Today I attended an interesting session hosted by the regional psychiatrist and medical unit here at post discussing the frustrations of our chosen path of life and an adaptation cycle that we all generally expect to go through. The familiar topics of "Third Culture Kid", homesickness, where is home?, depression, reverse-culture shock, improving post moral and other challenges came up.
I was going through the handout and decided that for someone who has just gone through a very stressful time, I found that I had not wandered far from the steps listed on the "resilience checklist".
I was telling a colleague the other day about my experience in Guyana with the Peace Corps. It was, as the slogan goes, "the toughest job you will ever love." What was strange about this week and past month, were how many nice comments of support I received from some of my Guyanese friends in Guyana. I never really thought that I made much of a difference in their lives, but their messages made me feel the opposite. It does mean a lot to hear from them after so much time has passed.
Last summer when I participated in a study about TCK, it dawned on me that I actually don't know much about American cooking. We had a colleague of Jason's over for dinner, he was from the Ukraine. I wanted to make something "American", so I made cheeseburgers and fries, failing miserably on the fries. Most of my cooking is with a Guyanese flair... I can't make a meat loaf but I can make a mean egg ball with mango sour, and that is my comfort food.
You can take the girl out of Guyana, but you can't take the Guyana out of the girl.
