building for her foundation.

Charlie, my plane-mate, was in Honduras about five years ago, doing Water and Sanitation Engineering (i.e. what I thought every Morocco volunteer should be working on, but we didn’t have that sector). His background is Latin American Studies and his Spanish is great. He was a contractor/developer in New York up until now. Jonathan is also an architect and he was in Romania; he finished last year. Drew was also in Water and Sanitation, in Jamaica, with an engineering/consulting background. Since he COSed in 2007 he’s been traveling around. The guys, all in their 30s, are all working at the same foundation (and will be joined by another), doing design and building. They’re in Metro Manila, but just about as far from me as one can be and still be in Metro Manila.

With all of these backgrounds there was more engineering/architecture/construction conversation than I’ve participated in for a while. My friend Helen is an architect, but other than that I think I talk about it more than most of my friends want to hear. How refreshing it was to listen to people who are passionate about it and who know so much about it! Maybe my past life in civil engineering will come in handy! Habitat was impressed with it too (that’s fine, as long as they don’t expect me to do any calculations).

Last but not least is Mercedes, who will be in special ed, working with autistic children. A tiny Filipina of 73, she charmed all of us. She married an American sailor who was here on some weather-forced R&R – he met her, wrote to her for five years, and came back to marry her. She moved to the U.S. in 1960. When her husband died, he told her to join the Peace Corps and travel. She served in Romania and then has been traveling doing other work in Mali and India, to name two. She grew up learning English but took Tagalog as a subject – so she helped us with language and noted some of the history of the places we passed, including the church where she was married. She remembers being here for WWII. She’s the farthest one – on an island that’s a plane ride away – but I still hope to visit her too!

In addition to our conversations about where we were and what we were doing we also talked about our Peace Corps service – not surprisingly, there were ups and downs, pluses and minuses of every country, cultural differences and sometimes issues with staff. Also not surprisingly, everyone doing Peace Corps Response had an overall positive experience – you’d have to have, to do it again. So the energy in the group was nothing but positive – passionate, dedicated. I realized as we were leaving that the room I shared with the other women was filled with nothing but good karma, and I felt the same way around the men. I feel really fortunate to be in this country with this group!