04.16.2007 — As Thad and I reach our 9-months-in-China anniversary (April 1), I thought it would be a good time to reflect on our service as Peace Corps Volunteers.
 
9 months has brought us to the opposite side of the world, given us experiences that we never imagined possible, introduced us to new people and places and taught us new things about ourselves.
 
***9 months is a third of the way through our service in China, and yet it is nowhere near the bulk of the experience.
 
***9 months is long enough to have survival Chinese skills down pat, and yet nowhere near anything I would consider approaching fluency.
 
***9 months have been filled with food I would never touch in America (rabbit, tofu, mutton), but short enough to have avoided the worst that is sometimes served up (dog, various bloods and organs).
 
***9 months has been the foundation of friendships that will last forever (go SNU-cru!) and yet there is so much about one another we are still learning.
 
***9 months means time to travel to parts of China most foreigners never see and to visit villages where we we're perhaps the first foreigners ever, but not enough time to have seen the major tourist attractions of Beijing and Shanghai.
 

 
Peace Corps Volunteers in China teach at universities and we have pretty nice living arrangements. Sometimes there is a feeling of bewilderment since many of us envisioned mud huts and outhouses when we originally applied for Peace Corps, but when looked at in this light, we are changing our small corner of the world:
 
If I teach 210 students this semester
 
I could reasonably teach 400 over two years
 
Say 300 become teachers
 
Each teacher has 150 kids a year
 
And teaches for 20 years
 
That's 3000 students
 
x 300 is 900,000 lives that I've impacted in some small way.
 
(Thanks to fellow PCV John for this viewpoint! Looking at the math is all his doing, as I tend to not be able to count without my fingers!!)
 
As our in-country staff always tells us, "This is not your grandma's Peace Corps!" We may not live in huts and haul our own water in China, but we are definitely making a difference in the lives of the people we serve!