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Culture is an iceberg. Art, food, tools, language, music, holiday, styles of dress, those aspects of culture we can see — those that show above the metaphorical water line — are important parts of any cultural puzzle and good … Read More
Some thirty Kazakhstanis and four Americans were in charge of our training in a village near Almaty, home of Kazakhstan’s international airport. But first, we had to get there. The Peace Corps brought us to Washington DC … Read More
We knew we’d be able to come home whenever we wanted, theoretically. The Peace Corps does not want volunteers who don’t want to be there. It’s not the army, after all. In practical terms, though, it would be … Read More
“Flexibility, patience, and a sense of humor characterize the successful Peace Corps volunteer,” or PCV, as the recruiter actually said, using the acronym that would soon became part of our everyday vocabulary. He may have been referring to … Read More
Everything I’ve ever let go of has claw marks all over it. … Read More
I weeded through four years of my life one recent afternoon. Some folks might call it clutter. I called it memories. Or souvenirs. It took me three hours to get four years of photocopied journal articles (copied beneath that … Read More