The Home Stretch

During my Pre-Service Training (PST) time crawled by so slowly, each day seeming longer and more sweltering than the one before. Twenty-seven months seemed to stretch off into infinity, a boggling amount of time. Now, a year and a half later, my Close-of-Service (COS) conference is coming up on the horizon and it feels like the earth has sped up; the weeks are just flying by. It isn't really a surprise (pretty much everyone I talked to about Peace Corps mentioned this phenomenon) but it's still somehow slightly shocking, like when a good friend's baby is suddenly starting kindergarten.

It make sense that this happens; at first everything, even the most innocuous small-talk, was a struggle and daily life was both exhausting and filled with huge blocks of unoccupied hours. I'm busy now, with work projects and to-do lists and mundane chores and Peace Corps responsibilities and social calls and vacation ideas, and even though I have so many more things I want to do while I'm here it's starting to feel like COS-ing is just around the corner. It's not bad, it's mostly pleasant to be busy, it's just a little strange to be most of the way through a thing that once seemed like it was going to last such a long time. Now that I really feel at home here it's time to start thinking about going home there. Funny how that works.