Ahh, the Joys of Living Alone (For the Most Part)…

So I’ve now been moved out of my host family and living on my own for three weeks. Yay! I knew I missed cooking for myself, but I didn’t quite realize how much! I can now cook for myself whatever I want whenever I want it. Well, with the constrictions of the ingredients I can get locally. So no peanut butter, chocolate chips, brown sugar, cheddar cheese or pre-packaged beef (I don’t really have the desire to buy it from the butcher and grind it myself). And if I don’t feel like eating I don’t have to explain it to anyone.

And I can also come and go as I please. No one needs to know if I’m coming home for lunch or asks me why I came home at 6:00 instead of 5:30. And while I recognize that that’s what a family does, it was just a hard adjustment to make after being on my own for so long. In my new housing I just let my landlord know if I won’t be home for the night so that she can lock the door. The house is set up so that there is a porch with three doors opening off of it: one is the kitchen, which we share (to date no problem there as their schedule is completely different than mine), one leads to my area and the other leads to her area. So while there were a few questions the first week as I learned my way around the house and she saw that I really did want to be independent, everything seems to be going smoothly now. And soon she’ll move to Moscow.

Even though I was very excited to move out of my host family’s home, I think host families are an important part of the Peace Corps. I met a number of people through them and experienced local holidays with a local family, which wouldn’t always be possible on my own. While you can experience a large part of a culture by living in it, there would definitely be parts I would’ve missed by only living independently and never with a host family. So while they are definitely not family, it was not a bad experience and I will look back on it positively, and I will continue to see them as long as I live here.