life these days

Hello, my name is Mori, and it has been one month since I've sat on a toilet seat. So, you're welcome for that little tidbit and partial "Finding Nemo" reference, and thank you for joining me for this lovely celebration post of my "I left home 1 month ago" post.

One of my first days in Albania, all of the trainees watched a video called "The Danger of a Single Story", which is incredible by the way, and you should watch it because the description I am about to give will absolutely not do it justice. Anyway, in this Ted Talk, Chimamanda Adichie talks about her childhood, and the exposure that she had as a child in Nigeria to literature. She talks of how all the novels she read featured characters that did not look like her in places that were unlike the places around her. To her though, that was literature, the single story of what constituted literature.

I was going to make this picture smaller, but it pretty much captures my hype about life right now. As an added bonus, you can literally see 10 villages and a city in this picture, so, super cool.

This Ted Talk is important, and in many ways it has rang painfully true in many aspects of my life over the past few weeks in Albania. When I came to Albania, I expected a drastic change in my standard of living. I expected to always feel dirty from lack of showering and ability to wash my clothes. I expected to feel cold all the time. I expected to be smothered all the time by my host family. However, when I arrived, it was clear that I was mistaken. While I shower less often, I have only felt truly dirty after making myself run off the massive pieces of cake that always sound like a great idea in the moment. I have only been cold when I decide it sounds like a good idea to run in the rain. Honestly I spend so much time with my real family, I don't think any amount of time with my host family would feel like it was too much. Also, as an aside, my family is incredible, and we clicked immediately. However, I will admit that I have probably been extremely lucky in that regard. Really though, in most all areas, my standard of living has experienced a pretty drastic change. I'm finally eating healthy, I am finally sleeping enough and on a regular schedule, and I am finally being purposeful about the time that I spend with the people I love, just to name a few.

For me, that single story was one of ignorance, that somehow my life here would be a journey marked with little sacrifices along the road back home. This single story was perhaps perpetuated by information I was taking in, but I would argue that it was rather perpetuated, or even perhaps created, by my own tendencies to overthink, worry, and imagine. I was scared of the unknown, of my life being altered, of my life being different in some way. It seems stupid and senseless now that I put that into words, but that doesn't make it any less true. I chose this, right? I quite literally asked for it, and then I was anxious about my life being different? Duh, Mohri. Duh. Being here, it is glaringly obvious to me that my anxieties really were just the unknown. I am no stranger to "kicking it", so there was no doubt that whatever the situation was would be fine by me when the time came, but it was the anticipation of not knowing that got me. Like I said, my life here is not worse, if anything it is better and healthier in most every way. I'll admit though, it is different.

My "normal" has taken a hard left turn, but in the month that I have been living it, it's crazy to me how normal it all is. Walking to training this morning, my friends and I passed a chicken on the road and we all laughed and talked about how crazy it was that things like that don't even phase us anymore. I walk to training every day and share the road with chickens. I run every night and share the road with a herd of sheep. I eat mandarins straight off a tree. I'm legitimately surprised when anything costs more than 200 leke (roughly $2). I know the tv schedule and am very invested with my favorite shows. I barely even notice the toilet seat leaning up against the wall anymore, or for that matter, wonder why it just isn't on the toilet. Speaking of toilets, I don't contemplate my ability to hold it when I walk into a restroom and see a Turkish toilet anymore. I run down the street to buy soap or what have you and automatically decipher the difference between new and old leke. I wake up to a crowing rooster that may or may not be crowing at an appropriate hour. I give all the dogs a wide berth so as to not get bitten. I change my shoes before coming in and out of the house. I appreciate the sunset over the mountains.

The other day, I was chatting at a lokal after class with my sitemates when a cow suddenly mooed out of the back of a huge truck we hadn't even noticed sitting barely 10 feet away. The conversation just kept going like nothing happened except that we all did the "half-smile accompanied by inaudible laugh" as we continued on. I can't speak for my friends, but mine was brought on by the fact that the hidden cow didn't phase us. That this was life, this was normal, this was home.

Honestly, you try being cold when you have a fire shooter pointed at you.

This conversation over raki led to a discussion of worldview and perceptions of cultures and places different from our own. Callum said, "I think the real benefit of a program like the Peace Corps is that it exposes Americans to the world". This is important, and I think that exposure does more than just show us different cultures. It forces us to accept that maybe we don't have it all figured out. Maybe there is something better out there, maybe my values are a little bit out of line, or maybe I have misjudged people, places, values, things, governments, cultures, etc. Maybe, just maybe, there is more to the world than the stories that I have constructed and accepted to be true in my own head with very limited use of legitimate information. Maybe my idea of what "better" means is an idea that could or even should be challenged, but I haven't given the world an opportunity to do so. Maybe there is more than just a single story.

What is crazy to me is that so many people don't know what the world looks like beyond their front door. It seems that people don't travel, or at least, the only people who do are the kids from the generation known for "feeling invincible" and "taking risks", kids who choose to ignore the choir of people telling them to be careful or "smart". For the rest of society though, traveling is just not an activity on the docket, but why? Perhaps it's because the world beyond the front door is scary. The media paints places as being dangerous, full of crime, and honestly just scary. Perhaps though, it is the idea that the standard of living in other nations is so far below that of our own that traveling would be so uncomfortable. Honestly, I'm not convinced that the media actually plays into this as much as I would love be able to blame them. The media plays to what we want to see, and honestly, we don't seem to care about the world outside our borders, so why would they waste time showing us what the world looks like. Rather, I think that we often just choose to paint that picture on our own. Beyond this, I think people don't travel because they simply don't want to. We have lost our sense of curiosity and our ability to see worth in anything beyond the 40 hour work week that pays the bills and sets us up for a cozy and lavish retirement.

After pulling myself over the thorn patch that surrounded this mighty establishment, I had the revelation that, every day I think I've seen the coolest, most beautiful sites, views, etc. in Albania, then it just pulls this kind of stuff on me.

I'm not going to sit here behind this keyboard and tell you that this is wrong. However, I will tell you that the pieces of the world that I have been fortunate enough to see are nothing like what my American background would have me expect. I will also tell you that the pieces of the world that I have been fortunate enough to see have changed my world. Traveling has impacted what I care about, what I know to be true, and how I live my life. I would also argue that I am better for it. It's not that I don't believe in American values, it's that I also see their limitations. I think it's important though to not allow myself to get comfortable and see truth in the world I experience everyday because this is just an excuse to discount the worth of the world beyond my limited experience.

The other day someone asked me where I am going when I finish my service. Honestly I dread this question because I truly don't know, and the part of me that needs control over my life wants to have an answer nicely packaged and tied with a bow on hand. However, the part of me that recognizes the value in timing, flexibility, and following my heart loves to smile and say, "I honestly don't know, but I'll figure it out". At this point, I recognize that my entire life is just a struggle between anxiety and happiness, it just comes down to what I choose to pay attention to in the moment. For those of you wondering though, I know I will be back, at least for a little while, because the twins will graduate high school and move off to start their new lives, something that I literally would not miss for the world. After that, the world won't wait for long, because I unequivocally know that I am better for it.

Just when you thought you had made it through a Tuesday with Mohri without a single sunset picture. It's clear why I'm obsessed with them though, right?