96% happiness rating

Yesterday was a bad day. I was crabby, my coworker was crabby, and I was/am homesick. I was given the wonderful advice from a new PC friend to not dwell on it, to do something I always enjoy and remember that it’s only one day. It was the 100th day of me being in the Peace Corps. So… that makes it easy to estimate percentages. Including yesterday, that makes 4 days that I have been truly unhappy here. That’s a 96% happiness/contentment rating, and that’s not half bad. Seeing it that way makes it so much easier to take the bad days with the good. There are so many more good than bad!

Also, so many good things happened to make my day better—God’s will, I believe. Masha hugged me. Then I went to yoga. My body bent in ALMOST all the ways that I asked it to. At the end of the lesson, the teacher (who shares my birthday), came over and hugged me. She is so patient and kind—and says “relax”, and “smile to your heart” (that’s about all the English she knows). Next week I am going to try a headstand. Then I was walked home by one of the ladies. At home, my mom had made a beautiful plate of BEETS, pickles, potatoes and chicken. She took the vegetable thing to heart and even made me squash pancakes this morning. Her son, Eliya, Yelena and I then had a movie night. We watched a classic Soviet Union movie. In the middle of it, Bota called to chat. Then I got a text from a good Peace Corps friend that I hadn’t heard from for a while, just checking to see how I am doing. It was out of the blue, and meant so much. All in all, I had a bad day because I felt lonely and unwanted. But at the end of the day, so many good things happened, which made me realize that I have a community here and they do care about me.