Why I Love Peace Corps #1

One series I've been contemplating is "Why I Love Peace Corps." Some posts will be sincere, others a bit tongue-in-cheek, but I'll let you all judge. Without further adieu:

Why I Love Peace Corps*, #1:
You can use children as free labor to decorate your house.


In a matter of an hour and a half tonight I had an entire wall covered in charming drawings, and all I had to do was give them scrap paper and put up with a little bit of screaming. Felices as we say here. For that matter, you can ask these kids to sweep your house, mop the floors, wash the windows, fold your clothes, and do the dishes and they will do it. Some will even think it's fun before a more lazy/rowdy kid in the bunch points out that, hey, if we were doing this in our own houses right now it would probably be considered work. But I try to draw a line somewhere.

*I should specify off-the-bat that some of these reasons will be more specific to "why I love living in a small Mayan town in the highlands of Guatemala for two years", however Peace Corps is one of few opportunities that ever would have allowed me to do that, and certainly was the most accessible opportunity.

Born in the USA

Tomorrow I embark for my second and probably last vacation home during Peace Corps. Hard to believe I have only six months left, but things are chugging along nicely. Have some friends, have some projects, have some Masters' data. And it seems like the increase in amount of stuff I've been asked to bring back from this trip is a quite a good proxy for my degree of integration into the community.

So that everyone can see just how integrated I am (re: just how comfortable people are taking advantage of my near-inability to say no), a non-abbreviated list of things people have asked me to bring them from the US:

-Two nice digital cameras
-Six old digital cameras (Actually, I'm pushing this one too, it's for a photography camp we'll be doing in November!)
-Half a dozen Victoria's Secret bras
-High-quality hair shears of a brand which starts with "W"
-A special camera case**
-A netbook**
-A special perfume, neither the name nor brand of which the person could name, but supposedly they'll bring me the empty bottle tomorrow morning before I leave**
-A small boom microphone for videocamera
-A sound system (this was clearly shot down, I don't think Delta's going to let me pack that as checked baggage, and it's not like Maryland or wherever the system is stored would be just half an hour away!)

**These items were, not too unpredictably, asked for today. Am I the only one who thinks that requesting a 3,000 Q. computer is not a casual transaction to slip in between "When do you get back?" and "How's the weather there this time of year?" ?

Last trip's request for an English-Spanish digital translator was clearly mere child's play. At the risk of making everyone think it's effortless to find anything anywhere in the US on short notice, I'll do my best to help them out. Next week I'll be on hiatus to celebrate my good friend's wedding and hold my grandma's hand while watching Jeopardy, but when I get back I'll let everyone know how it went!