Peace Corps Ruined Travel for Me, But I’d Do It Again in an Instant

I served as a Peace Corps volunteer from 2010-2012 in Ukraine, and if I’m talking to fellow Peace Corps volunteers, they know what that means. I don’t have to explain what an amazing, once in a lifetime experience it was. I don’t have to explain how I experienced the highest of highs and the lowest of lows throughout those 27 months. I don’t have to explain how the experience exposed me to a different way of life, how it forced me out of my comfort zone, how it opened my eyes to how big the world is, all the while seeming so familiar in certain contexts.

The Peace Corps experience is nearly impossible to describe to people who haven’t experienced it. When I tell my stories of witnessing the slaughtering of the family pig, or drinking vodka with my host dad until we could both speak each others language, or going to a 3am Easter church service, I’m often met with stories from the other person’s study abroad experience, or their two week backpacking trip to Peru. Like most Peace Corps volunteers who hear these stories thought to be comparable to ours, I smile, close my mouth and listen, thinking, “man, this person has no idea, how could they?”

Peace Corps is a truly unique experience. You live in the community that often times doesn’t have an English speaker among them, not even the local English teacher will speak English to you. So you learn the language and culture, not out of curiosity, but out of necessity. You’re there for 2 years, you assimilate. You become a fixture in the community, every single person in that village knows you. They know where you live. They know what you buy at the market. They know what time you go to work. It’s sounds kind of creepy, but they know you. And you get to know them.

The most fulfilling part of my Peace Corps experience was this true immersion into a community. You learn and absorb the culture in a way that cannot be done unless you are part of the community. Unless you live there for an extended amount of time, unless you work there, unless you shop there, unless you build a life there. You’re no longer an outsider looking in on a foreign community, but an insider absorbing all you can. It’s not “traveling”, it’s not a vacation, it’s not a holiday, it’s living life, just in a different place. And that’s what makes it so truly unique and wonderful.

Nevertheless, having such an integrated and fully engulfing experience in a different country, in a different culture, pretty much ruined any future travel for me. Having that Peace Corps experience makes other conventional travel experiences seem trivial, void of a deeper connection and understanding of that new place. I always feel stuck in the tourist traps, in the places “other” people go. And I want more! I know what an elevated experience is and I want it every time! But it’s not always possible. Jobs. Family. Life happens. You can’t always fly away for two years, and there aren’t many opportunities to do so.

Don’t get me wrong, I still enjoy a weeks vacation to Hong Kong or Costa Rica, who wouldn’t? So “ruined” might be too harsh of a word. But the  Peace Corps experience definitely casts a shadow over conventional travel. I know what it is to really understand a culture, to speak to locals, to live outside of the big cities, to experience what real life is like in another country, which, for me, is my main goal when I go some place new. I’m not too interested in getting that hot Instagram pic, or strolling down the main city street, or being one of a thousand visitors at the “must see” site. No, I want to learn, I want an authentic experience, not one with a tourist veil.

It isn’t just the living abroad component that fulfills that desire. I tried to recreate my Peace Corps experience when I set off to South Korea to teach English. I taught at both a private hagwon in Seoul and at a public school on Jeju Island. But I was not connected with the community. I was still an other. I didn’t have a host mom to walk me around the village and introduce me as “her American” to all the neighbors. I didn’t have 10 weeks of cultural and language training to help with the assimilation. I wasn’t the only foreigner in town. It wasn’t even a town, it was a big city. It wasn’t the same.

I find myself constantly trying to recreate the Peace Corps experience, because it was that valuable to me. I grew as a person on a trajectory yet to be reached since. I was miles outside of my comfort zone and pleasantly surprised at how well I could adapt. I developed a kind of understanding and kinship with a group of people that originally seemed so different, so other than, that still remains to this day. I still read about Ukraine and recent political happenings. I get excited when I hear people speaking Russian (or rarely Ukrainian) on TV. My favorite stories still come from my time in the Peace Corps.

So I will continue with travel, conventional or not, trying to find that deeper connection to a new place that I had while in the Peace Corps. And even though my two years in Ukraine changed how I experience subsequent time spent in other countries, I wouldn’t change a thing. I’d do it all over again. And I probably will, on my never ending search for authentic understanding and new experiences.

Check out some more Peace Corps stories!