This book takes us back in time, to those days when an idealistic band of youthful Americans journeyed halfway around the world in response to President John F. Kennedy''s clarion call to ''... ask what you can do for your country.'' We eagerly signed up to serve in a new program called the Peace Corps, an initiative first spawned in those exhilarating days of Camelot when fervor and innocence trumped experience and common sense. While each of us knew our decision to volunteer for service overseas might prove challenging, we had no idea what was in store for us. As these reflections suggest, our service both pushed us as individuals and altered our subsequent lives as a collective. In these pages, I try to capture some of these transformative experiences as well as intimate possible consequences.

This book takes us back in time, to those days when an idealistic band of youthful Americans journeyed halfway around the world in response to President John F. Kennedy''s clarion call to ''... ask what you can do for your country.'' We eagerly signed up to serve in a new program called the Peace Corps, an initiative first spawned in those exhilarating days of Camelot when fervor and innocence trumped experience and common sense. While each of us knew our decision to volunteer for service overseas might prove challenging, we had no idea what was in store for us. As these reflections suggest, our service both pushed us as individuals and altered our subsequent lives as a collective. In these pages, I try to capture some of these transformative experiences as well as intimate possible consequences.

This book takes us back in time, to those days when an idealistic band of youthful Americans journeyed halfway around the world in response to President John F. Kennedy''s clarion call to ''... ask what you can do for your country.'' We eagerly signed up to serve in a new program called the Peace Corps, an initiative first spawned in those exhilarating days of Camelot when fervor and innocence trumped experience and common sense. While each of us knew our decision to volunteer for service overseas might prove challenging, we had no idea what was in store for us. As these reflections suggest, our service both pushed us as individuals and altered our subsequent lives as a collective. In these pages, I try to capture some of these transformative experiences as well as intimate possible consequences.