Six months in

me one week in

Yesterday marked a pretty big milestone. Officially, I have been in country for six months. That’s half a year, (in military brat world, one deployment) one fourth of the time of my service. Before I left the States there was no Occupy Movement, no Republican primary, and school hadn’t let out for summer. I boarded a plane from San Diego, CA to Washington, DC May 31, 2011, and it’s been a wild ride ever since.

Some of the days have dragged on for so long I could hardly stand it. Sometimes the hours flew and it went from morning to night so fast I wondered where I had been (those were the good days and now usually the weekends!). But I hear that’s normal, many PCVs talk about how the days drag and yet somehow the weeks fly by and the months blend into one another so much that before you know it time is ticking. The object of the game is to hang on, don’t take much for granted, and do what you can with what you got.

I feel like I should have something profound to say about six months, something about how much I’ve grown and the friends I’ve made, about how I think about staying in Mali forever and can’t imagine leaving. And it’s true. I have grown. I am trying to put myself out there more when it comes to befriending other volunteers, I can hail a cab in Bamako in total Bambara; I can go to the market. I still say bread funny, but my guy knows what I want so no problem. I have a pretty structured job situation so I always have somewhere to be, and I’m formulating side projects constantly. And I’ve made friends. I have the Goodfellas who keep me sane, my totally and completely wonderful family who spend hours listening to me complain and boast (often in the same conversation) about my life here, stupendous friends who send me constant emails keeping me up to date with their lives and overall American pop culture. I have Susan, my adorable and totally annoying 2-year-old host sister. And, of course, my kids at school whom I adore.  I am truly blessed with American neighbors who spoil me rotten and I seriously don’t know what I would do without them.

Most days, it’s kinda amazing.

Whether or not I stay here forever is certainly up for grabs. Forever? Probably not. I tell everyone that when I’m at Tubes, when I’m with the Goodfellas, when it’s good, it’s so good I imagine a 3^rd year, I imagine being in Mali in this happy moment for as long as humanly possible, if I could have bottled up the happiness I felt during IST and saved some of it for later I would because coming off that high into the reality of site and re-establishing my routine has been a jerky ride. But I have great hope for getting there, for getting back into the groove of things and going back to my contented peace of being at site that I did have before IST and my vacation. I’ll get there, maybe not today, but it will come.

Six months is a big deal. It’s where the work starts, where the service gets going with stronger momentum, it’s where my service will take shape and starts to emerge into its own. It will only get better.

Happy six months Goodfellas. Rock on.