English

I miss my first language. Just writing this right now makes me feel better. It is now 10:48 PM and I just finished watching a movie on my laptop. I have done so quite a few times while here in the DR and every time I do I forget where I am at some point in the movie. Then the movie ends and the really good feeling I have after listening to spoken English for two hours is interrupted by the realization that no one around me can speak it. More often than anything else, I have pinpointed this as a factor that makes Peace Corps so hard. I just miss English. All those stupid little things you say back and forth with your buddies, or the little accents you use to add more meaning to a joke, or the pace at which you say certain things, all of that is lost in another language. You learn new little jokes and all in a new language. But it’s not the same. It doesn’t fit as well. Kind of how a new shirt can never replace the old beat up one. It doesn’t feel like home. Ha, as much as I have been a traveler since I left for college, and as much as when I am home for brief periods I think about where I can go and what I can do next…I miss home. I really do. And that does not mean that I want to leave here. But it is a new thought for me. That I could miss all of those little things about English I had previously not paid any attention to. I miss MY way of expressing myself. I miss MY language.