LIKES AND DISLIKES. Here are a few...

What I like best about being here? In no particular order: the simple lifestyle (upscale camping?!) which includes simple meals, no make-up or daily hair styling, simple/few clothes; learning about a totally different culture; the pleasure of helping girls learning basic computer skills; starting on my project; (it's really happening, just now!)my beautiful area of the country; my new Peace Corps friends; time to read lots of books, watch lots of movies on my computer, and I am so happy to have learned how very much my family and friends all mean to me!

What I dislike? Public transportation, the inability to control the temperature inside my house, not having an American toilet/shower/tub, my lack of anonymity. The last one is because everytime I go out my door, I walk into the role of half- celebrity/half-freak. Because I am older, it isn't nearly as bad for me as it is for the young female volunteers. Depending on their towns, some of them have a very difficult time of it. I try to think of it this way: If a woman walked down streets of Fairfield, Montana with a jellaba and headscarf, would she not be considered peculiar by many? Especially kids? So I try to understand how I must seem to them, but yet, I do want to share culture, and to me, that is part of it. Many of them do see American films on TV, and lots of tourists, so my dress isn't terribly foreign.

I do miss a variety of places to walk/work-out, and live theatre/concerts/shows. Didn't realize how much I had come to enjoy those aspects of my life!