Being Everyone's Friend Can Be Hard Work!

Qofte, Buke, Raki, and Qep. It's the Albanian Family Dinner in action

Making friends while serving in The Peace Corps can be an interesting endeavor.

Sure we all want to be a great volunteer. We want to be friends with everyone. We want our name to be called as we walk down the streets of our home town/village/etc. We want that experience like in the TV show "Cheers" (where everybody knows our name). Anthropologically-speaking, we as humans have an innate social instinct. We try (even need) to fit into a social group in order to survive. Those who are not part of a social group are at risk for being picked-off and attacked, are less likely to find a suitable mate, and are relegated to the bottom of the social hierarchy.

Putting this into context for Peace Corps, there are several things going on here:
1. We try to fit in with our new social environment.
2. We try to fit in with our fellow Peace Corps Volunteers
3. We try to impress Peace Corps as an organization, and produce note-worthy work.
4. We try to find like-minded people these domains (cross-sectionally), building/expanding our own local social network.
5. We try to maintain social standing and presence with friends and family back home.

We are willingly uprooted from our home and place of comfort. We are transported to another  environment with a culture different from the one to which we are accustomed. We don't want to fall behind our Peace Corps peers. So what do we do?

Me and one of my buddies in Librazhd, Albania

We try. We try hard. We sacrifice. We sometimes worry. We sometimes worry a lot. We cry. We overeat. We undereat. We gossip. We burnout. We strive for greatness. We give ourselves to our communities. We dedicate our lives to strangers. We make friends. We open our hearts. We make meaningful connections. We have misunderstandings. We offend. We are offended. We have expectations that don't get met. We fail. We try again. We fail again. We gain resolve. We try yet again. We succeed and feel amazing. We are dynamic and unstoppable. We experience ups and downs. We find ourselves at a loss for words. We experience breathtaking beauty. We see some messed-up things. We shut the world out. We fear for our future. We open up the doors to life again. We find new passions. We discover things about ourselves. We try new things. We eat new things. We offer our culture willingly. We participate gratefully. We act silly. We help each other out. We admire each other. We get jealous of each other. We envy one another. We apologize for our mistakes. We move on. We forgive others. We forgive ourselves. We find that we love our new home. We grow close to our communities. We work together to accomplish great things. We surprise ourselves. We surprise others. We go for gold and end up going platinum. We wake up wanting to change the world and do amazing things!

Then again... some days we just want to watch Game of Thrones in our underwear and eat the peanut butter our parents sent us last week.