These are some notes I made before an interview I had with my school's Alumni Magazine yesterday.  When that issue comes out in April, you bet I'll link the article to here, too.

And finally, THE UNCLER trailer, something I'd actually like to see!

PEACE CORPS = endurance sport

specifically an Ironman triathlon

Rish and value come bundled in a package, usually.  TO get a lot, you have to risk a lot. Though, I'd say PC is less risky than normal tourism. But while you're more coddled by the support staff in PC, it's risky because you have to give more and suffer the physical and emotional aches and pains of being in a strange place, far from home.  Traveling is great, but at the same time PC gives you a supportive framework where you are able to actually give more of yourself.  Similarly, a race and Peace Corps both are controlled situations where you get to practice the ability to cope, and so grow. Sort of like a laboratory setting in human experience.

So, the first thing that relates the two--Ironman and Peace Corps--both make you work out and strengthen several different attributes in order to succeed each day. You're not doing one thing but a variety of things- cross cultural communication & practicing a language, the ability to evaluate a situation different than what you're used to, to speak in public in a cross cultural setting and to identify local solutions that don't require outside resources.  In getting ready for Ironman, you strengthen your mind and soul, and you're not great in any one area: you're not specialized.  But your endurance and overall strength is far superior to the specialists.  Because you're doing a little bit of everything, your  focus is on nutrition, and the panoply of swim, bike and run workouts strengthen all the muscles in your body.   Peace Corps is similar.  It's the most real form of diplomacy, I've heard people at the embassy say. And we get out into the real world, you're not stuck in a gym like they are.

Also, you are self-sufficient, you are your own boss and so nobody is herding you to the finish line. You're alone, and you have to get there yourself.  And so the rewards are more your own, both in Ironman and in PC.

The swim in Ironman is akin to training.  The first month and a half is like the first mile and a half, swimming directly away from land out into the ocean. Here you find out whether you'll float or sink. It can only be one or the other. It's a completely different environment from what you're used to, and only worse if you don't know the language (i.e., no prior swim training). Straight into the deep end.  People are around to support you, i.e., kayakers.  This seems at the time like the hardest part of the whole thing.  In the brief respites, you wonder if you can hop back in again, swim back out from land into the ocean.  You've visited your site-- that's the furthest from land that you've been--and you get to land again all the time knowing that you will very soon be going back out there again.  So it takes 10 times more effort to get out and leave the small plot of sand for the shifting waters, now more threatening in its choppy wake.  You know now how it is, and so you get to appreciate your last days in the big city, in my case Cochabamba, and soon you're living and the water doesn't work half the time and the nice family that ushered you through training and all the professors are gone.  Already you've spent more time abroad just for Pre-Service Training than all of the intl. volunteer jobs that you've done in the past.  Just like how an Ironman dwarfs all the sprint tri's that you used to do.  When you're half-way done with the first leg of an Ironman, that's more time than you spend sometimes doing an entire triathlon of the smaller distances.

The bike part then comes next.  This is equal to your first year.  You feel like you're moving quickly, but you still try to forget that you have 112 miles to do. Whatever you do here, good or bad, you have this burden of knowing that it's only the middle part, and more is to come.

You go and go but don't feel like you are gaining anything, or else you are wasting your time and think you'll never make it to the finish.  

Ultimately, you get off the bike and are surprised that you can walk at all.  The last miles were especially difficult, because between miles 70 and 100 you felt invincible.  Then it all caught up with you--i.e., you're going through the first serious serious wave of culture shock since you first arrived, and everything you thought you knew about this country you discovered was wrong--and now the miles seem to take three times as long as they used to.  

The run then is the second year in Peace Corps. You start in the confidence that the end is in sight, and you can feel progress for the first time all day. All you have to do is repeat what you did already! You're much more comfortable, on your feet now, even if you're sore and you still remember the times when you crashed your bike.  It's so long that the feeling of nausea from the ocean has been forgotten.  You can laugh about your concerns from miles 30 to 50 of the bike since that was nearly 100 miles ago, and you have enough distance that the pains then seem comical.  

But the burden of the final year, and the marathon of an Ironman triathlon, is that you get closer to the finish and start to believe you'll make it there, and so the disruptions are infinitely worse since you start allowing yourself the chance to hope all might be well and that you might actually do it, can't-believe-it-but-only-ten-miles-more.  This is especially true for those people that had to leave PC Bolivia right in the think of the work they've prepared for since they arrived, 12, 16, 18 months before.  I tell people that my having to leave Bolivia would have been infinitely easier 1 month earlier, during the first consolidation, because that was exactly when I was at my lowest point.  But the one month extra that I got to experience instead was a catapult to the top, feeling the greatest I had in the 8 months I was there and eager to be finally sinking my teeth into things.    This made it far more painful then, when I got the phone call, saying a plane ticket was waiting for me the next morning, 'be sure to pack your most important things'.

Finally, friends and family are waiting at the finish line for you. In some ways, it's the greatest part of the whole experience. You saw them briefly along the way, but you had to continue moving past them and focus on what's in front of you.  

The Dalai lama says that adversity is important because it is like a set of weights that seem so difficult to manage, but they are what allows your muscles and mind to grow and develop.

Similary with Ironman, Peace Corps is similar in that the first time I couldn't have made it through the preparation and execution of it if I didn't have the satisfaction of knowing that someone other than me benefitted from it. My first Ironman, I completely successfully because I had the motivation of the Janus Charity Challenge, raising several hundred dollars for my sponsored kids in Children International, Colombia, the Philippines and Guatemala.  

The second time I believe will be different. Just like in Ironman, I was able to go back a second time without that heavy internal debate of whether I can do this or not.  I have done it.  I've experienced the endless waves of heights and depths, and it's something I've seen myself through already.  

Unfortunately, while I was able to share in the community of the thing, I was like a person doing a competition and suddenly  bad weather intercedes and we have to stop half way, all our preparation ruined in an instant.  

It's heartbreaking because your one purpose of existence in those moments has been removed.  And I didn't know what I might have achieved.   Like with triathlon, when you enter Peace Corps there's so much that's beyond your control--an important lesson in itself--it's frustrating, especially since you thought it was this controlled environment.  In that sense, a triathlon is much more of a science lab for you to use in the discovery about yourself than Peace Corps is.  But the lesson of coping is still central to both.

You know, if I leave in late September, maybe I can sign up and do the Great Columbian tri, September 19.  Well, we'll see.Publish Post

The Uncler w/ Uncle Sam and Alyssa Milano from Alyssa Milano