I find that writing is cathartic. It was my outlet while my husband and I lived in a remote jungle of Guyana as Peace Corps volunteers. It was how I vented (and then erased it due to the often bitching nature of it) and then how I found the positive in my day-to-day. It was how I expressed to my friends and family who were 3,220 miles away what I was experiencing, experiences that I will more than likely never have again and which often they had a hard time understanding, and ultimately a way to keep a chronicle of our fulfilling yet often unexpected service experiences. Once we finished the Peace Corps (http://itsalwayssunnyinguyana.blogspot.com/) the adventures continued and we took a 7-week trip through South America and once again I bursted at the seams to blog about all the places we had seen, all the food we had tasted, all the people we had met and all the funny stories we would now tell for the rest of our lives at dinner parties. But now in Bogotá, Colombia the once cathartic outlet, has become a nostalgic shadow. This has been a difficult post to write.
Friends and family expected similar recounts of past travels-the food, the people, the living arrangements, all the excitement that comes with a new place, and in this case our new home in Colombia. But sometimes those experiences are hard to uncover when life gets in the way. I expected living abroad for the second time to be easy, because I believed I was "seasoned" and though it is eerily similar, there are so many different aspects that the quote "you never stop learning, because you never stop living" has a whole new meaning.
An unknown author once said "Sometimes its not about the destination, but the journey."And as inspiring as that might be, those are difficult words to live by. As an expat who has lived abroad for the last 2 1/2 years and has committed to living abroad for another 2-5 years, whose parents lived abroad for more than half their life (Army) and whose in-laws lived abroad for years, this quote does not only resonate with me, it defines me.
Had you asked me 4 years ago where I would be today, I certainly didn't think it would be living abroad voluntarily for a second time. I joined the Peace Corps with the intentions of having my "adventure" and then settling down at my "destination" shortly after. As a woman in her late twenties, the destination is all anyone is ever interested in. Where will you settle down, when will you settle down, when will you have kids, whats your ideal weight, etc.? And don't get me wrong, because you have a house, car, career, child or expecting a child doesn't mean you have reached the finish life, the journey has just begun. But thats the whole problem with this destination/journey predicament that it's assumed if that if your path is common it's only the destination that matters and if your path is unusual it must be because you don't know where your destination lies. I struggle with this predicament, and this is why I have decided to chronicle my experience living abroad through this lens. This experience, unlike the rest of my life is not a fixed term (school, internship, university, job before joining PC, PC), it is not a stepping-stone to the next phase its a journey. And right now the journey is the trailing-spouse syndrome in a developing country.
Till next time.
