Oh, Dance in the Dark of Night, Sing to the Morning Light!

The magic runes are writ in gold
To bring the balance back.
Bring it back.
At last the sun is shining,
The clouds of blue roll by,
With flames from the dragon of darkness
The sunlight blinds his eyes.

I have used the Lord of the Rings as a metaphor for my Peace Corps experience before; namely, when describing the endless treks over mountains. I recently re-watched the movie trilogy, and noticed a lot of other Peace Corps-related moments and quotes. A sampling:

-Gandalf arrives in the Shire on a cart, and everyone stares at this stranger as he enters the village. All of the children are simultaneously frightened and awed by him, screaming his name. Upon entering Bagend, the tall, awkward pale man hits his head on various objects in the much-too-small-for-him house. I have definitely experienced this, right down to the (much smaller) beard. No fireworks though…

-The way Legolas says profound things, seemingly only to himself (like while running endlessly in Two Towers). I do this a lot, although the things are rarely profound, and are actually usually in song-format.

-The thinly-veiled environmentalist message of the Ents (self-explanatory for this environment volunteer: don't cut down and/or burn all the trees!)

"Look for your friends, but do not trust to hope; it has forsaken these lands" – rider of Rohan

-When you're really down on site, and all of your projects are falling apart, and nothing seems to be going your way... you just want to go hang out with your friends in your banking town and complain over a few beers. But the movies/books also promote the theme necessary to survive two years (or more) in Peace Corps: There is always hope!

"It takes a long time to say anything in Old Entish. And we never say anything unless it is worth taking a long time to say. " – Treebeard

-This is the Malagasy way. Greetings can go on endlessly, with lots of "what's happening?/nothing," "what's new?/nothing," and "but seriously what's happening?/nothing" before eventually getting to the point of the conversation in a roundabout way. The focus is on the experience of interaction rather than the purpose of eliciting a result from the conversation.

"One thing I've learned about hobbits: they are most hardy folk" –Aragorn

"Foolhardy maybe" -Merry

-Surely this applies to Peace Corps Volunteers, who survive cyclones and squatting over fragile latrines and illnesses and harassment and failure and everything else in order to accomplish... something? Hopefully? PS the hardy part may only apply to environment volunteers, the most 'hard-core' of Peace Corps Volunteers... kidding, other volunteers... mostly.

-The awkward end of friendships forged through mutual suffering and adventure (end of the Return of the King, end of Peace Corps service). Some will embark on new adventures in foreign lands, others will remain in this new land, and still others will begin their long journey home...

Let's close with some all-around awesome lines:

"All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us." - Gandalf

and of course...

"Not all those who wander are lost"

Applicable, I'd say...