Things here are starting to get into a groove. I don't love teaching, but I'm getting used to it. I am now constantly being told that I have chalk everywhere on my clothes, so that must mean I am a teacher now. I feel like things are starting to get rolling, finally, after almost 6 months at site.
I am also learning the hard things about being here though. Some days you hit a wall. You encounter something that seems so ridiculous to you that you can't help but feel the surge of energy and think "Yes, this is what I'm here to do. It will be great" and you feel good that you are here to help. But then it hits you. There are too many roadblocks in your way and and too much apathy to overcome them, and too many things entwined together to change just one. You realize that really can't help in the way that you'd like, no matter how much energy and good intentions you put into it. There have been a few moments in my past six months as a volunteer that have really left me torn. Torn between wanting to spring to action and go save the world or to just give up. The "one step at a time" thing is really hard to do.
It is moments like this where I have struggled with what I am doing here, because I am not here to save the world, I realized that I am not really capable of saving something the size of my village, I am only here to hope that some of the tools I bring will be used later on so that maybe one day something will happen, something will be built, or at least one day someone will remember that the tools exists and will ask what they are. It gives me a lot of perspective, because I am here working on a person to person basis, the small picture stuff, but I joined Peace Corps because of dreams of changing the bigger picture.
So I have been jumping in on some projects to keep me busy, and which I think will be absolutely amazing. I am now on a women and gender in development committee, and I am also working on GLOW, which is a camp for young girls throughout Georgia. After the war in 08, a lot of the information was lost about how it operated here in Georgia in the past, but some of last year's volunteers did some great legwork and I am on the team to help get it started again this coming summer. It will not only be a great learning experience, but it will help me impact young girls here, which I have decided is one of my main goals here, and it's a start!
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