It feels really good to wake up in the morning with your hands achin'.
The ache isn't what feels good. It's the knowledge that it comes from weaving, playing volleyball, and making tortillas.
I am going to miss my jungle home but let's face it: right now is always just in time.
Saturday, October 30, 2010
Sunday, October 17, 2010
offers still standing to stand still
I wrote these sentences over the course of a week in no order at all. If you want to read a nice jointed account of our achievements there is always the organization blog: mejorc.wordpress.com
When we were on tour last year, Kelly and I joked that we had adopted Texas accents after being there for two days. Something I’ve always known about myself is my fondness for picking up idiosyncrasies all over the place. Whether that reveals my character’s weakness or proves its strength, I don’t know. It feels fluid to speak like a friend for a week or move my hands like an acquaintance for a month and then switch to something else. It feels like taking off my glasses and letting it all run together. It feels like sitting on a hill at sunrise listening to the birds (and insects), see what I’m saying? It just feels like connectivity. What can I say about moving around? That I feel the life around me moving in and out of my body so wholly that I become another entity watching myself live. That I can feel every muscle isolating and traveling through the breathing air.
Admittedly, I occasionally worry about livin’ the solitary life. I worry about the slow decline of communication with my loved ones. I think about the times they said “I won’t forget about you” the times I said “I’ll write you all the time.” I’ve slipped into a state of consistent independence but I couldn’t want anything more. I think about my life as a (caterpillar) like a segmented living being, you know? I’m here and I was there and I could never be there again and the longer I am here the more I forget, the more I can’t imagine ever going back. It isn’t a problem for me. The letters decline and I know everyone will be ok. We’ll all be ok if I spend my life roaming around South America in search of my heart which is apparently buried somewhere deep in the jungle.
Brent and I sat in the soccer field, looking at the stars, as we sometimes do after particularly long days. We talked again about what our plans are after we leave and I said “more than anything else, I want to travel through Central America.” Then I said do you ever say things and then realize they’re true? (I actually said that a totally separate occasion, what fabrication!) I may or may not be able to get a job in Lima, I may run out of money and come flying back to my parent’s house fueled by credit cards and shame. But, if things do somehow work out, I will find a fountain of money and travel through these 6 or 7 or 8 countries and be sublimely happy. I came to this conclusion mostly as Jaime and I were trekking through a jungle to magically get to a town with internet access. We were led by a baby attached to a woman for a little while and then followed some cows up a hill, doesn’t that sounds like it feels right?
I want to work with kids. Teenagers, even. I had an interview once with an at-risk youth organization in Portland and it felt like the most intimidating 50 minutes of my life (group interview). When I finally wake up from this dream, bleary eyed in a bed in Portland, I want to try again. As I have mentioned, I daydream while I run in the mornings. I’ve been (sub)consciously daydreaming about working with teenagers in the United States for maybe a couple months now and it didn’t even register. Some things are so obvious, they really shouldn’t be epiphanies.
People say that working with kids “shapes the future.” Since my last post, we’ve been working with younger kids in addition to our girls from last year. They are so rosy cheeked and brimming with enthusiasm that I find my own cheeks glowing red and my own fervor ready to overflow! It’s cute. Our new and old kids helped us paint a mural reminding the community to care for the environment. Look at it!
As you may or may not have deducted, I felt frustration with the lack of enthusiasm or interest displayed by the kids from last year. I don’t feel this way at all with these younger kids. They fight over who gets to use the camera, are eager to try anything we suggest, and actually act like they are enjoying my company. These younger kids have an innocent kind of confidence. It’s always the ones that aren’t self-conscious that seem to be having the most fun. It sounds hard to enhance self-esteem in youth and it’s infinitely more difficult than it sounds. I know we’re trying. I know I have been taking any opportunity to strengthen these kids’ opinions of themselves. But our efforts are nothing in comparison to the social dynamics and verbal beat downs they get every day. It’s not just the culture. Every culture has its own way of rewarding talent and good looks and rejecting the opposite. Look! Somehow we’re back to me wanting to work with teenagers.
We have completed almost all the objectives of this year’s assignment here in San Francisco. The only things left are the evaluations of the completed kitchens which are moving at a sludgy sleep-cover-band sort of pace since we are having difficulty actually getting people to install them. It’s totally understandable since most families are working on constructing bathrooms or other parts of their houses. Several of them want to redo the whole stove area which will take more time. So now I am trying to figure out how to spend the next couple months. We were given such clear objectives, put on a path. Now we have free range to do whatever the hell we want here.
Katie and Roberto visited us last week! Katie is the Executive Director of MEJOR and Roberto is her husband and one of the board members. They actually had never seen San Francisco before, so it was cool seeing their reactions and introducing their miniature gringo to everyone in town. (The fact that I didn’t mention their son earlier makes that statement odd, right?) They’ve been down in Peru meeting with organizations to partner with next year. The best thing for MEJOR right now would be to send Jaime and/or me to work with prospective organizations while we are down here. There is a chance that come November we are going to be shipping off to other parts of Peru to observe pilot projects. The idea is awesome but a little part of me is going to be sad to spend less time in San Francisco than I had originally thought. I’m attached to the people here. After three months maybe you feel like you are just getting there. You feel like your friends are friends and your students trust you. Like in Point Break when he says “I could never hold a knife to Tyler's throat, she was my woman. We shared time together.” It’s just like that.
I need to stop trying to write these blog posts while listening to music. Especially Jackson 5. Who can write when they’re dancing?
Birthday party
Testing the water above San Francisco and after (to see the contamination from trash)
Installing the kitchen in the kindergarten
More from painting day:
Look! Buds!
The typical truck rides to and from town
Oh! Hey! I learned how to weave!
When we were on tour last year, Kelly and I joked that we had adopted Texas accents after being there for two days. Something I’ve always known about myself is my fondness for picking up idiosyncrasies all over the place. Whether that reveals my character’s weakness or proves its strength, I don’t know. It feels fluid to speak like a friend for a week or move my hands like an acquaintance for a month and then switch to something else. It feels like taking off my glasses and letting it all run together. It feels like sitting on a hill at sunrise listening to the birds (and insects), see what I’m saying? It just feels like connectivity. What can I say about moving around? That I feel the life around me moving in and out of my body so wholly that I become another entity watching myself live. That I can feel every muscle isolating and traveling through the breathing air.
Admittedly, I occasionally worry about livin’ the solitary life. I worry about the slow decline of communication with my loved ones. I think about the times they said “I won’t forget about you” the times I said “I’ll write you all the time.” I’ve slipped into a state of consistent independence but I couldn’t want anything more. I think about my life as a (caterpillar) like a segmented living being, you know? I’m here and I was there and I could never be there again and the longer I am here the more I forget, the more I can’t imagine ever going back. It isn’t a problem for me. The letters decline and I know everyone will be ok. We’ll all be ok if I spend my life roaming around South America in search of my heart which is apparently buried somewhere deep in the jungle.
Brent and I sat in the soccer field, looking at the stars, as we sometimes do after particularly long days. We talked again about what our plans are after we leave and I said “more than anything else, I want to travel through Central America.” Then I said do you ever say things and then realize they’re true? (I actually said that a totally separate occasion, what fabrication!) I may or may not be able to get a job in Lima, I may run out of money and come flying back to my parent’s house fueled by credit cards and shame. But, if things do somehow work out, I will find a fountain of money and travel through these 6 or 7 or 8 countries and be sublimely happy. I came to this conclusion mostly as Jaime and I were trekking through a jungle to magically get to a town with internet access. We were led by a baby attached to a woman for a little while and then followed some cows up a hill, doesn’t that sounds like it feels right?
I want to work with kids. Teenagers, even. I had an interview once with an at-risk youth organization in Portland and it felt like the most intimidating 50 minutes of my life (group interview). When I finally wake up from this dream, bleary eyed in a bed in Portland, I want to try again. As I have mentioned, I daydream while I run in the mornings. I’ve been (sub)consciously daydreaming about working with teenagers in the United States for maybe a couple months now and it didn’t even register. Some things are so obvious, they really shouldn’t be epiphanies.
People say that working with kids “shapes the future.” Since my last post, we’ve been working with younger kids in addition to our girls from last year. They are so rosy cheeked and brimming with enthusiasm that I find my own cheeks glowing red and my own fervor ready to overflow! It’s cute. Our new and old kids helped us paint a mural reminding the community to care for the environment. Look at it!
As you may or may not have deducted, I felt frustration with the lack of enthusiasm or interest displayed by the kids from last year. I don’t feel this way at all with these younger kids. They fight over who gets to use the camera, are eager to try anything we suggest, and actually act like they are enjoying my company. These younger kids have an innocent kind of confidence. It’s always the ones that aren’t self-conscious that seem to be having the most fun. It sounds hard to enhance self-esteem in youth and it’s infinitely more difficult than it sounds. I know we’re trying. I know I have been taking any opportunity to strengthen these kids’ opinions of themselves. But our efforts are nothing in comparison to the social dynamics and verbal beat downs they get every day. It’s not just the culture. Every culture has its own way of rewarding talent and good looks and rejecting the opposite. Look! Somehow we’re back to me wanting to work with teenagers.
We have completed almost all the objectives of this year’s assignment here in San Francisco. The only things left are the evaluations of the completed kitchens which are moving at a sludgy sleep-cover-band sort of pace since we are having difficulty actually getting people to install them. It’s totally understandable since most families are working on constructing bathrooms or other parts of their houses. Several of them want to redo the whole stove area which will take more time. So now I am trying to figure out how to spend the next couple months. We were given such clear objectives, put on a path. Now we have free range to do whatever the hell we want here.
Katie and Roberto visited us last week! Katie is the Executive Director of MEJOR and Roberto is her husband and one of the board members. They actually had never seen San Francisco before, so it was cool seeing their reactions and introducing their miniature gringo to everyone in town. (The fact that I didn’t mention their son earlier makes that statement odd, right?) They’ve been down in Peru meeting with organizations to partner with next year. The best thing for MEJOR right now would be to send Jaime and/or me to work with prospective organizations while we are down here. There is a chance that come November we are going to be shipping off to other parts of Peru to observe pilot projects. The idea is awesome but a little part of me is going to be sad to spend less time in San Francisco than I had originally thought. I’m attached to the people here. After three months maybe you feel like you are just getting there. You feel like your friends are friends and your students trust you. Like in Point Break when he says “I could never hold a knife to Tyler's throat, she was my woman. We shared time together.” It’s just like that.
I need to stop trying to write these blog posts while listening to music. Especially Jackson 5. Who can write when they’re dancing?
Birthday party
Testing the water above San Francisco and after (to see the contamination from trash)
Installing the kitchen in the kindergarten
More from painting day:
Look! Buds!
The typical truck rides to and from town
Oh! Hey! I learned how to weave!
Saturday, October 16, 2010
intermittency
Does this feeling warrant examination? What standards are being met or falling short during this expatriation process? The instinct to live in the now, that the cube of experience is ever repeating from this moment backward and forward. The strings that I feel between myself and other living beings, do they stretch, fortify, or break? I know where I move. I know where I feel. What once was part of a carefully structured existence, molded from an unknown gel is now oozing out of every hole in this place we call home. And I’m lost I’m lost I’m lost? Or I’m found? You have to understand that either of these descriptions lose meaning through the process. And I would say that here I am as a conclusion but here I am not, because here I never was and what does it mean anyway? At once we feel and exist to not explain.
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