I’m Leaving on a Jet Plane

I finished my Peace Corps paperwork and reports early on Wednesday, and with a final signature I was no longer a Peace Corps volunteer! I had Thursday and Friday this week to relax before flying home tomorrow. In addition to seeing the final “Harry Potter” film, I had two more despedidas. One going-away party was with my Peace Corps colleagues and our boss, and the other was with Kristine (my friend from the capital) and Sachiko.



I feel like there are no more “good-byes” left in me. After a rough week of farewells at site, I am too emotionally drained to do it again. Luckily, I will see these people again, and an “hasta luego” is a lot easier than an “adiós.”



I return to California tomorrow morning! I can’t believe I’m actually leaving, and that I will not be going home to the cornfields and mountains of my site. It’s going to be weird. I’m tired and I’m ready to go, but I will still miss my life here.

I’ll have a month at home, and in August I return to Harvard to study at the Graduate School of Education. I’m going to get a masters in International Education Policy, hopefully to one day work with the leaders of the Ministry of Education in countries like Guatemala. I had a passion for education and Latin America before I served in the Peace Corps, and my job here confirmed that I want to continue in the field of education. A great education—including life skills—can help youth like my students to achieve a future consistent with their dreams.

Through teaching at rural middle schools, I saw a foreign education system at the local level first hand. Many policy makers do not know what happens in those schools—that ninth graders sit in desks for pre-schoolers, or that teachers get offered tenure in August and the students are without a teacher for the rest of the year (both true stories from the same school). I hope to use my perspective gained in Peace Corps to continue to make a difference at the policy level.

Thanks for reading this blog! It has been a fun and reflective way to share my experience in Guatemala with the people at home. A goal of Peace Corps is to facilitate understanding of foreign countries to Americans. I hope that through this blog you have learned about Peace Corps and indigenous Guatemala. It is a special country that will always be dear to me, and I am thrilled that more people are excited about this gem of Central America!