How to get my mother to calm down about me in the Peace Crops?

Question

Okay for quite a long time I have been planning on joining the Peace Corps, and being fresh out of college, I decided to go and apply. Well I recently learned that I was accepted and I will be serving in Jordan.

So of course I needed to tell my family. I first told my older brother, who completley accepted it. Then my younger sister, who is still in highschool, and he seemed to accept it, but she didn't know much about... And then of course I had to tell my parents, which I thought would be the hardest, and it was...

Immediatly after I told them, I got two different responces. My father thought it was great for me to be going to Jordan to help out, but my mother nearly flipped! My mother kept saying that I was ruining my future (how, I do not know), how it was too dangerous (being that it is the middle east and she holds sterotypes about it) and just completley flipped, refused to talk to me, and all of that. I told her that it was a good cause, and that I was the once to decide, and I am an adult, but she is still furious about me going to Jordan for 2 years...

Any help?

Answer 1

When I told my parents I was going to Borneo they were afraid I'd be eaten by wild beats.

(I was, but they took very small bites. When I take a long, soaking bath you can still see some tiny white circles on my ankles from leech bites I got while on a vacation trek through the jungle.)

Google "Peace Corps Blog Jordan". If you find one (And it isn't someone in Mali named "Jordan"), see if she will read it. If you can't find one, try for one in that part of the world.

You mom is going to worry; that comes with the territory when you are a mom. There is nothing you can say to her to get her to stop.

Once you get there, write once a week (on paper, if she isn't a computer type.) Write about ordinary, everyday problems. ("Burned the goat stew; got too engrossed in an Arabic soap opera . . ."), not about the suicide bombing 400 miles away or the cholera scare two villages over. Sooner or later she will calm down.

Best of luck!

Answer 2

Peace Crops....is that some sort of agricultural spin on the Peace Corps?