Summertime and the Living’s Too Easy

I remember my mom shaking my shoulder to wake me up when it was still dark outside. She was always gentle and seemed truly sympathetic to my plight as I struggled to open my eyes at 5:30 in the morning. Sometimes she would scratch my back for a few short, lucky minutes before she went to wake my brothers. Eventually I’d stumble out of bed and make my way to the bathroom to brush my teeth and then to the kitchen to choke down a bowl of bran flakes before squeezing into my dad’s truck with my brother James. We rode in near silence, usually, until we got to the bus stop—a small white chapel tucked into a steep corner of the windy road that ran along the ridge, the one my mom was afraid to drive down in the winter without chains on the snow tires. 

Other kids walked to school. Other kids walked down the street to the nearest bus stop. But we lived way out in the county. And furthermore, we went to school in a different county, so my dad had to drive us to the county line, where we waited in the warm truck with him until the school bus rolled into sight. All told, it took a total of about two hours for us to get from warm, cozy bed to the classroom. All those mornings, I remember thinking that someday, when I got old like my parents, I wouldn’t be so tired in the morning. When I was as old as them, I figured, I’d be just as bright and awake in the morning as they were. It had something to do with age, I surmised. Somehow they always managed to be up on time, long enough before us to get coffee brewing and breakfast on the table. They seemed fully awake. Maybe a little quieter than usual, but everything seemed quieter when it was dark outside. 

I kept waiting for the day that it wouldn’t hurt to wake up, the day that I’d suddenly just rise up out of bed at 5:30 a.m. and think nothing of it. It took me until about five years ago to realize that my parents were probably more tired than I was, at eight, nine, ten years old. I eventually came to understand that that day will never really come. If I don’t get a full eight hours of sleep, I’m probably going to feel tired in the morning…and sometimes, even when I do get a full eight hours of sleep, I’m still tired in the morning. Waking up is just not something I’m ever going to do particularly well. And I’m 25, childless, and about as free of obligation as they come. It’s only going to get worse, I suspect.      

Lately, getting up early has become even more difficult, as I’m even freer of obligation now that the school year is over. For the last week and a half, I’ve had absolutely nothing to do. There have been things I could do…but nothing I had to do. My grant application is finished, lessons are over, and my students are studying for their exams so I don’t have English club. Those three things have been the main preoccupying forces in my life for the last six months and now, without them, I find myself at a bit of a loss. 

When you’re a naturally late-riser, it’s hard to make yourself wake up at 8:00 when you know full well that you don’t have anything at all to do except eat, exercise, read, and watch copious amounts of TV on your external hard-drive, just to stay awake until it’s time to go to sleep again. 

Summer is a funny time of year for a Peace Corps TEFL volunteer. Classes are over, and with the exception of camps (which we aren’t required to do), there really isn’t a lot of organized work for a volunteer to do. Of course, each volunteer’s situation varies, and some are given more explicit instructions from their schools, but by and large, most of us are told by our Ukrainian colleagues to “have a rest.” But we’re only given so many vacation days, and we’re only given so much money, so not all of those free days with no lessons can be spent travelling or visiting other volunteers. There’s bound to be some down time at site without much to do.

So what’s a bored Peace Corps Volunteer to do? 

One of the questions that I was asked in my nomination interview during my Peace Corps application process was what I would do if I found myself living a much slower, relaxed lifestyle than I was used to as a busy-body American. During the interview, I reflected back to my time studying abroad in Spain. At first, the concept of a 2-3 hour break in the middle of the day to take a nap seemed a little silly to me. I thought, “Perfect time to get stuff done! I have no classes and nothing else scheduled during that time…I’ll go to the grocery store, I’ll run errands, and I’ll take care of stuff I don’t have time to do during the morning or evening.” 

My aspirations of getting things done were quickly foiled when I realized that everybody else in the entire city was relaxing and taking a siesta. That meant that all the shops were closed and nobody else was around getting things done. They were all at home, eating lunch and taking naps. It didn’t take long for me to resign myself to my fate and join my roommates in eating a big lunch and falling asleep on the couch in the middle of the afternoon. 

My interviewer was pleased enough with my answer and I thought, at the time, that I would definitely be able to handle a lot of down-time without any issues. And it’s not as though this (my as-yet super lackadaisical summer) is really a problem or predicament…but it is definitely different than I expected it to be. The thing is, it’s not as though everyone else is relaxing and living a carefree, laid-back lifestyle and I’m the over-worked, hyper-driven American that can’t learn how to chill out. 

It’s not that. It’s that all my Ukrainian colleagues have more obligations than I do right now—administering and grading exams, completing end-of-the-year paperwork, and other things that I simply can’t be a part of. I’m not legally allowed to do any of those things here and there really isn’t much else for me to do. 

So I drag myself out of bed at 9:00 in the morning as hard as it still is (and, I’ve resigned myself to this, always will be.) I’ve decided that the trick is to force myself into some kind of schedule. Otherwise, I’ll just end up sleeping until noon, lounging in my bed watching TV for a few hours, falling asleep again, and then staying awake until two or three in the morning, only to repeat that lazy cycle over and over again. So I get up, I read for a while, I go running, I watch TV, I read, I doodle (I’ve become a master doodler), I walk around the town, I cook more than I normally would, and when I can, I try to go visit my friends in town. 

There are days when it’s still a little hard. I’ve figured out that if I do things in the wrong order—for example, if I go running first thing and then watch TV, I get unbelievably sleepy in the middle of the day and have to prop my eyelids open just to stay awake. It’s best to save running for a little later in the day, when I’m prone to sleepiness if I’m just sitting around. Reading is an activity better done in the mornings and in the later afternoon or evening. 

It all comes down to knowing myself, my habits and my tendencies, and manipulating them as well as I can. So I try to give myself a schedule, I’m trying to find new hobbies (I’m learning how to do traditional Ukrainian embroidery), and I try not to feel too guilty when I don’t get as much done in a day as I’d like to. Besides, you can’t save the world if you’re not fully rested. After this summer, I’ll be so rested I’ll be ready to take that on.