Hey Everyone,
You guys are going to love this one, I went to Dili recently for a S&S meeting and didn't take any pictures.
I'll make sure to take some next time, but for now I have a few including one from me planning my English lesson on
ABC's and 123's. It's been interesting planning lesson's because I definitely don't have a process down (at least
not one I'm sticking to). I have found however that I am good enough at improve and public speaking that I can run
through these lessons without needing to stick tightly to my lesson plan (#humblebrag). Chilling with my
friend's here in Baucau has been great and I'll give a shout out to my friends in the Foho!
I went to the PCMO during my trip to Dili to check on my health (mostly relating to weight I've lost) and I found
out I've lost almost 30 lbs.! I'm actually under 200 now which is a strange thing because not only are my pants all
baggy, but I've also found myself not recognizing myself in the mirror. Mum, I'm feeling great though and she said
my blood test came back showing I'm getting all the nutrients I need, I just need more calories. Over all the
trip to Dili was a great chance for me to meet up with some friends and reconnect a bit before my actual reconnect
in March.
Besides that fun stuff (and the pizza I had witch made me extremely happy) I've just been doing the same ol' thing
I do every week. I got to my taxes and have been discussing a way to to use my microphone here. At this point
I've had a lot of interest in a dialog series I'll be hosting on Sound Cloud and embedding here for anyone to
use. It will be a three part dialog that will be English-English then Tetum-English and finally Tetum-Tetum.
This will hopefully be a nice tool for my class, but also I'm hoping it can be something future PCV's and PCT's
will be able to use when trying to learn English or Tetum. If you have any ideas, or if your looking for some kind
of resource I can help create let me know, because I'd love to help bring that to Timor. I've also been thinking of
recording my English lesson's, but that is still tentative because dang that would be a lot of work to tack onto my
8-5!
Living here is hard, adapting to life here is hard. I never take the fact that I have a plane ticket back home on
deck, but at the end of the day I look at what I'm doing as an investment in the person I will be in the future.
Someone who I can trust to commit to something he plans. Someone I know will stick to their guns when the chips are
down. Someone whose personality and happiness is tied to something that extends past their living situation.
I'm doing this for my reasons, but if you are reading this and have a different situation then I have some
unfortunate news. Nobody can make your decision for you...
We grow up being able to rely on others to make the big decisions for us, usually our parents, but sometimes our
teachers or just relying on an external locus of control to blame our circumstances for the choices we chose to
ignore. This injustice is unfortunate because it trains us to look for advice and other peoples answers to
our situations. The thing is though that we are all in charge of our futures, each person is able to make the
decision that would be best for them. This can be a liberty and it can be a freedom, but it can also feel like a
curse because often to open a door we need to close one first. I hope this helps you, but at the end of the
day your choice will be your own and the only thing you can control after you make your choices is how you feel.
Stand behind your decisions, make them yours! Don't let anyone make your decisions for you! Don't let someone take
your life away from you! I'm making my decision to stay here because it's a choice I made and one I choose to stand
behind.
If you are going through something or have to make a choice that will affect your future, I hope only that you make
the decision that is yours. rarely are things black and white enough to where you can know if you made the right
choice, but one thing you can know is if YOU made the decision or if someone made it for you. I got to go plan a
Saturday and Monday English lesson now, but until next time I'll leave you with this.
Happiness is a choice. You can choose to be happy. There's going to be stress in life, but it's your choice whether
you let it affect you or not.
~Valerie Bertinelli
Much love,
~BW
