Making the Time

One gigantic misconception I had about Peace Corps and my involvement in it is that I'd have a lot of downtime for "personal exploration" through reading, writing, and doing arts and crafts. I hear stories of such volunteers and I envy them. Am I just that bad at managing the time in my day? When I talk to friends and family I'm always stuck when describing what I'm up to because it seems so monotonous and petty, but I swear it's a constructive use of my time. Planning lessons, researching and introducing projects (let alone implementing them) take up a lot of my time.

However, I still want to incorporate more reading into my life. In stark contrast to most volunteers, I'd say that I've done the least amount of reading in my life while in service. Perhaps this is because I'm addicted to my GoogleReader or too occupied translating from Russian, but I want to make it part of my day.

Here's a list of books I've been wanting to read. If you have any of them laying around and want an excuse to visit the post office, please feel free to do so on my behalf:


Teach Like a Champion by Dough Lemov !!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Three Cups of Tea by Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin
Mennonite in a Little Black Dress by Rhoda Jenzen
Making Ideas Happen by Scott Belsky
The Story of Stuff by Annie Leonard
The Frozen Rabbi by Steve Stern
The Disappearing Spoon by Sam Kean
Quantum by Manjit Kumar
The Naked Anabaptist by Stuart Murray
The Possessed: Adventures with Russian Books by Elif Batuman
The Way We Learn by Louis Menand
An Edible History of Humanity by Tom Standage
Ladies and Gentleman, The Bible! by Jonathon Goldstein
anything by Ian McEwan
Shah of Shahs by Kapuscinski
The War against Cliche by Martin
Perfect Rigor by Masha Gessen !!!!!!!!