Happy Fourth Day of the Seventh Month of the Year

My cousin sent me a letter a while ago, and in it she said she didn´t know many people who would put their lives on hold for two years to serve in the Peace Corps.  When I read that I immediatly thought, "I´m not putting my life on hold, I´m living more than ever now," but in some ways I think she is right.  My mom also sent me a postcard not too long after that telling me the african daisies were blooming in Phoenix, and I was shocked.  It seemed I had forgotten that the world back home was still going on ahead without me.  I left Phoenix in the winter, it should stay that way until I get back, those daisies should have just kept their little orange spring-heralding heads under the sand for two years.

Maybe it has something to do with the lack of discernable seasons here.  A friend of mine in Ecuador explained to me that the sheep get all sorts of confused there since there is only one season, seeing as how it´s on the equator.  The non-native sheep then don´t know when it´s time to make babies because they need the change of seasons to tell them when the time is right.  That´s not a perfect analogy for my situation since there is no baby-making going on here except for the several buns in the oven over in the Casa Materna, but it might explain my state of general confusion.

Since I don´t have much access to internet, or newpapers, or television, or anything of that sort I loose track of holidays.  Without the bombardment of advertisments, I forgot which Sunday of the month Mothers´and Fathers´Day was, which resulted in slightly awkward phone calls back home.  The highlight of my phone call on Fathers´Day was when I asked my dad what he had been doing and he said, "well, we just got back from dinner since today is Fathers D-"
"HAPPY FATHERS DAY, I totally knew it was today...yes."

And then, about a week ago another PC friend asked me if I wanted to do something for the Fourth of July.  I had just been going over my schedule, looking up important dates - when I would have to go to the capital, when a medical brigade would be coming in - and I totally neglected to notice our nation´s day of independence.  I feel like I am suspended in my own personal little bubble, full of my own thoughts and frustrations and insecurities, and I have forgotten to come out of my head and look at the world around me, not just in my own little site.  My life is not on hold, that much I know, but I cannot expect that others, or nature for that matter, will put theirs on hold either.  Nor can I sit in my own head, only acknowledging what I feel is important to me in my own self involved way, which does not include, apparently, holidays.

Anyway, be it weather or narcissism related, I vow to break free of my own personal time-space contunium flux-thingy.  So happy Fourth of July everyone, I´m going to celebrate by doing something very American, like refering to the United States as America.
...
America.