Saying goodbye to the other volunteers

Friendships in the Peace Corps are different than in those made in other environments. Without easy transportation or geographical proximity and only one or two conferences a year, maintaining relationships is inconvenient. But having friends who understand the ups and downs of life in Bulgaria you’re enduring makes the distances and times unimportant. The intensity of Peace Corps service, when everything is new and foreign and often difficult, builds tight bonds among volunteers. I was especially close with volunteers in my training group. After three months with them in Kravoder, I felt like I’d known them for years.

Training groups, the four or five people volunteers spend their initial three months with, are based on about an hour of demonstrated language potential during the first 72 hours in country. They don’t always get along and some training groups have serious personality conflicts. My group in Kravoder had a lot of strong personalities and it’s share of discord, but I also love them and care about them like family. Would we all have been friends had we been in college together? I don’t know, probably not. But we went through a special period in our lives together and saying goodbye was hard. Way harder than I expected.

Saying goodbye to my Peace Corps friends marked an end to our shared environments and closed the basis of our intensely honest experiences. We’re from different states and are pursuing different paths. I know we’ll remain in touch (thank you facebook), but it will never be the same. This makes me sad. I’ve never grown so close to a group of people so quickly. We’re so different and regularly irritate one another, but it’s like with family, even if they drive you crazy, you still love them.