What I did with those two years

Thursday, I submitted my background check to my future place of employment. If you've ever done this (which, I actually have--I was fingerprinted and thoroughly checked out before I left for Ukraine), it's a little unnerving, no matter how clean one's record is. I didn't even have to submit that much information: just my social security information and the addresses of every place I've lived in the last 7 years. I hate this sort of thing not because I have anything to hide, but because it is SO annoying. Especially if you've, say, spent a significant portion of time overseas and have to explain to someone why it would a giant pain in everyone's ass for you to write down every address you've lived at ( a) they're in Russian, and b) I don't remember all of them and c) if you want a really good picture of what type of citizen I was thru 2005, its easier to check with the Peace Corps office in Kyiv than with the local police department in a small town in southern Ukraine). It always sounds like you're lying or hiding something.

This is actually something I run into frequently: having to explain my Peace Corps service and all it entailed to people who haven't spent any/ a lot of time in a developing country. I had a less than idyllic Peace Corps service: I started out my service with a giant, painful cyst in my ear which I had to have removed (after 2 operations I'm finally okay); I had a very difficult time with the administration at my school; I moved a bunch because of a bad landlord or two; I had put up with some seriously childish, asshole-like behavior on the part of other volunteers(think re-living high school in a bubble); and I was diagnosed with an anxiety disorder 3 months after arriving home (I didn't tell anyone about the anxiety while I was in Ukraine for fear of being sent home). It sucked. Not everything, and not the whole two years, but a significant proportion of it.

So, when I try to explain why I moved four times in a year, or why I don't consider Peace Corps the best time of life, or why I don't even bring it up right away when I meet people, it's hard. I don't want to scare anyone off from trying the Peace Corps, or, God forbid, traveling/living overseas, but I don't want to lie and say everything was sunshine and roses. It wasn't: but not for the reasons that most people think (no heat, intermittent water, frigid weather, etc.). How do you explain that? I don't play the "poor me" violin and ask for pity. I just want to put the bad parts behind me completely and forget about it sometimes, which is difficult when I have to constantly talk about the circumstances surrounding my service whether in an interview or filling out a background check.