How not to be scared in the Peace Corps

The month before I joined the Peace Corps, I talked to the youth group at my church, St. Rose of Lima, about my coming service. Afterward, some high school-aged girls approached me to ask me if I’d be scared, living by myself so far away. I bravely told them no, but I understood where they were coming from, so I wanted to give some advice on keeping your wits about you and not giving into fear while you serve in the Peace Corps:

• Don’t think about the aliens from the movie Signs.
• Don’t think about how the aliens from Signs can almost completely camouflage their bodies, so that you only see them when they want you to see them.
• Don’t think about how the first reported sighting of the aliens in Signs took place not in the U.S.A., not in a major city, but in a rural place in the developing world, not unlike your site.
• Don’t think about how one of those aliens from Signs could, with little difficulty, stand in front of the window in front of your kitchen area at night as you wash your dishes, concealed by the reflections on the window, so that the first time you saw it, it just blended in with the image of your room, until you move one way and it moves just so slightly the other way, and you lock eyes, and you see its face move every so slightly and then, instead of making any move to harm you, instead of rapping or scratching menacingly against the window, it just disappears.
• Don’t think about how the aliens from Signs possess super human strength, able to run very quickly and jump over barns, among other things. Don’t think about how, with your protein intake reduced chiefly to eggs and what you can combine from beans and rice, along with your lack of any weight-lifting regimen, your muscle density has decreased greatly since coming here, and that even if you were at your absolute peak shape, it would probably still be no contest in a physical struggle.
• Don’t think about how the aliens from Signs can only really be stopped with water, which is poison to them, or how this relates to the fact that you live in a country where water is scarce, a country that, just last year, did not have any rain for a full six months, and that were the community taps to run dry and you were going off what you had stored, you might at some point be faced with the unenviable choice of using your water to drink, in which case you would die by Signs aliens, or using your water to destroy the alien, in which case you would perhaps live, but perhaps die from dehydration on your journey across the scorched, desiccated Earth looking for water. 

Don’t think about any of theses things, and you should be fine!