The last five months have contained some of the most difficult experiences of my life so far. Although I have undergone many difficult instances before, none had been in such an unfamiliar, isolated context, or for such an extended duration. As difficulty and discomfort breed development I have learned much... mostly about my surroundings and a little about myself.

I've learned that I am impatient. Perhaps it's just an aspect of the ignorance of youth to expect things to happen quickly and at your demand. It seems that at this point when I've lived so little and have so much left to learn I could hide in that excuse. However, I'd rather develop patience.

I've learned that I'm relatively simple in terms of the conditions of happiness. When I start to breed thoughts of revolt and slip into the cataclysmic throws of a depression, nothing is actually seriously wrong. I just need to be fed and put to sleep. This would seem painfully obvious to some, but at this age I was still blinded by my invincibility and a desire for melodrama, rather than common sense. I didn't want to admit I was as simple as that.

On community, I've learned that we in North America forgot what it was long ago. Community to us is a group of people living in the same area. That definition to me shows just how far we've receded into a material society. We think about little but the physical and tangible. The physical attributes of people, the physical relationships of people. People's material worth, their tangible wealth.

Really community has very little to do with physical proximity or anything tangible. Community is the network of relations and interactions of people to people. Essentially it is defined by cooperation and reliance. They don't necessarily live close together but they are interdependent and interconnected. Either through teaching each other or just by fulfilling each other's emotional requirements they cooperate and rely on one another. This conception terrifies North Americas because we associate interdependence with weakness. We want to be self--sustainable, self--reliant and isolated. We build high fences and buy food from Europe all to keep community out of our lives. When I return home I want community more than anything.