It's been a little over a month since I posted and that's due to partially to procrastination and partially to the holidays. Regardless of that, I've been up to quite a bit that I will try to recap here. Today we are filtering the wine we've been fermenting for the last 2 weeks, unfortunately, the jug in my host family's kitchen went a bit sour because they were apparently breaking the seal on the airlock and letting air enter which oxidized the wine a bit. This is a good lesson because it shows us how important it is to follow instructions when trying something new. Never the less it is definitely alcohol (even if half of it tastes vinegary... not that I'm salty or anything). They want it ready for tomorrow which it should be after we filter it in an hour or so.
The holiday season has been pretty busy with parties and celebrations galore. One of the parties was ruined for me though after waking up in the morning to them slowly beating a goat to death with a stick. That sound will stick with me for a while and honestly left me feeling nauseous for the day. The holidays here are a bit of a letdown since they hype up the season a lot and then don't really do much to celebrate it (at least compared to American culture), besides long masses and formal parties.
Let's see... during Thanksgiving, I celebrated with the other volunteers, which was a blast and has me excited for MST at the end of January. During that week in Dili, I also taught a class to the new TL'10's during one of their PST training sessions. I was also able to be there to see them all get assigned to their sites, which was an honor and reminded me a lot of when I went through the same process a year ago. A week after that I had to revisit Dili and attended their swearing-in ceremony where the TL'9's presented our site projects and watched as the new group joined the Peace Corps Timor-Leste family! The ceremony was preceded the day before by a dinner with the director of the PC as well as the regional director of PC Asia. We have received 4 new volunteers in Baucau, which feels good to have after sending off the TL8 group.
That's mostly it, and honestly, I've been focusing a lot on personal growth as this year comes to an end. I'm working on my programming skills and attempting to provide what knowledge I do have to the people who are truly interested in learning it. Living here, it can be easy to only see people who don't want to work towards change, but when I really think about it there are plenty of people I know in the US who don't want to make the effort to develop themselves personally. What's different here is that I haven't grown up with these people.
So as my challenge for all of you who read this, I encourage you to look at yourself and those around you and see if there is something that is missing. Is there a new skill you want to learn? Maybe a loved one is having trouble getting motivated to study a new subject or overcome an issue that's been plaguing them for a while now. See what you might be able to help push them, or yourself, in the right direction. Nobodies perfect, which is why mindfulness is so powerful and gives us the ability to look at the things in our lives that have become normal and find a way to change them to benefit us. I'll make sure to also keep this challenge to heart myself whenever I'm at site, so I hope you can join me in this resolution.
I should be coding a timer so you can see where I am in my journey, so keep your eyes posted for that! Until then I wish all of you a Happy New Year and hope you had a Merry Christmas or any other holiday you might celebrate during this season of reflection. Also, I'll leave you with this!
Learning without reflection is a waste. Reflection without learning is dangerous.
~Confucius
Much Love,~BW
P.S. It's Finally Raining!!!!
