Back in site

We recently had our PST2/early IST (in service training). There are 6 billion acronyms in Peace Corps, I think I know about nine so far, that’s on my mile long list of things to learn. Anyway, we had this training that lasted almost three weeks, we received a lot of information, I think I have already forgotten to remember most of it, but so it goes. Mostly what I came away with was that I love my site and how different I remain to be from most of my other companeroes.  I missed my lake. I missed my host family, and walking around the streets of my town. I missed traje, and K’iche’ (though now that I am back, I think that one might have been less true). The point being most people were thrilled to be there surrounded by Americans, friends, other vols, the night life etc. everything that Antigua has to offer, but I kinda didn’t. Everyone told us that the first night in site would be the hardest, but in reality my first real night out of side, back in my training community, was my hardest. I don’t know that I have ever felt so alone. Which is crazy, the past three weeks I was surrounded by people, so much so that I felt really overwhelmed, but almost everyone else basked in the glory of togetherness. To me, this means 2 things: 1. I have become a part of my site, integration, big-o check. And 2, I have become even more introverted around people that I am supposed to feel most at ease with. I am not entirely sure what it is that has exacerbated my utter weirdness, but for some reason being surrounded by indigenous Mayan people has not helped my lack of ease around my peers. Who knows? I did realize though, that this time around in training, I cared far less if I was accepted, or left out, I was able to enjoy my own company and found random trees to read in, and cafes to stream Netflix and eat way too much in. What else does anyone really need in life?

Once back in site I felt almost immediately more at ease. Until the earthquake. Okay, so I have never really felt a strong earthquake, apparently the last one was nothing in comparison. This go around was insane. At about 5:30 Monday morning I woke up to my bed rocking a bit, no big, but about 10 seconds later everything started really shaking, things started falling, glasses breaking, sheet metal from roofs falling. Then people started screaming and kids crying. I am not sure that my body feels fear, or maybe my mind conceptualize it, as it once did, because this should have been terrifying. Instead I remember thinking very clearly. Oh no, I just organized my books and they’re falling. And then looking for my shoes to walk outside because what the hell else are you supposed to do when the Earth is trying to kill you? Finally, after what seemed like forever the earthquake stopped. I feel like it should have rumbled a bit before its abrupt ending, but no. Just nothing else, leaving most people in my community standing around outside, half-dressed looking scared and lost. Barefoot children on the hips of barefoot mothers with their traje askew and hair pointing in every direction. In less than a minute forty homes in my town were leveled, several homes still had their residence inside when they collapsed. My host mom (Dona Cecilia) later explained that earthquakes during late night and early morning are the  most dangerous, almost always someone dies. She, as usual, was right. In total five people died as a result of the earthquake. And I was worried about my recently alphabetized bookshelf, perspective.