On making it worth it

"So this is the new year, and I don't feel any different...."
-Death Cab for Cutie

My last year's resolution (inspired by my mother) was "making it worth it". And looking back on the year, I think I did. I joined Peace Corps, got a job, and visited friends and family who are important to me. It seemed to be one of the most uneventful years of my life, but when I think about all the good things that happened that year, I realize that I am very blessed if that was one of the LEAST eventful years of my life, because that must mean that I have a lot of adventures, past, present, and future.

As soon as it became January, I realized that now is the time to face all the preparation I must do to get ready for Tanzania.

As it turns out, making it worth it is just as good a resolution this year as it was last year. The old adage "the more you put into something, the more you get out of it" or something along those lines comes to mind. Peace Corps will humble me, will make me grow, will give me growing pains in the process. It will be tough. I will cry (probably). There will be blood. But I am going to learn, and I am going to teach. I am going to enable and I am going to be enabled.

I will give and I will be given to.

Take the hospitality of the new year, then turn around and make it worth it.

HAPPY NEW YEAR

kx

Peace Corps Tanzania!

After having applied to Peace Corps eight months ago, an Ebola outbreak, a reassignment, and many, many mental and emotional journeys to places unknown that could be home to me, I have accepted an invitation to serve in Tanzania as a crop extensionist with the agriculture/ environment program there, starting in February 2015.

I am honored and blessed to have been given this opportunity, and mostly am excited to say that I get to go BACK to Tanzania. (I never thought I would get to say that. At least, not at this point in my life!) In 2011 I went on a service trip to Tanzania for a few weeks. Everyone in the group I traveled with could have told you that I didn't want to leave Tanzania when the trip was over.

Departure is in four months. So much to do before then. I'll share what I can (or what I remember to).

kx