Block Quote!

One great and not-so-great thing about being in the Peace Corps is the downtime. To be honest, there wasn’t much during training, but there was some, and now that I’m at site, there is going to be a lot more (because that's what happens when you're in your house by dark, also known as 7pm, and there's no TV or anything else going on). And one thing a lot of downtime means is a lot of reading. Naturally, I’m looking forward to that. I’m a little concerned about the fact that I sat down and read Let the Great World Spin, which was excellent, in just over one day. If I do that too often, I’ll be really sad when I run out of books and am six or seven hours from the bookstore in Kampala.

I also just recently finished reading A Fraction of the Whole by Steve Toltz, which was also really good and since, instead of writing my own blog post, I can quote other people who say better things than I ever will, here:

The sky a vast foreign country. The setting sun in my eyes but too happy to blink.

This was the life I wanted, blowing around like a leaf with appetites.

I was experiencing one of those horriblebeautifulterrifyingdisgustingwondrousinsaneunprecedentedeuphoricsensationaldisturbingthrillinghideoussublimenauseatingexceptional feelings that’s quite hard to describe unless you happen to chance upon the right word.

There’s always a fire, always houses lost, lives misplaced. But nobody packs up and moves to safer pastures. They just wipe their tears and bury their dead and make more children and dig in their heels.

And, ok, last one:

He somehow became dreamy and positive and took sunsets dead seriously, as though the outcome of the event might not always be that the sun sets but that it might freeze just above the horizon and start going up again.

Those are some of the ways that I’ve felt in Uganda. Better said than I could have.