Wednesday, April 13, 2011

running on coffee

I get asked sometimes how I manage to stay sane with what I’m doing—don’t I get bored, antsy, miss home or things from the states etc—and the truth is there are definitely moments when the answer is either: a. I have no idea. I think I have become exceptionally good at shutting off my brain. Or b. There are times when I come pretty close to losing my mind. Of course, I have some tricks up my sleeves. Headphones and an i-pod or a DVD in English are great ways to tune out the world. And I have also managed to turn my room into a lair/cave/sanctuary where only happiness exists. But there are also two practices that I have brought with me from my previous life that, on normal days, help me stay sane.
1. Running. I started running when I was 15 mostly as a way to stay in shape. Almost 10 years later, it is still something I do almost every single day. When I was in high school and in my early years of college, it was mostly a time when I blasted music, turned off my mind, and shed excess energy. But at some point in my sophomore year I stopped running with music and my runs became a time to think and de-stress (even if I wasn’t particularly stressed).
And that seems to suit me perfectly here. Even though running at a hilly 10,000 is still challenging a year and a half later, I still haven’t found a better way to chill out than my almost daily run. Granted, running here brings a whole slew of different experiences than it does in the states; avoiding cows, donkeys, sheep and pigs (and their ropes) is always an exciting challenge and I almost always keep a rock in my hand to scare off dogs who look and act like they want to bite me. Even though I have been doing this for as long as I have, I still get tons of surprised reactions, in Spanish and Quechua, that, wow, I am in fact running. It’s not uncommon for primary school kids to drop what they’re doing and try to keep up with me for a few hundred meters and then make up an excuse as to why they can’t keep going. And there are the few justified stops, like when someone asks me to send their cow in the opposite direction or help lift a bag of potatoes. But at the end of the day, a run is a run is a run and there is no better way to forget the frustrations of a long meeting, or someone not showing up or just about anything.
2. Coffee. Actually, now that I think about it, I think I started drinking coffee at right about the same time I started running—maybe I don’t have as much excess energy as I thought. But ever since junior year of high school, pretty much interrupted, I have enjoyed 1 to 2 to 4 cups of coffee a day. Actually, my first year in Peace Corps I had pretty much kicked the habit. See, despite the fact that Peru produces some of the best coffee in the world, they don’t drink it. What do they drink? At best, pretty diluted drip coffee, at worst/normal, really watered down, really sweet Nescafe. So until October of 2010, I kept a package of instant on hand for emergencies (meetings, early morning, days when I hadn’t slept well etc.) and wasn’t even drinking coffee every day. Then on my 24th birthday, it all changed.
My friend Rabbit gave me a 1 cup French press coffee maker. I had always been a drip guy myself, but this was the best thing available, so I went with it. And within weeks, Pete had told me which coffees were actually not half bad and I was back to a cup after breakfast and one more after lunch on most days. AND I LOVE IT. My napping rates have gone way down and leaving the house in the morning is definitely easier. And most of all, it’s something I can hold on to from a mas o menos normal semi-adult American life. I have my routine down right now where I can eat breakfast at 7, shut myself in my room for about twenty minutes while I have a cup of coffee and read something and still be at the school by 8. It was the kind of thing I didn’t fully appreciate it until I started embracing. And since Peruvians generally do not like drinking coffee the way we do, it’s kind of like a cool secret Gringo club. A cup of coffee is usually the first thing I will offer another volunteer who comes over, and it is usually one of the main enticements when someone wants your help in something (i.e. dude can you come help me give this class—I’ll make us coffee beforehand). So while I may have a “habit”, I honestly could not care less…

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