I haven’t posted in a while because I didn’t have anything positive to say. I still don’t, but I decided that the negative is as much a part of my experience as anything else. So this is going to be a negative post, in case you want to skip over it.
I’m really unhappy here. I don’t know why it has been so hard for me to adjust to life in Nicaragua this time around. Maybe the novelty of living in a third-world country wore off after last summer in Granada. Maybe it’s that I’m not living with another American who I can talk to and go do things with. For whatever reason, I really, really want to go home. And I don’t say this lightly. I’ve lived away from home for three years now, and it hasn’t always been easy, but I never really considered giving up and going home. The other morning I woke up and just started crying. I couldn’t stop. It’s that I miss my family and my friends, but it’s lots of petty little things too, that add up. The mouse poop on my books. The roof leaking on my bed. The cockroaches in the shower. The rice and beans for breakfast and dinner. My towel, which didn’t dry properly after I washed it, and now smells sour. Dog poop on sidewalks. Diesel fumes. Cobwebs everywhere.
I made some lists, trying to think about the barriers to me leaving. What people will think of me (failure, washout) is a big barrier for me, but even when I put that aside, it still wouldn’t be easy. It’s too late in the semester to go back to Olin and start taking classes. I would never catch up, and I doubt that they’d let me start this late anyway. So my only option would be to go home (to Norman) and call this semester a leave of absence. This would mean I wouldn’t graduate with the majority of my class at Olin, although there are a few other people who have taken leaves of absence. Grades don’t matter much to me. I’m not competitive. But it is kind of important to me that I graduate with my class at Olin. I’m not sure exactly why. However, I will be thinking a lot about this—whether it’s worse to graduate late, or to stay in Nicaragua.
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