Tonight I learned drinking cold water is bad for you (false) and sometimes you make sacrifices (true)

You know those times when you do something just because your friend asked you to? When you don’t really want to go to the grocery store or sit through a documentary or attend a 2 and ½ hour workshop in French on what foods and plants are healthy to eat but you do because your friend wants you to?

My colleague at work invited me to the latter a couple days ago. I forgot about it until he stopped by my class yesterday to announce the event to my students. Today, my students reminded me about it again, and, since the person who asked me is important to me and I still have another 22 months in the same village, I lured my postmate with a promise of peanut butter cookies to come with me so I would have another American with which to talk.

You could argue there is a fine line between being true to yourself and being a good friend. I didn’t really want to go to the presentation, but to be fair, usually, what I really want to do here involves air conditioning, ice cream and Netflix. So, almost not possible.

Right now, my job here really, even more than teaching middle school students English, is to become part of a community. To build relationships with people who have lived their lives very differently than mine, and to learn from that exchange.

So, for now, if that means sitting in a hot church until 10:40 at night listening to a lecture that is sometimes both bizarre and false, that is what I’ll be doing.