tick tock tick tock

6 April 2005

I guess this is how I move forward in my life. I study and commit and submerse and envelop.

I've been attacking every word I can find about Ukraine. About Peace Corps. I've been eating up blogs, facts sheets, weather reports, Yahoo! groups, friends who've even just heard the word Ukraine, school contacts, Ukrainian doctors studying at MIIS, and even, sadly, a Ukrainian cookbook.

Thankfully, I've got a tag-team partner. Instead of working today, as we both should have been doing, my mother-in-law and I were systematically trying to grasp a divining rod and find out where our staging city is going to be. I supplied a list, from peacecorps.gov, of all the staging cities available. I suggested the city with flights to Ukraine has a high chance of being our staging city. Then Jan jumped over the top rope, tumbled to the canvas, and checked out flight schedules for 4 October 2005 from those cities to Ukraine. Guess what?

They all god damn go to Ukraine.

Strike one.

I think Jan and I are racing to find the most websites about Ukraine. She's winning right now. She's found the best sites, which Karen and I have been feasting on each night. I read faster than Karen does, so I tend to summarize what I've learned. I talk too fast, so I often have to repeat myself, which is fine. I love talking about it. I'm so excited. I'm learning, reading, writing, seaching, editing, and discovering like a madman.

I feel like I'm on speed.

Notice the post time? Karen's been asleep for an hour. It's either the info gathering or the smuggler (Anthony, you'll remember smugglers) Karen made for me before she conked out that's got my fingers and eyes racing across the net tonight, looking for anything blue and yellow--Ukraine's flag colors.

Did you know Ukraine's birth rate is going down?

Did you know the popualtion in Ukraine is 48 million?

Did you know blah blah blah?

It's kinda like that.

I'm so happy Jan is, seemingly, so excited about this invitation. Peace Corps is a very important step in our lives, and it is very important for us to share this with people in our lives. It really helps out the morale when those people push back, support, and encourage.

We (I?) met a girl named Leigh today who is going to Moldova with Peace Corps in June. Moldova is right next door to Ukraine. We're looking forward to getting to know Leigh more before she heads off. Potential contact in the region.

In reading this blog (http://books.dreambook.com/sarahperez/dae.html), I see the pre-Peace Corps invitation frustration Karen and I felt. I won't spill my now forgotten, by me at least, angst here. I'll simply quote Dae's fairly accurate words: "life has been extrememly routine--on hold really." Life for us hasn't been routine--marriage is a wondeful fixer upper for the routine blues--but we have felt our lives were on hold. Waiting and waiting and waiting.

Dae says, "it's hard to grasp that i'm finally leaving, after over a year of waiting. and it wasn't that good kind of waiting, like milhouse said about kissing. that it's not the kissing itself that's so good, but the waiting before the kiss. this was some of the most excrutiating waiting i've experienced. while time ground down to a halt, my personal time sped up. by this i mean that although it seemed like the months couldn't pass fast enough, i felt like i was aging rapidly, my prime years were being pissed away, friends were getting married, getting serious jobs, doing things that adults do."

"this was some of the most excrutiating waiting i've experienced."

Yeah, that's about right.

But the next wait, the six months paving the twisting path between today and the kissing and hugging and goodbyeing at the airport, will not excruciate me.

I will, like a sponge, soak up every last second the clock, now ringing in 11:13 pm over Karen's heavy, but sonorous, breathing, can tick away.