2011 : A Year In Review
The last 365 days have been a weird mix of days.
At times, the year has absolutely flown by, and looking back, I hardly know where a month here or there went. At other times, I can recall with agonizing clarity just how snail-like the pace was. However, I can undoubtedly say that the past year has brought many changes and a crazy amount of personal growth that even I didn’t quite expect from 2011.
I think the first two months of 2011 went by the quickest. January and February were filled with frantic late-night runs to Target with Mom, marathon packing sessions where I packed & re-packed two bags with my entire life stuffed into it, and endless goodbye parties & tears where I bid farewell to everyone who makes my life worth living. Oh, I also tried to learn how to play my uke…unsuccessfully, but hey, at least I was trying:
I also took a bomb-ass trip to Tombstone, Arizona with two of my best friends in the whole wide world and hung out with cowboys for a day. Awesome:
Then, suddenly, abruptly, rudely…March hit. After all my prepping, in no way was I actually prepared for it. With it, a whole new wave of crazy. Flying to Madagascar with 38 other trainees. Landing in Tana, living in Anjozoro with a host family, learning Malagasy.
We even painted a world map:
Oh right, and there was that time I killed a chicken:
March & April flew by, and before I knew it, it was May 9th, 2011, and I was being left by the Peace Corps car in Anja Park, Madagascar.
Holy shit was that terrifying.
For the entirety of May, June, July, and August (plus most of September), I dealt with the extreme highs and extreme lows of being a new volunteer at site. Making friends, re-learning my dialect, trying to get any semblance of work done, making my house into a home…you all know how hard those first 5 or 6 months were for me. I mean, goodNESS.
Then, like a blessing sent from the Big Man himself, it was the end of September, and I was able to see all of my stagemates again in the capitol for our In-Service Training. Thank the Lord:
Which was followed by an awesome vacation in Mahajunga for a week or so, where a big group of us laid on the beach, drank from coconuts, ate fish and shrimp tacos, and soaked up the last of our “relaxation time” before heading back to our respective sites:
A few of us took one final detour before heading home and helped start a little pepiniere, which was pretty fun:
Before I knew it, October and November were already gone! Seriously, I blinked and those two months just disappeared! Halloween was spent in Fianar, with myself dressed up as a ring-tailed lemur, and November was spent actually getting work done at site and celebrating Thanksgiving with some really awesome people from my region. 11 months down, what???
Christmas was, as you all know, in the southeast of Mcar, in the company of some pretty amazing people that I’m blessed to call my friends. It was just a perfect way to start wrapping up 2011. A few days later, we all got together with even more volunteers in Tana to celebrate NYE, and with that, 2011 was brought to a close:
To try and sum up the past 365 days is, quite literally, impossible.
There’s absolutely no way I can even put into words how this past year has treated me. And I know it’s the tradition of “New Year” posts to get all sappy and emotional, so instead, (even though I really want to get all weepy on you guys), I’ll just leave y’all with a little poem that I think sums things up quite nicely:
“What can be said in New Year rhymes,
That’s not been said a thousand times?
The new years come, the old years go,
We know we dream, we dream we know.
We rise up laughing with the light,
We lie down weeping with the night.
We hug the world until it stings,
We curse it then and sigh for wings.
We live, we love, we woo, we wed,
We wreathe our prides, we sheet our dead.
We laugh, we weep, we hope, we fear,
And that’s the burden of a year.”
- Ella Wheeler Wilcox
Thanks so much for following my blog this past year you guys. Thanks for putting up with my sad, depressing posts…my crazy, maniacal ones…and all the ones in between. I hope that you have all had a 2011 to remember, because I know I have.
Now, let’s get 2012 off to a bang, shall we?!!
Until next time…faithfully yours…and still crazy as ever,
T
