Feriadu Mak Rame

Hey Everybody,

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!!!!

Rainy Days

Hey everyone,

This week has been fairly rainy, but still hot as per the usual. I have also been free as far as work goes, it's been just English classes. So because of this I've been trying to find some things to do like the dialogue project I'm working on and making a new format for the images on my blog. I will be putting it here first and then if it works well I'll be updating all the other posts to use it. On a side note however, I'm wondering how you guys like the new comment section, I decided to switch it out because Google's comment system wouldn't let me reply to comments on my own site. Let me know what you guys think, I'm thinking about doing a few changes on here, so it would be nice to hear everyone's thoughts.

I've also been doing a bit more reading which has been nice. "Born to Win" has been a book I've had on my shelf for a while, but now I actually have the time to read it. Transactional Analysis is actually the subject I want to focus my Ph.D on, so this book has been good at fusing that field of study with Gestalt experimentation. Speaking of books I'm also planning on getting a Kindle, but unfortunately they don't ship to Timor, so if there is anyone who lives near here who reads this, hit me up!

The third picture here is from the new class my counterpart wants me to teach. It's been alright starting this class a little after my first class because I can reuse old lessons in order to save time and my sanity. In all honesty I've never taught English to adults before, let alone adults who speak a foreign language to myself. Props to anyone who does this for a living or has gone through teaching people who speak a different language from you, because it is incredibly easy to become self conscious about what you are saying.  I've asked my students and some other people I see most days to correct me if they hear me speak incorrectly, but I'm wondering if they are reluctant to do this because I'm still new and they feel like that would be disrespectful. Regardless I can tell my Tetum has been getting better and better which is definitely helping me express my ideas better.

Also this week is the 10 year anniversary of the Peace Corps having a group in Timor-Leste. So if you are from an earlier group and would like to make a comment about where the program has gone since then or about your service in general, reach out to me in the comments or through Facebook and I'll make sure to send your comment to the Peace Corps TL Facebook Group. 

Apart from those things the last few pictures are different thing's I've eaten through the last week. 😂 It's been a long week, but with IST coming up in just a couple weeks the last 6 months have seemed to just fly by. I can only imagine how fast these 2 years will fly by without me realizing it. So this week I'll be leaving you with a quote about how important it is to use that time wisely, so until next time let me leave you with this.

You cannot hope to build a better world without improving the individuals. To that end, each of us must work for his own improvement and, at the same time, share a general responsibility for all humanity, our particular duty being to aid those to whom we think we can be most useful. 

~Marie Curie

Much Love,

~BW

Improvisation

Hey all,

I've never seen this before it's raining behind the house, but not in front. Just thought I'd share that with you. This is coming out the day after Thanksgiving in the state's, so happy Thanksgiving. However for my international audience, happy Thursday.

I gave a presentation on our final field activity during PST, and the majority of the next few weeks will involve getting ready for the LPI. I'm not to worried for the Language Proficiency Interview though because I'm feeling confident in the language and I know that I'll be able to pass it, but aside from that I'm feeling nervous about leaving for my next host family. I will be starting from scratch with a new family, but this is good in some ways as I'll be able to make a great first impression with the family I'll be with for the next two years.

For those of you who are reading this and are planning on joining the Peace Corps, I hope so far this has been good in giving you some insight. However, for those of you who are close to me, or are reading as a point of interest, I hope you can feel as connected to the people of East Timor as I do now. I also hope that you share this blog with your friends, not for my own sake, but for theirs.

I believe having a broader view of the world, gives one a better view of themselves. That's one of the reasons I'm here in the first place, but I also believe that success is not something people achieve on their own. Success in our lives is developed by honing our skills to a cause, and then by performing that cause we have laid out for ourselves to the best of our abilities. It is my belief that the experience we need to hone ourselves cannot be obtained solely by using our own experience, but must be combined with the experience of others. Therefore we all need to share our experience, and revel in the success we have given each other.

All that to say, I hope my story and the story of the wonderful people I meet here will give you experience. That with that experience you can hone your life and abilities into what you see as success. Until next time, I'll leave you with this.

"Experience is merely the name men gave to their mistakes." 

~Oscar Wilde

Much love,
~BW

Udan Boot

Hey All,

I was trying to think of what to write about, and then it started to rain. Below is a story I experienced today that tested my humility. I hope that this can give you strength when you find yourself tripping over small stones throughout the day to day we all experience.

I tried to do laundry earlier and found myself being frustrated when I couldn't get any suds from the rinso (what I now know is freshener). My younger sister of 16 saw that I was having trouble and decided to teach me how to wash clothes. I don't know what it was specifically; the heat (90°F), the sore feet I had from Mass yesterday, or the feeling of uselessness as I was feeling while being shown how to wash clothes, but I found myself however beginning to feel the drain I had been warned about by the Peace corps staff.

It took a few hours of watching Samurai Champloo and reflecting not only on my adaptations, but the changes my host family has also had to endure. I did however eventually see the light that had brought me here, and laughed at how easily I left myself to the frustrations of those who do not live with passion in their hearts. Being human however we all find ourselves caught up in the small things from time to time, as I did today.

Ironically enough I feel that the audio recording attached to this is the best analogy I have for the flash of rash frustration I felt. I don't expect anyone to listen to it, but if you do you'll most likely stop as soon as you hear the white noise of the rain hitting our metal roof. If you listen closely however, you'll hear the beautiful sounds of my younger sisters here laughing and playing behind the deafening noise of the rain. This too is what experiences of adaptation are like. Sometimes you only hear the rain, but the laughter is the reason we listening.

I pray that you can find the laughter in the frustrations you find yourself in, and that you can laugh when you find yourself caught up in pride as I did today. Until then I'll leave you with this.

"In the intellectual order, the virtue of humility is nothing more nor less than the power of attention." 

~Simone Weil

Much love,

~BW