"Take the Trip"

On of Becca's friends is trying to decide on extending her Peace Corps service by going to another country or to go home. This is what I told her.

My Father-in-law gave us this advice when he was dying of cancer (while we had just started on our second assignment) and David had to choose whether to return to our assignment in Bohol and then our planned trip home or go home to help him out and take over the store: He said, "go back to Peace Corps and take the trip".

I know that it is not the same situation but my advice is, "do what you want to do"!

I have given this advice to a number of young friends over the years. I can still remember several times that we didn't take the advice: Once in Zamboanga, we were invited to go over to Basilan to a Yakan wedding. We chose to return home to Davao. I'm sure we had things to do but I don't remember now. Basilan is now off-limits to tourists because of the AboSayaf (Filipino branch of AlQueda) I wonder how the Yakan are faring with the militants hiding out there on their island?