Transition

The rains came yesterday. I walked into the bathroom to shower as sunlight was streaming in through my windows and when I stepped out my house had grown dark and the air felt heavy. Katherine had sent me a message: "stay inside, storm coming." How very convenient to have a friend living in the path of weather systems en route to my house. She's my own private meteorologist.

And the rains did indeed come. Within minutes the wind picked up and scattered earth and dust into the air, turning the sky an eerie, rusty red. When the rain hit, it hit with purpose, announcing its 9 month absence with gusto. Even the lightest of showers on a metal roof are amplified, so this was a freight train. I took a video of the rain gushing off the roof of my family's house, turning our courtyard into a lake, so that I can remember what these African rains are like. There may be rain in Seattle but it is nothing like this. It lasted for hours but eventually died down, languishing into a drizzle for a few short minutes before stopping suddenly, as if the faucet had simply been turned off. Welcome, rainy season; you are my third and last!

Blessed with a cool breeze and reason not to navigate the muddy streets of Pout, I stayed in and finished my Close of Service report. It's many pages longer than I had originally intended and while I like to think this is because I just have that many projects to write about, its length is partially owed to my ample wordiness. And rambling. I do have a tendency to do that. It feels strange to have completed it. Writing about my family was more challenging than I imagined because my thoughts about them and relationships with them are mine and mine alone. Leaving out details became purposeful; I don't want to plague my replacement with predispositions on their support network for the next two years. My catharsis about all that will hit me at some point outside the realm of a neat little paper package.

Finishing Peace Corps paperwork is only one task in the lengthy list of things to do. As my life back in America creeps closer, I'm spending more and more time thinking about the transition. I'm making real concrete plans now and the once fuzzy post Peace Corps months are coming into focus. With a few holes, of course. Anyone want to hire me? The task of finding a job is made more daunting by being physically removed from the actual country I'd like to work in - same goes for apartment hunting. I'm trying to ease some of the natural panic in my head by telling myself that it will be much easier stateside.

Tomorrow I'm off to Thies to spend three days with the trainees. This will be my last legitimate time at the training center until I find out who my replacement is in a couple of weeks (so soon!). I also scheduled my final language interview, so one of the Peace Corps language instructors will be testing me to see what level I'm at. I'm not even going to attempt a test in Wolof as that would be a joke, but let's see how awesomely bad my French skills are!