The 30 day Community Challenge

Exactly one month from today I will be leaving my community for a couple of weeks and I will head off to the Philippines to spend my holidays with my family. By that time I will have surpassed the six month mark at site by three days and a quarter of my service at site will be gone; only 3/4 left. As I indicated yesterday, overall  I am very happy with my progress here at site, but the one area I still feel needs improvement.

Community integration has been a difficult area for me. I am hesitant to stop and talk to people (usually because I am whizzing by them on a bike), and therefore people know that I am here, but they don't know why. I have also been dreadful with names because I was always embarrassed the second or third time I met a person to ask them their name again and how can you say that you know someone if you can't even remember their name? In general I have let my fear of what others are thinking (although they will think it anyway), my novice grasp of the language, and my desire to not attract too much attention get the better of me. Although I am happy with my progress overall, it is time to shed my fears and just go for it.

In an attempt to face my final integration frontier head on I have devised a 30 day challenge for myself. Recently I have seen several people participating in various 30 day challenges and I feel that it is time for me to get my own on. As I stated before I am in my fifth month at site. Although adaption is an ongoing process and I know that I will still encounter unfamiliar situations long after six months, the quarter mark at service is a decent benchmark for familiarizing and observing to lessen and for action to start. I want to make sure that I have done all I can before I hit this mark, so I am committing to get out into the community more over the next month.

For this challenge I have identified three days a week which currently lack scheduled plans during a chunk of the day; Sunday, Tuesday, and Friday. On these days I am committing to taking a walk (not a bike ride) and stopping in at anyone's house who invites me in. I will also commit to keeping a journal of all of my encounters so that I can better remember the people I speak with. On top of that, I expect that this challenge will give me some blogging material. Its time start relationships!

Today was a great kick off to this challenge. I went to the home of a church member who has been asking me to come by for a couple of months and I also stopped by a small house compound of sorts where three sisters live. Both excursions were long overdo, but they were a good way to get my feet wet. These were people I was familiar with and who had asked me to stop by on previous occasions. To my surprise the conversations flowed fairly effortlessly. I tried to do a better job of explaining why I was here, I answered some questions, and then I asked a few questions of my own. All in all a very successful day 1.

So here is getting out more and have no PC regrets about community integration!

Photo of the Day

My niece, Putri, and nephew, Akbar, blowing bubbles.