Oops... I was in America

Green Lake, Seattle

(If you look very closely you can see the Space Needle poking out of the trees)

The first introduction that I got to cultures beyond my own was through the walls of my grandmother’s house. Paintings brought back from her father’s time working in Asia, photographs of old European cities, Native American wood carvings; I absorbed it all and began wondering about what lay outside of America’s borders. My grandma loved art and she loved to travel. I like to think that the draw I feel to explore the world as much as I can partly stems from her. Sadly, my grandma passed away at the beginning of January this year. She was 89 and lived a long, rich life. I knew when I left for my service that this was a likely possibility, but it was still an isolating and strange experience to find out this news thousands of miles from my home and my family. However, thanks to the wonderful support of the Peace Corps staff, I was able to make arrangements to travel home and stay for 2 weeks so that I could attend her memorial service. 

I hadn’t been planning to return to the US until I completed my service in 2025, but in mid-January, I found myself walking out of the International Arrivals exit to find my dad standing waiting for me, muffin from my favorite coffee shop in hand. In my international travel-induced exhaustion, I didn’t even notice that he had brought along one of my oldest friends to surprise me. Before I could even process seeing the two of them for the first time in nearly a year, I was handed a notebook, pen, and a slip of paper with a clue written on it. Suddenly, I flashed back to the previous week when on a video call with my parents I told my dad that after he picked me up from the airport he needed to help keep me awake until that night so I could combat jet lag. As I said this, I saw the light of an idea spark in his eyes. I should have known that he would be taking this task seriously. Turns out, his strategy to prevent me from falling asleep was to organize an extravagant scavenger hunt across Seattle, visiting friends and family’s homes and workplaces along the way. The goal of the hunt was to find “the muffin man,” so at each stop as I was presented with another clue I was also given a muffin. I made the mistake of eating my first muffin immediately, not knowing that multiple more lay in my future. The hunt was successful in both keeping me awake and speed-running catching up with everyone I hadn’t seen in months. As I had predicted about halfway through the journey, “the muffin man” turned out to be my older brother. 

Driving through Seattle and then eventually back to my hometown, I had this incredibly strange feeling that I had dreamed the last 10 months of my life and was just waking up again exactly where I had been when I left. This wasn’t what I expected to feel at all. It turns out that the familiarity of the place where I spent 24 years of my life runs deeper than I thought. It was jarring for me to walk along the beach and overhear conversations in English. I’ve gotten so used to tuning my ears to English in public because I rarely hear it on the streets of Armenia, that I became overwhelmed feeling like I needed to try and eavesdrop on every single conversation I heard. In what I’m sure was an effort by Washington to make me feel at home, it was rainy and overcast nearly every day. But like a good PNWer, I didn’t let that stop me from keeping very busy while I was there. I ate all the food that I had missed (specifically, authentic sushi, New York-style pizza, and classic American BBQ), spent a lot of time with my family, and met up with friends. Hearing about the updates in my friend’s lives (decorating apartments, changing jobs, buying cars) made it easy to wonder what mine would have been like if I stayed. This imagined life formed in my head and felt frighteningly tempting. Maybe I would have stayed at my job and moved into the city or gone back to school. But I knew that all of it would be waiting for me after I finished my service, and it would be all the more full and interesting because of the Peace Corps. I think that it must be normal for volunteers to have these thoughts. But I hadn’t allowed myself to indulge in them too much until I was confronted with them at home. I’d been avoiding dwelling too much on this topic because I worried that it would make me want to leave or was some kind of sign that I wasn’t doing a good enough job as a volunteer. But being home and coming face to face with this helped me to realize that I could wonder about the what-ifs and still know that I am doing exactly what I should be doing right now. 

Almost exactly halfway through my time at home, we held my grandma’s memorial service. A slideshow projected on the screens outside the church sanctuary showed scenes from her life. On the altar, we placed a large framed photo of her perched on a sailboat, smiling as she coasted through the islands of the San Juans. During the service, the choir that she had been a devoted member of for many years sang a beautiful tribute. Watching them sing and imagining her up there in the alto section reminded me of a story that I later told at dinner with our extended family. It was Christmas Eve and for the first time, I had been asked to sing at the main service, and not the earlier children’s service. We were having dinner at my grandma’s house before church and I was sitting at her piano nervously plunking out the notes to my song. My grandma came over and asked how I was feeling. I told her that I was recovering from a  cold and was scared that my voice wasn’t in its best shape to hit the high notes of the carol. “Well, you should just do what I used to do when I was in choir and was sick,” she told me matter-of-factly. “What’s that?” I asked intrigued. “I would bring a flask of brandy into the choir loft and take a swig before my entrances to clear out any phlegm.” I couldn’t implement this strategy as I was 15 at the time, but I appreciated her characteristic candor and problem-solving attitude. 

After the service, I spent most of the coffee and cookie hour answering questions about the Peace Corps. I lost track of how many times I explained where Armenia is and how many months I had left in my service (“about a year and some change” was the go-to answer I settled on). It was a glimpse of what my life might be like after service when my job will be to continue sharing my experiences with people back in the States and hopefully educate them about Armenia. You forget that aspect of service while you’re in the thick of it, but it really is a lifelong commitment to spreading knowledge about your country of service wherever you go. Hearing people’s reactions to what I am doing here helped to revitalize my motivation. For me, almost halfway through my service, so much of it has become commonplace. But as I spoke with people about it, I was reminded of how incredible of a life experience this is. On days when you have a hard class or are sick or miss your family, it’s hard to remember the big picture of what you’re doing. Somewhere along the line, the monotony of service may eclipse the reason you joined in the first place. But then moments happen that break through the clouds and you’re reminded again of how lucky you are to be on this adventure, in this place, with these people.  

On one of my last days at home, I ran my favorite route around Green Lake in Seattle. It’s the perfect place to run, it’s flat, there’s plenty of people watching to keep your mind occupied, and the scenery is beautiful. Back in March 2023, I also ran this lake the week before leaving for the Peace Corps. On that last run back then, I remember going over all the unknowns in my head. What would it be like there? Who will I meet? Will I be successful in my work? It was interesting running past the same landmarks and scenery so many months later now having the answers to all those unknowns that had been swirling around endlessly in my head. Getting ready to leave again, I didn’t feel like I was jumping off a cliff into uncharted waters. Instead, I felt like I was heading back to my life to keep working on building what I had started. 

Overall, while it was unexpected and it was for a sad reason, I was happy to have been able to go home for a bit. It helped to reinvigorate and refocus me. I have started to think that this trip home was some kind of final gift from my grandma, to allow me the time with my family and with the familiarity that I needed to continue my service here in Armenia.