Day Four

I managed to catch my brother online today and he forcefully convinced me to video call him with Skype despite the fact that video chat mildly freaks me out due to my own insecurities in regards to not photographing nicely.  I sucked it up though.

I haven't seen Matt in a couple years, not since he visited Las Vegas with a friend of his from Boston College, and even then I didn't see him much.  Matt is my unstep, never step-brother brother, and yes, that makes sense :)  When my family first moved to Las Vegas when I was three, Matt and his family lived across the street and we became instant buddies since he was only a few month younger than I.  A few year later my mom and his dad wound up together despite the upset it caused with our other parental units.  I also managed to inherit two other brothers from the situation, one older and one younger.  Our parents were together for over 15 years and never married and then split a few years ago.  Hence the unstep, never step-brother brother label.


Anyway... He has been living in Columbia doing various internships in regards to their government for the past 15 months, which I think it pretty awesome of him.  He is one person who has been over the moon excited for me to go into the Peace Corps, which makes me feel better knowing I have someone beyond excited for me without telling me they are going to miss me (I never know how to quite respond to that one....)  We got to talking about integrating into a new community and culture and I found it amazing that despite his 7 years of studying Spanish, he couldn't understand a thing anyone was saying.  This actually makes me feel pretty good about the language aspect of things.  I also find myself amused that he has a hard time speaking English on the occasions that he does because he conducts every piece of his life in Spanish.  He even goes so far as to not hang out with Americans or other native English speakers he encounters because he wants that language and cultural immersion.

That is how I want my PC experience to be.  Obviously I want to be friends with other PCVs, but I don't want it to get in the way of my immersion like I know it can.  I have the ability to be a loner and homebody on far too many occasions, so I am glad I am taking on this whole 365 thing since it seems like a great way to get me out of the house and interacting with people while in Ukraine which, too, will help with the immersion thing.