Today is cloudy. Light rain is predicted. It is warmish at 39° with no wind. Most of the rest of the week will be the same. Much of the snow has melted. The leftover piles along the sides of the roads are pockmarked with holes from the rain. My yard has large fallen branches and small pieces of wood scattered about. Nala brings in twigs and pine cones. I pick up chewed twigs and stripped pine cones.

This morning I found one boot upstairs and a pair of mittens in the dining room. I found chewed pieces of paper on the living room floor. Not the disorder of a poltergeist I figured but rather the doings of one boxer named Nala.

I used to love bologna sandwiches. The meat came in rolls and had to be cut into pieces. I was never a good cutter. My pieces of bologna were thick on one end and thin on the other. That made for an odd sandwich, always a white bread sandwich. I used to slather mustard on the bread. I also added hot peppers from a jar cut into slices. The father of one of my friends introduced me to hot peppers. I don’t remember their names, but I do remember where they lived, on Main Street in a large white house, a duplex, across from The First National. The house is still there.

This is Peace Corps week. My memory drawers are open. I remember Peace Corps training and how awful it was and how wonderful it was. I can see in my mind’s eye people and places and all the friends I made, especially two, Bill and Peg, who are still the dearest of friends. I remember during week eight or so in Koforidua, I got to my dorm room and said I was leaving. Everyone in the room said they were leaving too. We all laughed. None of us left.

I have posted this before, but it is perfect for today. I remember it all.

It didn’t take long after training to realize the best part of Peace Corps isn’t Peace Corps. It is just living every day because that’s what Peace Corps comes down to, just living your best life in a place you couldn’t imagine. It is living on your own in a village or at a school. It is teaching every day. It is shopping in the market every three days. It is taking joy in speaking the language you learned in training. It is wearing Ghanaian cloth dresses and relegating the clothes you brought with you to the moldy suitcases. It is loving people and a country with all of your heart from breakfast to bed and forever after. Peace Corps doesn’t tell you that part, the loving part, but I expect they know it will be there.