First decide whether to cook or go out. Cook it is.
Now what to cook? Some sort of Italian pasta with a bottle of wine – easy enough.
What time? This is where dates begin to get creative when you date a currently serving Peace Corps Volunteer.
Last Tuesday night my boyfriend and I planned
to have our first “dinner date” since I left for Peru in June. We planned
to both cook Italian – me fettuccini and he ravioli – then eat “together” on
Skype at 7 my time, 8 his time. And this
is where we have a problem – nothing ever goes as planned in the Peace Corps.
Halfway through cooking and 15 minutes until
my date, the electricity went out, as it sometimes does. I finished cooking by candlelight and with
high hopes it would be a short outage.
With no sign of light or internet, we moved to Plan B – a phone date.
20 minutes later I sat in my dark room with a
plate of fettuccini talking on my cell phone with my “date.” Just as I got the bottle of wine I splurged
on in the capital city open, the cell service was cut in my pueblo, too –
another occurrence that periodically happens with no explanation.
And so on to Plan C. There I was eating fettuccini by flashlight
in Peru while my date was eating ravioli in a well lit room in South Carolina
without anyway to contact me or know what was going on with his date.
This is the story of a relationship with a
currently serving Peace Corps Volunteer. When you decide to date a currently
serving PCV, you decide to go on a wild adventure that
includes ups like a great excuse to travel to a beautiful country and have an
entire family and community love you before they even meet you and downs like
unpredictability and isolation even though you still live in the wonderful
cushions of first world America.
A long distance relationship, especially in the Peace Corps, takes some creativity.
The “little things” become really big things that take plenty of effort
but are so exciting and appreciated that they are worth every bit of that
effort. So far we have learned to send
flowers in a 3rd world country, to have hot cookies delivered on a
birthday, the art of a snail mail letter or well-timed e-mail, and certainly
how to be patient and go with the flow when nothing goes as planned. Thanks for being part of my Peruvian
adventure, Matthew Strauss! I look forward to more creative Plan A, Plan B,
Plan C, and “Forget the Plan” dates in the future.
12 Reasons to Date a RPCV http://www.peacecorpsconnect.org/2012/02/12-reasons-to-date-a-returned-peace-corps-volunteer/
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