Great Expectations - not the movie

Bottom line. I don't really know what to expect. I've already decided to just let things happen.

Now that I've come to my conclusion, I'll try to figure out how I got there.

I talked to my brother the other nite about some of what was going thru my mind. Andrew had paid me a surprise visit at home - something unexpected - I thought he was stuck out in Colorado taking classes all summer with no more than a few days off. Turns out, I was wrong. Not only was I wrong, but I was blatantly uninformed. It's amazing the length a secret can go without being divulged to the party it's designed to be kept from. Usually someone blows it all up with an absent-minded comment, or maybe they just didn't know that person A was the person who as supposed to be left in the dark, and so tells person A, said secret. Well, that didn't happen, and everyone from my cousins from upstate, to my neighbors, to friends who were living in different states at the time kept mum. It was a wonderful surprise.

But. Back to my thought process. Andrew (my brother, for those of you playing the home game) and I took a ride to Jones Beach late on Monday nite to just spit a bit about everything we hadn't really had the chance to do. He got me talking about Peace Corps after a lengthy conversation about our own thoughts on "the afterlife" or the lack thereof, depending on the party. I realize reading that back that it sounds like something fourth graders also might have a conversation about... "Do you think there's really a heaven?" "Definitely." "How do you know?" "My sister's best friend has a brother who knows a guy who goes there on vacation in the summer." "No he doesn't." "Yea, he does. I saw him there." Well, maybe not, but I found myself answering questions or at least trying to answer questions I had never tried to put into words before.

It got me thinking about religion and what role that will play during my time overseas. South Africans are a rather religious people and often people will ask you to come to their church on Sundays. I realized I may be in situations where it is expected that I share my religious beliefs, or ideas about God. I'm very comfortable in my own mind with my beliefs, but expressing them coherently to another person proved to be very difficult, as my conversation with Andrew illustrated. What those beliefs are is not necessarily the point at this time, but rather how to express them so others may understand them. It would be easy if they fit into a schematic of an established religious faith, but for myself, it's not that simple. Anyway, that's a conversation to be had with myself at another time.

All this led to expectations from the Peace Corps. Someone had been talking to my brother a few days earlier and had asked him something along the lines of, "What's Joey going to do after he gets back from the Peace Corps? Has he thought about a real job yet?"

Ouch.

This brought up two issues.

#1 - It seems that some people don't fully understand the scope or reach of the Peace Corps, or anything that it actually does. This is not their fault at all - but the above example illustrates the problem of unawareness. I'll be honest - I have no idea of the scope or reach of the PC myself, but I would certainly stop short of belittling it by indicating one must move on to a "real job" afterwards. It's not just a two year vacation, as some may imagine it resembles.

#2 - I have no freaking clue what I'm going to do after Peace Corps, and to be honest, it's more or less the last thing on my mind right now. I have to get started before I think about wrapping everything up and moving on. It's like walking into a restaurant and having the obviously attractive hostess ask you if you've thought about dessert yet, or what your breakfast plans are for tomorrow. You don't have an answer yet, and you shouldn't be expected to. Although, a little word of advice - if an attractive hostess ever asks you what your breakfast plans are for the next morning, especially if she does it before seating you, you had better think of a witty answer rather quickly, and pray that you have a pen on you to get her number.

After Peace Corps... Already? Well, I've always had the idea that Peace Corps would be the key that would unlock countless doors, leading down many paths for the future. Peace Corps will highlight what I'm good at, where my strengths and weaknesses are, will hopefully help me realize where my passions are, and allow me to network with countless individuals - most likely all with similar goals and life plans as my own. At this point, I don't plan on staying around in South Africa for too much longer than my service allows. I expect to come back to the US, maybe go to grad school for XXXXXXXX. That's not meant to indicate my entry into adult entertainment, but rather just something to be filled in at a later date. I expect that my experiences will be something I can bring back with me to an academic environment, and continue learning from them, and share stories with others in school. Sustainable development, global health issues, international development and relations, poverty issues - all are possibilities for a grad school focus, but the list is by no means exclusive.

I guess I'll head back to Long Island for a while when I return to get my bearings straight. I'm sure I'll be in the mindset to get my own place - but I don't think I will be able to jump right into it, being that the readjustment allowance the PC gives to returning volunteers is currently under $7G. Maybe by that point some of my friends will have become rather well off, and will let me stay in their pool house, so long as I don't hog the courvoisier (does anyone actually drink that stuff?), or set the place on fire with an overabundance of Tiki torches that I set up for ambience, or scare the neighbors with my affinity for magic.

I'll need a job. Maybe a job doing research for a development organization, or working with HIV/AIDS issues domestically. Maybe bartending or painting houses for a few months. I'd be a great babysitter because I adore kids - even if I think they look funny. But I don't think many people would hire a 25 year-old long haired, bearded, Setswana speaking babysitter. At least, no one that I've come across. Ah - I guess that means I expect my beard and hair to grow long... That is, if I have much hair left by the time I get back. Yea, the hair gene in my family is not so strong, so I expect to lose a good bit of it. I've always been rather vain about my hair in my younger days, and I guess I still kind of am, but I promise, no hair pieces. Only combovers and spraypainted hair.

What about immediate expectations? Expectations of my service? To understand somewhat what it is I expect, you must understand that my whole life I've had a rather optimistic view of the world and the challenges it faces. I do express my fair share of disappointment and go thru periods where I think everything has gone to shite, but overall, it is my mindset that any problem can be addressed and dealt with as long as there is the dedication to solve it. Not just a "We should do something about this because it's the right thing to do." But rather, "We can do this because there's no reason we can't. You say there is a reason we can't? Well, we'll start there."

I'm not sure how informative this entry was overall about my expectations, but I'm sure I'll be posting more in the future here and there about what it is I will expect. For now, it's difficult. As I said at the beginning of this entry:

Bottom line, I don't really know what to expect. I've decided to just let things happen.