DAY #5: A SMILE
It has been said that I don’t smile in pictures. I know I didn’t have a problem with smiling when I was young, but as I got older and developed a tremendous sense of self-consciousness about my appearance, I realized the injustice a smile could perpetrate on my mug. I don’t like the way I look ever, and a smile somehow made it worse. There are very few photos of me with a genuine smile and fewer that I approve of. It is a conscious decision- and an appearance I want to project. This photo is of a very important person in my Peace Corps life. This is my host brother, Pavil, wearing his Ukrainian smile taken about three days after I arrived in Ukraine on the first day I met him. I had asked my host mom Tanya to show me a park where I could jog in the mornings. She, in turn, asked Pavil to take me to “the park”. He introduced me to “the park” that other volunteers affectionately referred to as the “rape me woods”. Regardless of our surroundings and knowing this guy as I do, I know he is smiling- on the inside. We literally are brothers from a different mother.
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