We got four new teammates the other day, and I think I speak for all of us when we say we are pretty excited about them. They seem like great new additions. One of them is replacing me at my old village, so we will be heading out together to introduce her and get her situated.

I have been going through some abrupt shifts in what I thought my future looked like, and so I’m reevaluating what I want to do (yet again). To be honest not a lot has changed, I still probably want to go to law school and I still have plans for a great return to the states that includes a motorcycle and touring around.

But the bigger changes are internal. I feel as a wet towel that was being wrung out. Squeezing down into a dense hard mass, but still all twisted up. There is a cold clarity that makes me less concerned about the feelings of other people, and I wonder if that isn’t a good thing at the moment. I haven’t lost my enthusiasm for embracing emotions, for diving in headfirst, or that whole shpeal about experiencing emotions to the fullest, but you can bet the next time around (if there is…) I will be much more cautious. (Says I after only a few days. We all know that the feelings in the time shortly after a breakup are not the most reliable). Still, I am different for the moment. And my ideas about the importance of romance in my life have taken a dramatic turn towards, well, not being important at all.

Partly I just don’t have the space to deal. I am a guest at a volunteer’s house and don’t have my own space or even my own things, and there are a million people at the hostel right now because a stage is COSing (going home). So all of that will have to wait. I have up to this point refused to be largely affected by this whole turn of events, and my ability to clamp down on myself has sort of surprised me. But then again, that cold focus has been used in other parts of my life, perhaps just not yet in this arena.

On a related note, I’ve been noticing an increasing turn toward ambition in the last couple of years. Its an odd sort of thing. I think I have just been so internally focused that I have pursued external things as a means to an internal goal. But I am feeling both that I have some (hubris) of my internal stuff sorted out and that I have the urge to make my mark on the world. Its a little strange though, because I thought that was supposed to happen around age 24 or something, and I’m 30 now. 30 is a pretty cool age, to be honest. So anyway, much of my thoughts about the future are what kind of things I want to make happen in the world, which is different from what kinds of things will facilitate my inner soul searching, which is more of what it used to be like. The next decade is going to be awesome.

PS – Mois de Karem (Ramadan) starts today. Muslims can’t eat or drink anything from sun up to sun down. I wanted to join them this year but I don’t have a family anymore and you definitely need a support system to do that kind of thing. It remains to be seen how much it will affect the availability of food on the streets. It could be a (less for me than others) rough four weeks. Also, I kind of have to keep my drinking and eating under wraps, since its rude to partake in front of others. That means no more tea on my desk.

Last night after returning from dinner I found a small snake hiding under my mat that was rolled up and leaning against the wall. Snakes don’t really scare me, and though I was sort of subconsciously aware that snakes are generally poisonous in Niger, I managed to get the snake into a can and dump it a ways from my house without problems. Then on the way back I realized that people around here generally kill all snakes on sight, and maybe I had just deposited a very poisonous snake in my village where someone could get bit. Hopefully it heads to someplace else or someone kills it. But its funny that my reaction automatically reverted to what my behavior would have been in the states, when I might have been better off chopping it to bits with my machete. I think the bureau recommends calling villagers to do that part for you.

Anyway, today was insanely busy, and I am sitting inside my very warm house now about to drink some (hot) tea and am very content. I have been thinking about shells. Maybe all of life is about expanding outside your shell. Peace Corps is sort of like a mini-life. When you arrive you have a tiny shell because everything seems new and overwhelming. Trash on the streets, the state of people’s clothes, the food, the buildings, everything seems odd and new and unpleasant. Little by little your shell expands and, though I am usually not happy in the process, you reach a place where you are comfortable in a larger variety of situations. The thing is that it is easy to stop doing that, to reach a place that is sufficient but not extraordinary, and to coast through the rest of what is needed without expanding much. This isn’t bad really, but you might never make friends with the guy who is less enthusiastic about you than others. Thing is, he might be less enthusiastic because he is a good guy who doesn’t want the white person to take him to America and so it isn’t a big deal to him to be your friend. Yet he could be one of your best friends.

And of course we are always hard on ourselves for not extending even more beyond our shells, but extending is exhausting, and so its understandable that we stop at some point. I have always sought to extend by changing situations, but now I am starting to wonder how you go about extending without changing things. I don’t want to have to start a new relationship, find a new job, or move to a new city every time a feel stuck in the old one. My challenge now and in the future is to find ways to extend with my current committments instead of seeking new ones. I can see the sorts of shapes that that will take, and it seems like a whole new aspect of myself that I haven’t spent much time with. I expect that to change in the coming years, which seems about right (or a little late) given my age.

So to those of you putting yourself out there, fonda kokari (greetings on your motivation). I think it is worth it.