Peace Corps members- current or former...?

Question

What can you tell me about the peace corps? And please don't give me a link because I have already been to the website- I want personal experience. Is it similar to the military, is it really hard being away for so long, how do you live, what is it like when you get home, can you go home at all during your time? Etc, I want to know whatever you can tell me. Thanks in advance!!

Answer 1

I was a PCV 1971 - 1972. My daughter is one today.

http://www.tedpack.org/pchead.html

is a link, but to 6 short stories, some questions I have answered here (other people have asked questions almost exactly like you asked), pictures and a link to the RPCV web ring.

It isn't similar to the military.

It is hard being away for so long. Counter-balancing the hardness is the experience. The night, where I was, was like a swath of warm black velvet sprinkled with a million diamonds and I could hear strange bird calls in the jungle. Once, when I went back to my hut, there was a monitor lizard in the back yard. I still have small circular scars on my ankles from leech bites on my hiking vacation. Three of my former students now have Ph. D.s and write to me via e-mail.

They encourage you not to go home. Your friends and relatives can visit you.

When you get home it is strange.

If they accept you, you will change the world. You won't change much of it, and you won't change it much, but you will make a difference.

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