Seasons of Peace Corps

In celebration of completing one year as Peace Corps volunteers, we decided to write a tribute using the award-winning song, Seasons of Love, from the hit musical RENT. Seasons of Love illustrates the ways to measure a year, so we came up with the ways to measure a year in the life of a Peace Corps volunteer. Here goes:

Seasons of Peace Corps

Five hundred twenty five thousand six hundred minutes,
Five hundred twenty five thousand moments so dear.
Five hundred twenty five thousand six hundred minutes,
How do you measure a Peace Corps year?

In earthquakes, in kittens, in dogbites, in cups of coffee
In projects, in coups, in friendships, in strife
Five hundred twenty five thousand six hundred minutes,
How do you measure a year in the life?

(chorus)
How about love?
How about love?
How about love?
Measure in love.
Seasons of love.
Seasons of love.

Five hundred twenty five thousand six hundred minutes
Five hundred twenty five thousand bus trips to plan
Five hundred twenty five thousand six hundred minutes
How do you measure the stress of another travel ban?

In books that she read
Or in hours they talked
In the classes he led
Or the miles that she walked

Its time now to sing out
though the story never ends
lets celebrate, remember a year
in the life of friends

(chorus)

And here were a few other ways to measure a year as a volunteer in Honduras that didn’t quite make the list.

How do you measure, measure a year?

…in clothing we’ve ruined
…in stool samples
…in cups of sugary coffee
…in sleepless nights
…in the veggies we’ve planted
…in the sugar cane that we’ve chewed
…in the lessons we’ve learned
…in laughter
…in friends that we’ve made
…in emails we’ve sent
…in Spanish vocab
…in new grammatical structures
…in stitches received
…in gum boots
…in lempiras spent
…in tropical depressions
…in letters received
…in cheap macrobrews
…in ant invasions
…in places we’ve visited
…in bananas we’ve eaten
…in the times we’ve played the bean game
…in the many uses of “echar”
…in machetes
…in jalones received
…in Peace Corps points