In a little over a month, I will be on my way to Swaziland, Africa, to serve as a volunteer in The Peace Corps, and this is my first post to begin the adventure. And an adventure really is what it will be. I hope to learn a lot, about myself and about another culture. I hope to learn about what I want my future to look like, what to study and maybe do as a career. I know I am going to have fun, be scared, and miss a lot of people. But I will also meet a lot of people who will change my life, and I hope to be a part of a change in others lives.
WHY?
Everyone around me wants to know why I am doing this. So I will try to explain. To me, in a lot of ways, it began with an idea my friend Elizabeth Mattuchio gave me. In high school we started playing with the idea of joining the Peace Corps, saying that she would take photographs and I would write articles, and together we would send them to National Geographic. Back then it was an idea that seemed interesting and fun, and perhaps something I really would want to do, but I can't say that I knew I would actually follow through with it. Liz and I graduated at different times, so our idea of going together faded, but in my junior of college I decided that joining the Peace Corps was something that I really wanted to do.
The idea of it began with Liz, but the joy of service started long before I met my best friend. I started in youth group at The First Congregational Church in Rockport in the 6th grade. I joined because Chelsea Picardo's, a close friend of mine, mother ran it, and I always heard about how much fun they had. I believe this 6th grade youth group built on, and, in the 8th grade, our youth group (and close-knit group of friends in the rambunctious Sunday school class) was very strong. Our leader, Mindy, began formulating an idea for our group to go on a Mission Trip, and we were all into it. Our group of about 17 kids (I think) and the supportive adults, in a year raised 20,000 dollars to go to Pine Ridge, South Dakota, for our first Mission Trip. Following this trip until after I graduated high school, I participated in each Mission Trip we went on, 5 mission trips. It was great, and definitively a huge part of my life. These trips included a whole bunch of fundraising and volunteering throughout the year, and then an intensive volunteer week in places of need. You beginning to see why I am joining the Peace Corps?
Service has been a big part of my life, and I know that another factor into my idea to join the Peace Corps was my lack of service while I was abroad. I studied abroad in Spain, and while I was there I wanted to volunteer but just never found myself doing so. This had a huge affect on me, I really had wanted to do while service abroad. And on built the intrigue of the Peace Corps.
I returned from studying abroad with the intent to transfer schools, and upon completing this and settling down, I began researching what I had to do to make the Peace Corps a real possibility.
The Peace Corps is not something you can just jump into on some hasty decision, which I think sometimes is hard to see for my family. It is really something I have worked hard for and have thought about. I want to join so that I can satisfy my need for serving abroad, where ever else in the world this might take me in the future as well. I am not joining AmeriCorps for a reason, I want to go serve abroad and then when I come back, take what I have learned and apply it to my home country. Two years is a long commitment, but at the point I am in my life I need a long commitment to help me navigate to the next stage. I feel that right now something short term would be used as a filler, similar to what my study-abroad program was for me in college. Although it was a great experience, I am looking for something more long term to help guide me on to the next step, not hold me over until hopefully some direction comes. The Peace Corps IS my next step in my own search for direction, and it is an opportunity to do something amazing.
When?
June 5th and 6th, 2012: Pre-Departure Staging
June 7th-August 2012: Training
August, 2012-August, 2014: Service
Where?
Swaziland, Africa. :) (More on the where in a later post)
What?
Joining the Peace Corps..durrrr
Who?
Me, Jessica Hope Randall I, born on June 17th, 1989. Grew up in Rockport, the girl who went to 3 different high schools, and then technically 3 different colleges. Graduated cum laude with a degree in English Literature. The girl ready to go on an adventure, to learn a lot, to experience a lot of new things. The girl who will miss all her loved ones and friends, but hopes they send her love and happy thoughts, and knows that she will visit everyone in their dreams. The girl who will send postcards and who hopes to get postcards (and care packages of things I probably will need). Who? Who knows.
(Just kidding, I know. It's ME!)
