Remembering Boston

This past week I've been staying in Chimoio for a Peace Corps conference. The conference was really beneficial because I was able to meet with other volunteers from my training group to talk about integration, lesson planning/school, and any other issues we have faced so far at site. The conference started Tuesday morning and finally ended this afternoon. Tomorrow I'll leave early in the morning to travel to the beach with some other volunteers and enjoy a really fun long weekend in Vilankulos.

I want to back track a bit just to write about the tragedy that happened in Boston on Monday. I was sitting in a hotel room, enjoying some libations and good conversations with friends that I haven't seen in months when one of my friends handed me his phone. I looked at it and saw the headline about the bombing in Boston. It was almost as if the world stopped. I swear, I sobered up, I couldn't hear anything anyone was saying, I couldn't even think. Thankfully I am so close to the PC office so I grabbed my computer and ran to the office to try and figure out a little more about the sudden catastrophe at the race. I sat in the office for the next two hours with another volunteer trying to read news headlines, look at pictures and get in touch with people from home. It was really scary. People always say its the sudden tragedies that make you appreciate what you have, but seeing something (on the news) so outrageous, happen in a place that I truly love was really difficult. Being so far from home, from family and friends, was also really difficult. I am so glad that I was here, in Chimoio, with my PC family when these events happened, because I was able to try and understand what actually happened and I had a great support system.

I'm not trying to write a post so that you can feel bad for me, but I think this sudden tragedy really puts things in perspective. I'm really far away from home, and when something scary happens it's very easy to feel helpless, and its difficult to even begin to understand why/how these kind of events occur.

I just wanted to thank anyone who sent an email or a text and kept me up to date with the current events in Boston, and thought to check in on me. I hope that everyone back home is safe, and is able to begin to register and try to make sense of what happened on Monday. I am really sad to know that the Boston Marathon, America's most famous race, is forever going to be changed, and looked at differently.