Since February my life has been a little upside down.
*I moved out of the apartment I had lived in for 18 years and out of the community I had been in for almost 25 years.
*After living alone for the past 5 years and it being just my son and I before that, I now have a roommate and a teenage girl in the house as well!
*I’ve purged and stored my entire life. The first couple of months in my new home I was surrounded by boxes of pictures and files and paperwork and so much ‘stuff’ that it was overwhelming. I’m now down to bare essentials, plus clothes, shoes and jewelry (all of which I’m having a hard time parting with)
*I am now sleeping on the opposite side of the bed. Which is totally weird. Even in hotels I would sleep on the right side!
*The shower is opposite also.
*The basic routine of getting ready in the morning is all out of whack. My bathroom is on the bottom floor and my bedroom is on the 3rd floor. I was used to going back and forth between the bathroom and bedroom but that is now a little more difficult.
*Even my drive is completely different. It’s about 15 minutes longer and I sit in traffic every.single.day
*Then the kitchen happened. On March 24 close to midnight we had a pipe burst under the sink. Until last week (so yes, two + months), the only thing in the kitchen was the fridge and stove (but no cooking items and no counter to fix anything anyway!). The tile had to be removed and we spent several weeks with extremely loud blowers drying everything out. Toward the end of the project, my roomie decided to have all her wood floors redone so furniture was everywhere. Everything is finally (mostly) back to normal and it’s awesome to have a kitchen again.
Everything that has happened over the last four months is preparing me for my time in the Peace Corps and I’ve certainly gained a few valuable lessons:
~how to live with someone (cause I’ll be with a host family for about 4-5 months in Morocco)
~how to break out of a routine (extremely difficult – but glad to have the opportunity to experience now as opposed to when I arrive in a foreign country)
~how to live without a kitchen (yes I’ll have a kitchen in Morocco – but it won’t be what we are used to in the US so learning to handle things differently in order to eat has been a key development).
In about another month my life will go through one more disruption as I become unemployed, move in with my mom and start organizing and preparing for my awesome adventure in Morocco
alicrain 