My last post took us up through mid-November. In the month since then, way too much has happened for me to tell you everything in detail. Here are a few things that could each have their own post.
*Cardinal Juan Luis Cipriani came to celebrate Mass in Tupac. (I really do want to do a whole post on this one so stay tuned.)
*Catherine came for a week and hung out with me so I wouldn't be lonely. We celebrated Thanksgiving with our friends and had the experience of seeing our turkey, alive and looking around in innocent confusion, get its feet tied up and get weighed on the scale before it was taken in the back and killed. We almost felt terrible enough to become vegetarians.
*I went to a fancy-dress wedding, in a truly awesome dress, and danced salsa and cumbia until 3 am. :)
*I finished preparing the kids in the school for their concert and managed to get the thing to actually happen! It was something that's never happened in that school before. There were two choirs, a primary and a secondary, and two groups of girls who sang things alone; the teachers and parents came and while the singing wasn't really in tune, everyone liked it. The vice-pincipal Gaby even made a little speech afterwards to thank me for all my work... for the first time I felt appreciated in that school!! The teachers gave me a gift, a very beautiful alpaca vest that is entirely too big and the wrong color. But still. :)
*Iris had a party with the youth group in the school, and I was there the whole day with them, eating delicious food cooked by Sra. Rosa the wife of the school guardian Reineri, dancing, singing, watching them play soccer outside.
*In between all these moments, I had long days of being alone in my house but not wanting to go to the school, being bored in the mornings when everybody else in the world is working like respectabe people do, feeling the frustration of still not being fully part of this culture or being able to live a "normal" life here... basically, I went in and out of a heavy, deadening depression. It's the feeling of being stuck doing something that has no possibilities for change, creativity, or letting your talents develop--a helplessness in the face of Peruvians' refusal to be put in order, their unreliability that makes me feel like I have no power to bring any sort of project to completion.
*The second-year Confirmation group here had their confirmation. I played guitar at the Mass and later in the day watched Happy Feet, that fabulous movie about a dancing penguin, and then went to Sheila's house with a group of friends from the choir to sing her Happy Birthday.
*With my own first-year Confirmation group, we tried to go to the Parque de la Reserva, which is apparently a huge fountains-and-lights exhibit in the center of Lima... but we spent so much time waiting for people to meet up that we got there late, and ended up coming back to eat hamburgers in Tupac. Typical Peruvian fun. :)
*I came to grips, searingly, with the fact that I don't think I have any talents. It was a very difficult moment brought on by a practice for tomorrow's Christmas concert in the church, which led to a discussion of hitting the notes correctly vs. singing from the heart with expression. The former I can do; the latter embarrasses and terrifies me. I've been reading a book about Aboriginal Australians who give themselves their own names based on talents they have, like Composer, Secret Keeper, Kin to Large Animals, etc; and the way they honor the talents of everyone in the tribe made me realize how little I believe in the value of my own creativity. All I've ever learned to do in my life is complete, really, really, REALLY WELL, the tasks that other people set for me. But something originally my own, that nobody asked for, just a spontaneous idea that I could wave around happily and go, Look! Look what I came up with!!! ... Why do you think the fantasy novel I wrote from age 11-16 is still sitting on my computer, instead of being read? Anyway. A very painful realization. But after a long discussion and a short break, I was later able to sing Silent Night a cappella, in my own rhythm, trying to just feel the music and be the instrument to transmit its message. And it felt good. A moment of new possibility.
*Of course some of the stress of the music was due to the fact that I'M LEAVING PERU IN ONE MONTH, without a definite plan of what job I'm going to enter into at home, knowing only that I feel called to talk about Life, real Life, divine Mystery, God; to live my life deeply, in abundance; to speak a word of hope to people trapped in their own perspectives on life, who haven't had the experience I have in Peru. I'm not going to be a nun. I don't have a career path and I wouldn't want one all set out for me and tied up neatly with a bow (see above!). I don't know in what way my heart will speak to me once I'm there, where I'll end up. All I know is that it is good to be in this Lima world in these days that I have remaining... and that really, "home" almost isn't "home" any more because the place I actually live is here!... and that it's going to break my heart to leave... and that I can't stay where I am. I have to keep putting one foot in front of the other.
*Miriam came back from the US, understands completely my "desert" experience of being in a foreign country, and listens to me talk. And it's almost Christmas.
*I worked with Dante, Alfredo, and the rest of the church choir to "compose" a Christmas song to be presented at tomorrow's concert: we took the melody of a popular cumbia that's all over the radio, whose refrain is "I hope you die," and changed the lyrics to make a song about the birth of Jesus. It's hilarious and fabulous. Then we rehearsed it and tried to organize everyone to actually be there on Sunday...!
*I finished in Fe y Alegría with one last little actuación, in which I snuck my kids into the program Peruvian style, at the last minute, because they'd forgotten to put them on there earlier; and even got them the honor of singing the National Anthem in front of everyone simply by asking the people in charge about ten minutes before the performance started. See? I'm learning. Also, Sara had a little party for me with the Adelante kids, gave me silver dove earrings, and we ate ice cream despite the fact that one of the girls told me I look like I'm pregnant. Peruvian honesty.
*Today I'm going to Chaclacayo to be Mallco's "godmother" for his kindergarden graduation, i.e. I rented him a little suit for his party. It'll be good to see Tony and the kids again.
.......
So you see there's really been quite a lot going on. I'd give you pictures and all, but the thing is, Peru has stopped being weird for me. (Well, that's definitely an overstatement...) let's just say that I no longer feel like a journalist here. Instead I've become a member of this parish, this choir, this school (although that's a difficult relationship, thank God it's over!!!), this community. So if you don't mind, there may be no more blog posts from here on out. I'm just going to live my life for the next few weeks. I'm planning to travel, so there will be pictures from Puno and Lake Titicaca at some point... really before you know it I'll be home and you can ask me anything you want, and I promise to talk until you stop me. Believe me, I couldn't put it all up here anyway even if I tried.
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.
Saturday, December 20, 2008
Tuesday, December 16, 2008
November part I
I've discovered the secret to successful volunteer tutoring: Franklin the turtle. Franklin is a turtle about seven or eight years old whose adventures are chronicled in a series of books in the school library. At some point in September or October I realized that the students in Sara's Adelante class really don't learn much in the class, and would be much better served by individual reading time. I'll spare you my rant about how infuriatingly ineffective Sara is as a teacher, especially as a teacher of kids with behavioral problems who come from very dysfunctional homes... Let's just say that that feeling of frustrated helplessness that never truly goes away for me in Peru is currently due to feeling like I have to learn on the spot to manage a special-needs classroom, because if I don't stand up and make the kids pay attention, Sara does nothing and it's total chaos. (And I always said I didn't want to teach high school because I'd rather not deal with discipline; if you want to learn, come learn, and if not, fine with me, go do your thing elsewhere! is my thought on education.)
(2) I got to go on retreat. Katie came down from Tambogrande and the two of us went with Sissy and Sister Maria Laura, who directed the retreat, to a house outside Chosica (farther out beyond Dr. Tony's, getting up into the mountains a little and out from under the Lima cloud.) The retreat was an excellent experience, although the task--reflect on and try to understand the past two years of my life as an NDMV in Peru--was way too big for the three days we had; just getting started on the process was exhausting, and I would have preferred an extra two or three days to just sleep. Here's me and the fish pond in the pretty retreat center.
(3) I got to spend time with Katie. I always knew this year would be harder without Catherine, but I sometimes forget just how lonely I become for someone who shares my experience. Plus she's a cool chica. :)
Anyway, everyone benefits much more if I take the kids one by one to the library and have them read about Franklin and then answer questions in their notebook. They like it, too, because they feel special with all the individual attention, and I try to be a broken record of positive encouragement, to counteract the negative things I suspect they hear about themselves at home and in school. The down side to that is that then they hang on my arms and hug me and whine for me to stay when I tell them I'm leaving for the day. And since they're not particularly cooperative when I'm with them, I resent the implication that I'm a bad person for not wanting to stay. (more later on this dynamic of, "Nooo, Katalina, don't go!! Stay here so we can keep taking what we want from you when it's convenient for us and then putting you aside the rest of the time!" ...It's not just the kids I feel that from.)
November was a busy month. Not in the sense that I woke up from Monday to Friday and felt happy thinking of the day ahead, but in the sense that many things happened to interrupt my boredom and loneliness.
Sissy Corr, the director of my volunteer program, came to visit me and my fellow volunteer Katie. This was awesome for many reasons: (1) I felt recognized and valued for my work. Sissy followed me around to my singing classes in the school and my Confirmation group in the parish and told me how great it was that I'm doing all this. She has the perspective to be able to say, Look what you've accomplished from nothing! She also took great pictures of my elementary-school singers and the high school youth group.
(2) I got to go on retreat. Katie came down from Tambogrande and the two of us went with Sissy and Sister Maria Laura, who directed the retreat, to a house outside Chosica (farther out beyond Dr. Tony's, getting up into the mountains a little and out from under the Lima cloud.) The retreat was an excellent experience, although the task--reflect on and try to understand the past two years of my life as an NDMV in Peru--was way too big for the three days we had; just getting started on the process was exhausting, and I would have preferred an extra two or three days to just sleep. Here's me and the fish pond in the pretty retreat center.(3) I got to spend time with Katie. I always knew this year would be harder without Catherine, but I sometimes forget just how lonely I become for someone who shares my experience. Plus she's a cool chica. :)So Sissy's visit was good. Plus talking with Sissy about the practical details of running a volunteer program, I realized the enormous amount that I've learned about what works and what doesn't, and I now have some ideas of things to share with the administration at Fe y Alegría to help out the next volunteer, whenever he or she comes along.
Thursday, December 4, 2008
an interesting Halloween, making money, and the Lord of Miracles
This is me with my friend Mary when we went out for Halloween. Halloween isn't really celebrated around here, except for a very few little kids I saw dressed up in some kind of lame costumes and walking around with their parents on the street. But people do go out dancing on the 31st of October, so Mary and I went to get a friend of hers, Carolina, whom I didn't know before, and the three of us headed for Miraflores.Mary told me that last Halloween they went to a certain club and had a great time, because "you can dance by yourself, no problem, and the guys don't bother you." I wondered why that would be more true at this place than at another, but said, whatever, ok. (Then I was less happy when there was a cover charge of 15 soles. Carolina lives in a really nice house that reminded me of the US, and clearly has money; but when you're a volunteer, you start to think more like your friends, who would have felt very uncomfortable in that house and certainly would never pay S/.15 to dance when you can easily go to other clubs and dance for free. I was a little disgusted by the number of handbags Carolina had to choose from when we were getting ready to leave... more handbags than my friends have shirts, I'm sure.) Then when I got into the club, after a few minutes I noticed there were a lot of groups of all guys standing around dancing, and a lot of groups of all girls... and a lot of same-sex couples dancing... "Mary, is this a gay club??" "Yup!" says Mary, perfectly happy to be dancing without those annoying guys that sometimes won't leave you alone in discos. But I got bored after a while, because no one asked me to dance! The best entertainment of the night was a guy in a Zorro costume (it was Halloween after all) who introduced himself to everyone he saw as Don Diego de la Vega.
That Sunday was the annual Lord of Miracles procession. In the preceeding weeks I'd helped out a bit by taking letters to two schools in the area, letting them know that the image would be passing by their school, so that they could prepare an appropriate reception--decorations, flowers, their own image, etc.--and by giving out flyers along a certain section of the procession's route, to let the people know the same. On the day of the procession, I, with other people's help, made over 500 soles. Unfortunately none of it was for me!
My Confirmation group decided to do an "activity," i.e. sell food, at the church that day to make some money for their retreat at the end of their program. Juancho helped a lot, but Any, the other catechist, couldn't, so I was basically in charge of organizing the teenagers into preparing two GIANT pots of arroz con leche and mazamorra and selling it after church. We were quite the businesspeople! Juancho and I bought all the ingredients, the kids showed up one by one starting at about 5:30 am, and we started cooking, i.e. everybody arguing about how best to do it, almost burning themselves on the gas stove, running out to get more sugar and corn starch at the last minute, etc. It was fabulous.
After Mass we sold a total of 150 servings of arroz con leche (Peruvian rice pudding) and mazamorra (a jello-y liquid or liquidy jello dessert made from purple corn). But that was only about half of the enormous pots we'd made! So we agreed to come back in the afternoon and sell the rest, hopefully, when people came for the procession at 3 pm. After a much-needed lunch and rest in my house, it was back to the church. The kids were great vendors--they got trays and walked around with the procession selling as they went, and eventually got rid of all of it. Grand total: S/.200 of profit after paying ourselves back for the ingredients, etc. Each of the kids who helped will get almost 20 soles toward the cost of their retreat next year. (which I won't be around for!! :(
I didn't get to help carry the Lord of Miracles this year because I had a unique job during the procession. I was in charge of carrying the limosna box, asking people for donations. The money I collected was going to be used to pay the band, so it had to be quite a bit! At first I was a little nervous about asking people for money, especially these people, because from my perspective they don't have any. But my friends told me just to walk right up to the people watching and ask for "collaborations," and if they say no, they say no. And the vast majority didn't say no. Women selling snacks from little carts on street corners, a way that the poorer people in the neighborhood sometimes make their living, dug out 20 cents or 50 cents or a sol from somewhere to contribute to the Lord of Miracles. It really means a lot to them. I became a walking (or running!) broken record all afternoon and evening, from 3 pm to 9 pm when it finished back at the church: "Señores, a contribution for the Lord of Miracles? Thank you, how kind of you! Thank you very much, God bless!"
above: stopping to pray in front of the anda
left: a very touching moment between mother, son, and the Lord... actually these were two drunk people who wandered into the procession, but still...
right: at Sheila's house they prepared a reception for the Lord of Miracles. (these good neighbors were impeccably pious and not the least bit drunk.)
Unlike my friends here, very rarely in my life have I ever felt pressured to make a certain amount of money. But I learned during that whole day, first of mazamorra and then of limosna, that when your goal is to go out there and find a way, any way, to bring back X amount of soles, you get into a kind of money-making mentality where you lose whatever hesitations you felt about bothering people. Sure, they might get annoyed if you ask them for money, but someone else will be more annoyed at you later if there's no money to pay the band. Luckily I had my little friend Ivan to show me the ropes in terms of bringing in cash.
me and Ivan carrying the limosna box, way ahead of the procession
Ivan is an expert at selling the chocotejas his grandmother makes to bring in a little extra income for his family. Very shortly into the procession he took me under his wing, and for the next five hours he ran me up and down the streets, left, right, ahead of the image, behind it, to all the stores, all the houses, everything, saying, Katalina, over there! Katalina, ask them! This store here, Katalina! In a stunt that I'd like to think will be remembered for years, we even made the rounds of a soccer field surrounded by groups of men standing around drinking--the kind I always go out of my way to avoid if I'm walking alone, because of the whistles and harassment. What did I have to fear? I had a whole procession of churchgoers behind me, plus an official-looking vest and collection box and a twelve-year-old sidekick! (Ok, so one of the older ladies of the parish was also with us at that point, and she was great, she walked straight up to those who refused at first and demanded money like a mother scolding naughty kids. "If you have money to drink, how about giving some for GOD!!") But the way their mouths dropped open when this tall, blonde gringa came up and cheerfully asked for donations for the Lord of Miracles was fabulous. Those who didn't reach into their pockets immediately just stood there gaping until their buddies yelled at them to give the señorita a contribution! "Señorita--you're a vision! Una belleza!" proclaimed one or another. "Then why don't you contribute?" I replied, laughing. And wow, did they contribute! One after another, out comes five soles, ten soles, fifteen soles for the collection box! I think we took more cash off the borrachos than the whole rest of the pueblo contributed together.
By the end of the procession me and Ivan had over 300 soles in the box. All in all it was a very profitable day.
Saturday, November 22, 2008
...and the prodigal blogger returns
Apologies for the fact that my blog has adopted the mode of being of everything else here in my life in Lima: all or nothing, long droughts of boredom and then everything happening at once.
I can't remember almost anything that I did in October. It was a nothing month. All I remember is that the second-year Confirmation group went on retreat and didn't take me with them. I was originally invited to go with them even though I'm not really their catechist, I'm with the first-year group, but they wanted other adults along... or so I thought. It turned out that what they really wanted was a pretty time-intensive committment to helping organize the retreat, and when I couldn't make the organizational meetings, I was politely but firmly un-invited by Carmen. So the majority of my friends went and I stayed in Tupac, bored and depressed, and alone. I spend a lot of time alone here during the week, but usually on the weekends I see some friends, so that weekend was particularly rough because I felt kicked out of the fun.
Then there was a series of joint choral rehearsals with the other sectors of our parish to prepare for the anniversary Mass of the sector of Santa Isabel. I did things like typing the song sheet for the service, telling the Tupac choir to meet half an hour early so we could go down together to the joint rehearsal, setting off with Sofía and Sister BJ when no one else showed up half an hour early for said joint rehearsal, etc. (Our choir in Tupac has pretty much disintegrated this year. We're down to rehearsals of between three and six people, usually including me, Sister BJ, Sofía, and/or Victoria.) Not as cool as September's Huititi dance, but something to do outside the school.
There was also a crazy misadventure involving Dr. Tony's house, Sister Marleney, a kid and his father from Piura, a nose, and a muskrat. Marleney is the principal of a Fe y Alegría school up north, and one of her students has a tumor in his nose, maybe benign, but needs operating anyway. So she asked if the Hogar San Fransisco might be able to help him. I said, I'll call Dr. Tony. A week later the kid and his father were on a bus from Piura to Lima. Marleney asked me to get them at the bus station and take them to Chaclacayo, and I said, no problem.
After waiting at the bus station for two hours and then taking a taxi and a colectivo to the house, I introduce them to the doctor... and the kid decides he doesn't want to stay. He's sixteen years old, but he was terrified, literally trembling with nerves at the idea of staying in this weird new place in this weird new city while his dad had to stay somewhere else. I tried to convince the father that as the father, he had to make the best decision for his son's health and leave him in the house no matter how uncomfortable he was at first, but the father couldn't do that. He listened to me talk for minutes on end saying, Yes, you're right, señorita, that's true... and then turned to his son and asked, So, Jomar--will you stay? And of course the kid shakes his head in terror. So in the end, they both decided to go stay at his friend's house in Comas, to the north of Lima; and since he doesn't know Lima at all, the father turns to me and says, Señorita, you have to take us to where my friend can meet us, I can't find my way by myself, I don't know Lima, what will I do if he doesn't come?! After deciding not to accept the help that the sisters had arranged for him, he basically dumped himself into my hands and said, Do something with us, we're poor and have nowhere to stay, don't leave us alone!!
Well, I was going back to Lima anyway, so I took them to the bus station where his friend was supposed to meet them. I had to leave them there waiting in order to be back to Tupac on time. Later they called my cell phone to say that their friend had indeed come (something that was not at all certain in my mind, this being Peru!), and after that I never saw them again. Marleney tells me that she called to yell at the father and make him take his son back to Tony's, which he did, and then after staying one night they left AGAIN because the kid "couldn't get used to it there." Sister Maria Laura put it harshly but truly, when I told her: "If the son dies from not having this operation, the separation will be much harder!" But nobody could convince them. What can you do?
...ok so there was really no muskrat in that story. I said there was because on the bus back to Lima, while fuming about being stuck in traffic with two lost and irresponsible Peruvians on my hands, I was reading Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, and Annie Dillard was talking about muskrats. It was one of those weird Peru moments: I'm on a bus in Lima with two lost Piuranos, taking them to meet their friend who might not even come and then they'll ask me to figure out something else to do with them, stuck in traffic, reading a book about muskrats.
Besides that, October was basically a lot of Adelante, sporadic choir rehearsals (the ever-continuing fight to get time with the kids!... it wears you down to go to the place you're supposed to be helping out and basically be told, Go away.), hoping to do cool things on the weekends, and being disappointed when I didn't. I felt forgotten, if you can believe that, like somebody put me into this little life routine of house-school-house-parish-house and forgot to come back and take me out again... like I'd ceased to register on anybody's radar. We all have our "funk"moments. I think they're just harder sometimes when you're in a foreign country, far from your family and in a world where you are necessarily limited in the things you can do and the people you know.
I can't remember almost anything that I did in October. It was a nothing month. All I remember is that the second-year Confirmation group went on retreat and didn't take me with them. I was originally invited to go with them even though I'm not really their catechist, I'm with the first-year group, but they wanted other adults along... or so I thought. It turned out that what they really wanted was a pretty time-intensive committment to helping organize the retreat, and when I couldn't make the organizational meetings, I was politely but firmly un-invited by Carmen. So the majority of my friends went and I stayed in Tupac, bored and depressed, and alone. I spend a lot of time alone here during the week, but usually on the weekends I see some friends, so that weekend was particularly rough because I felt kicked out of the fun.
Then there was a series of joint choral rehearsals with the other sectors of our parish to prepare for the anniversary Mass of the sector of Santa Isabel. I did things like typing the song sheet for the service, telling the Tupac choir to meet half an hour early so we could go down together to the joint rehearsal, setting off with Sofía and Sister BJ when no one else showed up half an hour early for said joint rehearsal, etc. (Our choir in Tupac has pretty much disintegrated this year. We're down to rehearsals of between three and six people, usually including me, Sister BJ, Sofía, and/or Victoria.) Not as cool as September's Huititi dance, but something to do outside the school.
There was also a crazy misadventure involving Dr. Tony's house, Sister Marleney, a kid and his father from Piura, a nose, and a muskrat. Marleney is the principal of a Fe y Alegría school up north, and one of her students has a tumor in his nose, maybe benign, but needs operating anyway. So she asked if the Hogar San Fransisco might be able to help him. I said, I'll call Dr. Tony. A week later the kid and his father were on a bus from Piura to Lima. Marleney asked me to get them at the bus station and take them to Chaclacayo, and I said, no problem.
After waiting at the bus station for two hours and then taking a taxi and a colectivo to the house, I introduce them to the doctor... and the kid decides he doesn't want to stay. He's sixteen years old, but he was terrified, literally trembling with nerves at the idea of staying in this weird new place in this weird new city while his dad had to stay somewhere else. I tried to convince the father that as the father, he had to make the best decision for his son's health and leave him in the house no matter how uncomfortable he was at first, but the father couldn't do that. He listened to me talk for minutes on end saying, Yes, you're right, señorita, that's true... and then turned to his son and asked, So, Jomar--will you stay? And of course the kid shakes his head in terror. So in the end, they both decided to go stay at his friend's house in Comas, to the north of Lima; and since he doesn't know Lima at all, the father turns to me and says, Señorita, you have to take us to where my friend can meet us, I can't find my way by myself, I don't know Lima, what will I do if he doesn't come?! After deciding not to accept the help that the sisters had arranged for him, he basically dumped himself into my hands and said, Do something with us, we're poor and have nowhere to stay, don't leave us alone!!
Well, I was going back to Lima anyway, so I took them to the bus station where his friend was supposed to meet them. I had to leave them there waiting in order to be back to Tupac on time. Later they called my cell phone to say that their friend had indeed come (something that was not at all certain in my mind, this being Peru!), and after that I never saw them again. Marleney tells me that she called to yell at the father and make him take his son back to Tony's, which he did, and then after staying one night they left AGAIN because the kid "couldn't get used to it there." Sister Maria Laura put it harshly but truly, when I told her: "If the son dies from not having this operation, the separation will be much harder!" But nobody could convince them. What can you do?
...ok so there was really no muskrat in that story. I said there was because on the bus back to Lima, while fuming about being stuck in traffic with two lost and irresponsible Peruvians on my hands, I was reading Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, and Annie Dillard was talking about muskrats. It was one of those weird Peru moments: I'm on a bus in Lima with two lost Piuranos, taking them to meet their friend who might not even come and then they'll ask me to figure out something else to do with them, stuck in traffic, reading a book about muskrats.
Besides that, October was basically a lot of Adelante, sporadic choir rehearsals (the ever-continuing fight to get time with the kids!... it wears you down to go to the place you're supposed to be helping out and basically be told, Go away.), hoping to do cool things on the weekends, and being disappointed when I didn't. I felt forgotten, if you can believe that, like somebody put me into this little life routine of house-school-house-parish-house and forgot to come back and take me out again... like I'd ceased to register on anybody's radar. We all have our "funk"moments. I think they're just harder sometimes when you're in a foreign country, far from your family and in a world where you are necessarily limited in the things you can do and the people you know.
Tuesday, October 14, 2008
Time
"I am sitting here, you are sitting there. Our eyes meet; a consciousness snaps back and forth. What we know, at least for starters, is: here we--so incontrovertibly--are. This is our life, these are our lighted seasons, and then we die."
--Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek
Time is short. And long. It's expandable and shrinkable. Today I slept until 8 am, deliciously, dreaming that I was back in one of my high school musical productions and that I had to buy slippers from a Peruvian-style clothing stand, two different types of blue slipper so that I could take the little flowers off one and sew them onto the other and have them match. I said, in Spanish, That's ridiculous, I'm going to complain to the director, I'm not spending twenty soles on two different types of slippers. Then my cell phone alarm went off. I got up and got dressed in a rush to get up to the school by 9--and discovered that there were no students there. Jornada pedagógica: teachers' training day. No Liliana, Evelyn, Liz, José Luis, or Gerald in the morning, and no choirs in the afternoon. I felt my day ooze out of its structure, a bit repulsively, like an expanding waistline spilling over jeans. I have nothing to do and time is going slowly.
Since my last post, the first half of October has flown. I spend the first half of the week recovering from my weekend, the second half getting ready for the next weekend, and then do it again; I've almost started counting weeks from Thursday to Wednesday. Last Thursday I went with the Salud ladies to visit Agusto in his shack. Agusto is an older man who lives alone with his dog, Ferpudo, and a cat or two, in a house that's a couple of board walls imperfectly covered over with tin. There are three "rooms" more or less and a sort of foyer area that's open to the air, with laundry lines strung across it but no laundry, because Agusto has gotten sick lately and I doubt he can wash clothes right now. Instead of laundry there are things like plastic bags or dirty rags pinned up on the lines. There is cardboard underfoot and Ferpudo's bowl is on the floor with raw chicken parts in it--the dog eats better than his owner and is strong and frisky. He's got curly strawberry-blonde hair and his nickname is gringo. My compatriot.
Agusto normally receives us in his foyer, where there are a couple of chairs and a bench, but this time he was in bed. He's got some sort of infection that makes it difficult to urinate, and from what I understand, he's been to the medical post in Tupac and they've put a catheter in, but he still isn't feeling better because (Luisa says) he hasn't taken his antibiotic when he should have, because he had no appetite, so he doesn't eat, and then the medicine hurts his empty stomach. He has a brother and some nieces and nephews, but they don't come very often. I gather that they live far away. There's no one there to cook for him or make him take his medicine or go to the market for food; I don't know what he does on the days when Luisa can't go bring him some bread and milk and fruit or some chicken broth from the market. I think he gets up and goes himself. But the thing that shocked me most was, he had only one medium-weight blanket over him. He'd doubled it up and draped it over his legs, and from the waist up he was using a jacket as a blanket. I was bowled over. It's basically like he's sleeping outside, in the chilly, breezy, damp Lima winter, with only one blanket. I use two or three blankets, and my room has actual walls and a roof well attached to them.
I came home that day and slammed a chair on the floor and kicked my walls. It's all about time. Am I going to go to Agusto's house twice a day to make sure he eats something, drinks something, and takes his pills? He needs someone there to take care of him and there's no one. I've already committed my time to going to the market for the sisters, cooking lunch once or twice a week, running my choirs in the school, helping the kids (except when there's no school!)... How many nights has Agusto spent with his one blanket in the cold? So many that they've run together for him and the time since he was last warm at night seems short? And yet the thought of leaving him for one more night blanket-less like that killed me. I resolved to buy him blankets; it's the least I could do. I'll hardly notice the 35 soles. But I didn't go Friday. I was busy. I didn't go Saturday: I'd made plans with a friend to go to the market and cook together. And we did, we met and talked and cooked and laughed and ate and the whole afternoon flew by. Saturday evening was my Confirmation group, which, little did I know, had been cancelled by the coordinator that week, they just didn't tell us that beforehand. So the group showed up like normal and we had to invent things to do with them on the spot. Then when we finished I realized that we were scheduled to clean the church that day, but I'd invited my friends over for a movie-and-pancake night, it'd been so long since we'd gotten everyone together!... They all came over for pancakes and we had a great time.
On Sunday morning after Mass I finally went with Luisa to bring Agusto his blankets. And he blessed me. He took my hands and said, Hermanita, may it always go well for you wherever you go! And I almost cried, because it was so little I'd done for him. So little and so late. An afterthought to my happy, comfortable times with my friends that had been my priority that weekend. Unlike the widow in the Gospel, I give from what I have left over. But now, after adding three more interminable cold nights to his already infinite tally, Agusto has two new blankets. I hope he'll be a little warmer. He's still poor and sick, and the doctors in the public hospital are on strike and they're only seeing emergency cases.
Time can go on and on for ages without anything changing, an eternity, a lifetime--and then one day just like any other, everything changes. The earth existed without humans for billions (I think?) of years, and then one day, like Tolkien's elves, we woke up and started doing our human things, and literally changed the face of the planet. I lived and studied comfortably in the US for 22 years, and then one year I got a crazy idea to go live in Peru, and everything was different. I feel like I've spent much more time being bored as an NDMV than I ever did at home, and yet the number of things that have happened to me in my almost two years in this country seems exponentially greater than its counterpart for all of my previous life in Maryland.
My prayer right now is for more time. for the ability to live in the present moment. January 20th seems like tomorrow.
*Disclaimer: please excuse the new Google ads on the right. They are a shameless attempt to make a few dollars with this blogging thing. I'm not supposed to encourage readers to do anything in particular with the links, but if you like my posts, you might be nice to a poor volunteer and future theology student, and pretend to be interested enough to see what some of them are about.*
--Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek
Time is short. And long. It's expandable and shrinkable. Today I slept until 8 am, deliciously, dreaming that I was back in one of my high school musical productions and that I had to buy slippers from a Peruvian-style clothing stand, two different types of blue slipper so that I could take the little flowers off one and sew them onto the other and have them match. I said, in Spanish, That's ridiculous, I'm going to complain to the director, I'm not spending twenty soles on two different types of slippers. Then my cell phone alarm went off. I got up and got dressed in a rush to get up to the school by 9--and discovered that there were no students there. Jornada pedagógica: teachers' training day. No Liliana, Evelyn, Liz, José Luis, or Gerald in the morning, and no choirs in the afternoon. I felt my day ooze out of its structure, a bit repulsively, like an expanding waistline spilling over jeans. I have nothing to do and time is going slowly.
Since my last post, the first half of October has flown. I spend the first half of the week recovering from my weekend, the second half getting ready for the next weekend, and then do it again; I've almost started counting weeks from Thursday to Wednesday. Last Thursday I went with the Salud ladies to visit Agusto in his shack. Agusto is an older man who lives alone with his dog, Ferpudo, and a cat or two, in a house that's a couple of board walls imperfectly covered over with tin. There are three "rooms" more or less and a sort of foyer area that's open to the air, with laundry lines strung across it but no laundry, because Agusto has gotten sick lately and I doubt he can wash clothes right now. Instead of laundry there are things like plastic bags or dirty rags pinned up on the lines. There is cardboard underfoot and Ferpudo's bowl is on the floor with raw chicken parts in it--the dog eats better than his owner and is strong and frisky. He's got curly strawberry-blonde hair and his nickname is gringo. My compatriot.
Agusto normally receives us in his foyer, where there are a couple of chairs and a bench, but this time he was in bed. He's got some sort of infection that makes it difficult to urinate, and from what I understand, he's been to the medical post in Tupac and they've put a catheter in, but he still isn't feeling better because (Luisa says) he hasn't taken his antibiotic when he should have, because he had no appetite, so he doesn't eat, and then the medicine hurts his empty stomach. He has a brother and some nieces and nephews, but they don't come very often. I gather that they live far away. There's no one there to cook for him or make him take his medicine or go to the market for food; I don't know what he does on the days when Luisa can't go bring him some bread and milk and fruit or some chicken broth from the market. I think he gets up and goes himself. But the thing that shocked me most was, he had only one medium-weight blanket over him. He'd doubled it up and draped it over his legs, and from the waist up he was using a jacket as a blanket. I was bowled over. It's basically like he's sleeping outside, in the chilly, breezy, damp Lima winter, with only one blanket. I use two or three blankets, and my room has actual walls and a roof well attached to them.
I came home that day and slammed a chair on the floor and kicked my walls. It's all about time. Am I going to go to Agusto's house twice a day to make sure he eats something, drinks something, and takes his pills? He needs someone there to take care of him and there's no one. I've already committed my time to going to the market for the sisters, cooking lunch once or twice a week, running my choirs in the school, helping the kids (except when there's no school!)... How many nights has Agusto spent with his one blanket in the cold? So many that they've run together for him and the time since he was last warm at night seems short? And yet the thought of leaving him for one more night blanket-less like that killed me. I resolved to buy him blankets; it's the least I could do. I'll hardly notice the 35 soles. But I didn't go Friday. I was busy. I didn't go Saturday: I'd made plans with a friend to go to the market and cook together. And we did, we met and talked and cooked and laughed and ate and the whole afternoon flew by. Saturday evening was my Confirmation group, which, little did I know, had been cancelled by the coordinator that week, they just didn't tell us that beforehand. So the group showed up like normal and we had to invent things to do with them on the spot. Then when we finished I realized that we were scheduled to clean the church that day, but I'd invited my friends over for a movie-and-pancake night, it'd been so long since we'd gotten everyone together!... They all came over for pancakes and we had a great time.
On Sunday morning after Mass I finally went with Luisa to bring Agusto his blankets. And he blessed me. He took my hands and said, Hermanita, may it always go well for you wherever you go! And I almost cried, because it was so little I'd done for him. So little and so late. An afterthought to my happy, comfortable times with my friends that had been my priority that weekend. Unlike the widow in the Gospel, I give from what I have left over. But now, after adding three more interminable cold nights to his already infinite tally, Agusto has two new blankets. I hope he'll be a little warmer. He's still poor and sick, and the doctors in the public hospital are on strike and they're only seeing emergency cases.
Time can go on and on for ages without anything changing, an eternity, a lifetime--and then one day just like any other, everything changes. The earth existed without humans for billions (I think?) of years, and then one day, like Tolkien's elves, we woke up and started doing our human things, and literally changed the face of the planet. I lived and studied comfortably in the US for 22 years, and then one year I got a crazy idea to go live in Peru, and everything was different. I feel like I've spent much more time being bored as an NDMV than I ever did at home, and yet the number of things that have happened to me in my almost two years in this country seems exponentially greater than its counterpart for all of my previous life in Maryland.
My prayer right now is for more time. for the ability to live in the present moment. January 20th seems like tomorrow.
*Disclaimer: please excuse the new Google ads on the right. They are a shameless attempt to make a few dollars with this blogging thing. I'm not supposed to encourage readers to do anything in particular with the links, but if you like my posts, you might be nice to a poor volunteer and future theology student, and pretend to be interested enough to see what some of them are about.*
Tuesday, September 30, 2008
Craziest ten days of my life
From September 20th to 29th, I:Rehearsed, learned, and performed in a native Huititi dance for the parish Youth Day celebrations;
finished studying for and took the GRE;
kept on with all my regular projects like Confirmation, IRFA, choirs in the school, choirs in the parish, visiting the sick, and helping in the Delicias house with Teresa being on bedrest;
and decided, after a very strong, very painful freak-out session, not to be a nun.
It was a busy ten days.
Above: me and the other catechists in our traditional costumes from Arequipa!! Part of the costume is a dredlock-style full head of braids with ribbons tied in. My friend Josie's mom invited me to her house for lunch that day and braided my hair... so nice! Peruvian hospitality.Left: me with my friend Juan Carlos (aka Juancho). He's holding up his skirt to show that he actually is wearing pants underneath. In this dance, the men wear long skirts over their pants, because in the time and culture that invented the dance, parents kept boys and girls very strictly separated and didn't let them see each other. So, with that crazy bravery that dares a man to do anything for love... the boys dressed up as girls to sneak in and see their girlfriends!
Look how well I fit in! :) I'm practically Peruvian. The guy in normal clothes is our teacher.
So the dance was awesome, plus the fact that the whole three minutes of it is nothing but jumping from side to side in different formations, so I got in really good shape by the end of the rehearsals! The music is with Andean flutes and drums, and you get to hop all around and spin and yell EEY! Fabulous.
The GRE, which I took yesterday at the Institute of American English in Lima, was also surprisingly good. I got a 1420 on the multiple-choice verbal and math sections. I'd been studying pretty dilligently for most of August and September, trying to find one to two hours a day during the week (weekends were too crazy) to study vocab and review math I haven't done since middle school. I got kind of ridiculously excited when the word Perspicacity appeared on the actual test, and a little indignant that not one single right-triangle 1-1-root 2 or 1-root 3-2 question appeared! after I reviewed all those stupid angles and hypotenuses. Oh well. I feel I've taken my first step towards becoming a theologian!
...And I'm glad about becoming a theologian, because, the nun idea... not so much. Last Friday for some reason I was just absolutely flipping out, sitting in my house crying because I felt like I was being torn in two inside--because I like everything, everything about the idea of being an SND... except the part about never being able to have a relationship or a family. All these questions about happiness, love, what one really, REALLY wants in life... sacrifice, leading to true happiness over immediate pleasure... being able to love people and share with them... Luckily when I went up to the school, Estela was there, and she listened to me talk for like an hour, and reassured me that one can serve God just as well as a non-nun. By Sunday I'd calmed down sufficiently to be able to study, and by Monday I was good to go on the test. And after the test, during my celebratory walk around Miraflores (the sun came out! and I sat in the park overlooking the ocean...), I found myself thinking calmly: El amor es uno solo. All love is one. I think if you're living a life full of love, and doing what makes you happy, that's all you can really ask for and all that can be asked of you.
So, as I said. A busy ten days. But good. ...real good. :)
Today there was not one but TWO dogs that wandered into my choir rehearsals in the school. Plus fourth grade behaved like a bunch of wild monkeys. Aah, Peru.
Friday, September 12, 2008
I don't need you to like me, and other thoughts
When I'm not working with people here, I periodically find myself alone in the house. I do my laundry or my cleaning or, these days, study like mad for the GRE which I'm taking on September 29th. But mostly, laundry and cleaning are excuses for me to think like crazy. I sometimes feel like even when I don't want to be thinking any more, my brain goes around in circles until some sort of activity (like working with kids or directing a choir rehearsal or visiting the sick) intervenes to take my mind off... things.
(Disclaimer: these questions usually come up on Mondays or Wednesdays, when I have less to do and more free time, but nobody else has free time to hang out with me. So I sometimes get a little bored, and if I'm tired, bored turns into moody, and voila, we get the following... )
The most frequent question of my alone moments is, What do I want? Sometimes I just feel this sort of longing, for something undefined, for a lot of things, and in frustration I ask, What do I want?? Or put another way--Why do I feel unfulfilled right now and what would fulfill me? Am I complete, as a person, right now, with my life the way it is? If you want to know what it's like to be me right now, think about that for a minute. Are you complete? Or do you feel like there's something lacking in your world, in your life, a hole that needs filling in order for you to be whole?
There is certainly a lot of love in my life here. Tons of dear friends, the sisters who are like my family, the kids at the school, even those annoying old ladies in the parish... But none of them are "mine." They all have their families and I don't; they put their kids to sleep at night, or someday will, and I go to bed alone. Is that okay? Some days I think it is, and some days I know it isn't. Could I be happy as a sister, with a life like this, doing work that I love and delighting in the company of everyone, but never depending on the presence of certain people, a family, for my happiness?
My brain says, Seems doubtful. If happiness doesn't come from the love of your family, I mean nuclear husband-and-kids family--where does it come from? Supposedly, the answer there would be God. And that... is complicated. Some days I think that relationship is not enough to make me happy for the rest of my life. And some days I know it is. Those are the days that scare me most.
But I've realized lately, through talking to a friend who grew up very, very poor in this neighborhood, that people can put anything in that question above where I put "family" (well actually, I'm way far from thinking about families; the word right now would be "boyfriend.") Example, "If happiness doesn't come from having enough money to live comfortably, where does it come from?" My friend had a very dificult childhood and although he now has a decent job and enough to eat in his house, I can tell he's still trapped in the idea that other people look down on him for being poor. He doubts his ability to follow his dreams of being a musician because, according to the way he thinks people will judge him, "that's for people with money." Silly, right? Now that he's getting along okay, why keep feeling ashamed of who he was, or how he was perceived, in the past? ...Heh. Easier said than done. Money for my friend is a sort of beautiful, unattainable dream, money and the respect that comes with it. He never had any, and he had to take some hard treatment from the world because of it, and so he learned to feel unworthy of people's esteem, and when you learn something like that it's very hard to unlearn later. A wound that needs a lot of healing.
"If happiness doesn't come from... (that thing I never had and felt scorned and humiliated for not having), where does it come from??" I realized that I'm exactly the same way about guys. Never had any, learned not to expect them, decided I'd better get used to living without them, and placed the idea of having a relationship up on a sort of pedestal, thinking, That must be it, if I had that I'd be happy. But the truth is, there are people with tons of money who aren't happy. There are people who've had a hundred boyfriends or girlfriends and aren't happy. There are even people in steady, committed, loving, long-term relationships, who aren't happy (although those last probably have a better chance at happiness than some.) So, logically, that can't be it.
Enter Anthony DeMello, a Jesuit from India whose book I read a few weeks ago. The guy's practically a Buddhist, and his perspective, which he sums up in the title Awareness, is literally life-changing, if you take it seriously. He basically says, as humans, we need two things to fully flourish: to be free, and to love. To be free and to love--NOT "to be loved!" Wow. Either he's crazy or he's found the secret to life. He says that as children we are trained not just to want but to need, even to crave the approval of others--our family, our peers, our teachers--but that that approval, that "love," that pat on the back or admiring glance or certificate of achievement, is actually not necessary for our happiness. Think about a two-year-old child: if that child knows that Mom and Dad love her in a sort of existential way, that is, she trusts that they're going to keep her world turning and doesn't live in fear of abandonment--then she won't hang around Mom if she can help it. Instead, she'll go off exploring, delighted to discover more about this marvelous thing called existence. But as soon as fear of abandonment enters in, the child starts clinging, terrified to move out into the world. She becomes more preoccupied with keeping Mom's love than with growing into a fuller, more alive version of herself.
Basically, as I understand him, DeMello says that a lot of what we think is love, is actually just us trying to get our latest fix of the drug called other people's approval. My, how smart you are, Kathleen! How responsible you are! How good and generous you are to others! You look beautiful today! Good thing you got those As in school... good thing you never went to those wild frat parties in college... Good thing you wear those nice flattering tight clothes now, you're turning heads down there in Peru!... Behind every Good thing...! is an Otherwise: a vague, implied Otherwise looming just on the other side of whatever Line the other person doesn't want us to cross. Otherwise, you'd be off the dean's list and you'd end up waiting tables for the rest of your life. Otherwise, people would think you were irresponsible. Otherwise you'd be arrogant and irritating, and people would get offended and feel bad and talk about you behind your back. Otherwise you'd keep living your pathetic, restricted little boy-less life and live in fear of your friends saying, Let's play Never Have I Ever! (a truth-telling game where young people discover who's done what, what kind of experiences everyone has or hasn't had.) Otherwise you might end up as a nun someday, that is to say, end up going around with CELIBATE stamped on your forehead for everyone to stare at.
...Inasmuch as we NEED that drug of other people's approval, we are not free to go off and try something new, to gather up all our love and good intentions, and go out and make stupid mistakes, and then try to do better the next time--to grow little by little into who we authentically are. To breathe free air, beholden to nothing and no one except that which you choose to dedicate yourself to. To be fully alive.
So the lesson I take from Anthony DeMello is, I don't need you to like me. Yes, I'm talking to YOU. I may like you very much, I may even love you, but I don't need you! I would never, as DeMello says, choose your love over my own true happiness and fulfillment. So, I can choose never to go back to school and wait tables for the rest of my life if I want--and I could be happy, as long as I were truly "aware" (that's his Buddhist thing) of reality. Because the marvel of existence, he says, the wonder of entering into relationship with reality (or with God) is enough to keep a human being dancing through her days for a lifetime. I could be a nun, and derisive laughter of American culture be damned--and I could be happy! I could have a family, I could move to Paris and find myself a romantic Bohemian artist lover, I could run a bookshop, I could do whatever the (insert strong language here) I want! and I could be happy.
...I guess that means, going back to my earlier question... that I am "complete." It's just a question of recognizing it.
When I get really good at that, you'll know, because I'll be doing something I like, and I'll be happy for no particular reason.
(Disclaimer: these questions usually come up on Mondays or Wednesdays, when I have less to do and more free time, but nobody else has free time to hang out with me. So I sometimes get a little bored, and if I'm tired, bored turns into moody, and voila, we get the following... )
The most frequent question of my alone moments is, What do I want? Sometimes I just feel this sort of longing, for something undefined, for a lot of things, and in frustration I ask, What do I want?? Or put another way--Why do I feel unfulfilled right now and what would fulfill me? Am I complete, as a person, right now, with my life the way it is? If you want to know what it's like to be me right now, think about that for a minute. Are you complete? Or do you feel like there's something lacking in your world, in your life, a hole that needs filling in order for you to be whole?
There is certainly a lot of love in my life here. Tons of dear friends, the sisters who are like my family, the kids at the school, even those annoying old ladies in the parish... But none of them are "mine." They all have their families and I don't; they put their kids to sleep at night, or someday will, and I go to bed alone. Is that okay? Some days I think it is, and some days I know it isn't. Could I be happy as a sister, with a life like this, doing work that I love and delighting in the company of everyone, but never depending on the presence of certain people, a family, for my happiness?
My brain says, Seems doubtful. If happiness doesn't come from the love of your family, I mean nuclear husband-and-kids family--where does it come from? Supposedly, the answer there would be God. And that... is complicated. Some days I think that relationship is not enough to make me happy for the rest of my life. And some days I know it is. Those are the days that scare me most.
But I've realized lately, through talking to a friend who grew up very, very poor in this neighborhood, that people can put anything in that question above where I put "family" (well actually, I'm way far from thinking about families; the word right now would be "boyfriend.") Example, "If happiness doesn't come from having enough money to live comfortably, where does it come from?" My friend had a very dificult childhood and although he now has a decent job and enough to eat in his house, I can tell he's still trapped in the idea that other people look down on him for being poor. He doubts his ability to follow his dreams of being a musician because, according to the way he thinks people will judge him, "that's for people with money." Silly, right? Now that he's getting along okay, why keep feeling ashamed of who he was, or how he was perceived, in the past? ...Heh. Easier said than done. Money for my friend is a sort of beautiful, unattainable dream, money and the respect that comes with it. He never had any, and he had to take some hard treatment from the world because of it, and so he learned to feel unworthy of people's esteem, and when you learn something like that it's very hard to unlearn later. A wound that needs a lot of healing.
"If happiness doesn't come from... (that thing I never had and felt scorned and humiliated for not having), where does it come from??" I realized that I'm exactly the same way about guys. Never had any, learned not to expect them, decided I'd better get used to living without them, and placed the idea of having a relationship up on a sort of pedestal, thinking, That must be it, if I had that I'd be happy. But the truth is, there are people with tons of money who aren't happy. There are people who've had a hundred boyfriends or girlfriends and aren't happy. There are even people in steady, committed, loving, long-term relationships, who aren't happy (although those last probably have a better chance at happiness than some.) So, logically, that can't be it.
Enter Anthony DeMello, a Jesuit from India whose book I read a few weeks ago. The guy's practically a Buddhist, and his perspective, which he sums up in the title Awareness, is literally life-changing, if you take it seriously. He basically says, as humans, we need two things to fully flourish: to be free, and to love. To be free and to love--NOT "to be loved!" Wow. Either he's crazy or he's found the secret to life. He says that as children we are trained not just to want but to need, even to crave the approval of others--our family, our peers, our teachers--but that that approval, that "love," that pat on the back or admiring glance or certificate of achievement, is actually not necessary for our happiness. Think about a two-year-old child: if that child knows that Mom and Dad love her in a sort of existential way, that is, she trusts that they're going to keep her world turning and doesn't live in fear of abandonment--then she won't hang around Mom if she can help it. Instead, she'll go off exploring, delighted to discover more about this marvelous thing called existence. But as soon as fear of abandonment enters in, the child starts clinging, terrified to move out into the world. She becomes more preoccupied with keeping Mom's love than with growing into a fuller, more alive version of herself.
Basically, as I understand him, DeMello says that a lot of what we think is love, is actually just us trying to get our latest fix of the drug called other people's approval. My, how smart you are, Kathleen! How responsible you are! How good and generous you are to others! You look beautiful today! Good thing you got those As in school... good thing you never went to those wild frat parties in college... Good thing you wear those nice flattering tight clothes now, you're turning heads down there in Peru!... Behind every Good thing...! is an Otherwise: a vague, implied Otherwise looming just on the other side of whatever Line the other person doesn't want us to cross. Otherwise, you'd be off the dean's list and you'd end up waiting tables for the rest of your life. Otherwise, people would think you were irresponsible. Otherwise you'd be arrogant and irritating, and people would get offended and feel bad and talk about you behind your back. Otherwise you'd keep living your pathetic, restricted little boy-less life and live in fear of your friends saying, Let's play Never Have I Ever! (a truth-telling game where young people discover who's done what, what kind of experiences everyone has or hasn't had.) Otherwise you might end up as a nun someday, that is to say, end up going around with CELIBATE stamped on your forehead for everyone to stare at.
...Inasmuch as we NEED that drug of other people's approval, we are not free to go off and try something new, to gather up all our love and good intentions, and go out and make stupid mistakes, and then try to do better the next time--to grow little by little into who we authentically are. To breathe free air, beholden to nothing and no one except that which you choose to dedicate yourself to. To be fully alive.
So the lesson I take from Anthony DeMello is, I don't need you to like me. Yes, I'm talking to YOU. I may like you very much, I may even love you, but I don't need you! I would never, as DeMello says, choose your love over my own true happiness and fulfillment. So, I can choose never to go back to school and wait tables for the rest of my life if I want--and I could be happy, as long as I were truly "aware" (that's his Buddhist thing) of reality. Because the marvel of existence, he says, the wonder of entering into relationship with reality (or with God) is enough to keep a human being dancing through her days for a lifetime. I could be a nun, and derisive laughter of American culture be damned--and I could be happy! I could have a family, I could move to Paris and find myself a romantic Bohemian artist lover, I could run a bookshop, I could do whatever the (insert strong language here) I want! and I could be happy.
...I guess that means, going back to my earlier question... that I am "complete." It's just a question of recognizing it.
When I get really good at that, you'll know, because I'll be doing something I like, and I'll be happy for no particular reason.
Tuesday, September 2, 2008
It never rains but it pours
Literally speaking, this saying is not at all true in Lima. It NEVER pours in Lima and it almost never really rains either. But activity-wise, it seems to be consistently true for my life in Peru... either I have nothing to do, or I barely have a minute to sleep.
For most of August after my vacation, I was in low-key mode. Working with the choirs, doing my parish stuff, even being a good housemate and keeping up with my cleaning, cooking, trips to the market, etc. There was a week when the electricity was going out every evening any time between 7 and 9 pm, for 5 minutes up to an hour. We had our weekly Confi catechists' meeting by candlelight in the parish multipurpose room, and Miriam's goodbye party (she's going back to the US for another semester of English! so brave!) turned into a romantic candlelight dinner. I was even exercising every morning between prayer and breakfast, inspired by Rebecca's brief stay here... until my left knee got all swollen and stiff and I had to go around in sneakers for a week to get the correct knee alignment back.
Then last week, everything started happening at once. I'll try to write this the way it felt to live it...
One Wednesday, I went with the Adelante class to the Museum of Anthropological History. This involved at various moments me trying to control a group of 16 third-graders inside a museum, letting 50 children down off a bus one at a time to buy ice cream from the vendor who wisely parked his cart right outside and then gave me an ice cream sandwich for free because he was so grateful, getting asked like 15 times by Liliana why I hadn't brought a real lunch with me (i.e. no rice and chicken in a plastic tupperware, just three little cheese sandwiches and fruit--silly me! That's not lunch in Peru!) and wandering around the beach in Chorrillos with the kids and teachers (we stopped on the way back because we were running ahead of schedule, of all things.)
Father Kevin the British Priest of Awesomeness left! and his despedida (goodbye party) was sad and happy at once, everybody danced with the padrecito, I helped my girlfriends from the parish serve the snacks and drinks, there was music and pictures and delicious cake. :)
Thursday, Consuelo, BJ, Adrian, Carmen, and I went to a ceremony in rememberance of the 5th anniversary of the Comission of Truth and Reconciliation, which investigated the violence committed by both terrorists and the military during the 80's in Peru, mostly the victims were poor Quechua-speaking people of the sierra, whole villages were killed and the military was often as bad as the Senderistas. so we went to this ceremony and listened to Grupo Siembra (aka Awesome) and somebody gave a long speech and it drizzled (this being Lima in the winter.)
I got back and a friend who another friend says has a crush on me, but unfortunately is only 18 years old, so sad!, invited me to get something to eat, and I was talking with him till like 9:30 pm. Then Luis Alberto calls me and asks me to play guitar at Saturday's Mass for Santa Rosa (Saint Rose of Lima, real famous, big deal, lots of images decorated with beautiful flowers processing into Mass on the shoulders of their devotees and accompanied by blaring brass bands and light-less firecrackers that sound like gunshots... you know the type.) Me: "Ah, it's 9:30 right now... you're there with the choir practicing NOW? Um... (shrug)... okay!" Grabbed the guitar, hopped a mototaxi down to Las Brisas and practiced with them. Friday, was exhausted. Saturday: taught one little girl from my 5th grade choir a voice lesson in Delicias at 10 am, the others didn't show up. Conversation group. Played guitar in the Mass at Brisas. Did not register surprise at the fact that there was a dog wandering around the church, but found its huge head and little stubby legs hilarious. Went with Sara to the house of a friend of her mom's who was doing an actividad (you know, have a restaurant for a day, sell meat and potatoes and lettuce to everyone you know for 7 soles each in order to get some money together... like y'do.) Ate in the house sharing an armchair with Sara; this armchair plus a strung-up sheet was the wall between the kitchen and the bedroom, the floor was dirt and the roof tin and the walls just boards. Went back to my house and chatted with Sara about being 20-somethings and looking for our vocations in every sense. Confirmation group, then Luis Alberto's house for HIS actividad, better than the first one because his mom cooks awesome.
sunday played guitar in Mass, conversed in English with Enrique, went and taught my last IRFA class in the afternoon. Little party to end the semester. Talked to one of the other volunteer teachers who left her family in the selva 4 years ago and hasn't been back since, sweet, tiny, thin and kind of depressed. Choir rehearsal at night in which I sang one of my original songs which Dante helped me translate into Spanish, and then arranged voice parts for Andrea Bocelli's Con Te Partiró.
At least twice during all this wonderfulness, I squished a flea with my bare fingers. little suckers come wandering out from under your pillow like they own the place.
For most of August after my vacation, I was in low-key mode. Working with the choirs, doing my parish stuff, even being a good housemate and keeping up with my cleaning, cooking, trips to the market, etc. There was a week when the electricity was going out every evening any time between 7 and 9 pm, for 5 minutes up to an hour. We had our weekly Confi catechists' meeting by candlelight in the parish multipurpose room, and Miriam's goodbye party (she's going back to the US for another semester of English! so brave!) turned into a romantic candlelight dinner. I was even exercising every morning between prayer and breakfast, inspired by Rebecca's brief stay here... until my left knee got all swollen and stiff and I had to go around in sneakers for a week to get the correct knee alignment back.
Then last week, everything started happening at once. I'll try to write this the way it felt to live it...
One Wednesday, I went with the Adelante class to the Museum of Anthropological History. This involved at various moments me trying to control a group of 16 third-graders inside a museum, letting 50 children down off a bus one at a time to buy ice cream from the vendor who wisely parked his cart right outside and then gave me an ice cream sandwich for free because he was so grateful, getting asked like 15 times by Liliana why I hadn't brought a real lunch with me (i.e. no rice and chicken in a plastic tupperware, just three little cheese sandwiches and fruit--silly me! That's not lunch in Peru!) and wandering around the beach in Chorrillos with the kids and teachers (we stopped on the way back because we were running ahead of schedule, of all things.)
Father Kevin the British Priest of Awesomeness left! and his despedida (goodbye party) was sad and happy at once, everybody danced with the padrecito, I helped my girlfriends from the parish serve the snacks and drinks, there was music and pictures and delicious cake. :)
Thursday, Consuelo, BJ, Adrian, Carmen, and I went to a ceremony in rememberance of the 5th anniversary of the Comission of Truth and Reconciliation, which investigated the violence committed by both terrorists and the military during the 80's in Peru, mostly the victims were poor Quechua-speaking people of the sierra, whole villages were killed and the military was often as bad as the Senderistas. so we went to this ceremony and listened to Grupo Siembra (aka Awesome) and somebody gave a long speech and it drizzled (this being Lima in the winter.)
I got back and a friend who another friend says has a crush on me, but unfortunately is only 18 years old, so sad!, invited me to get something to eat, and I was talking with him till like 9:30 pm. Then Luis Alberto calls me and asks me to play guitar at Saturday's Mass for Santa Rosa (Saint Rose of Lima, real famous, big deal, lots of images decorated with beautiful flowers processing into Mass on the shoulders of their devotees and accompanied by blaring brass bands and light-less firecrackers that sound like gunshots... you know the type.) Me: "Ah, it's 9:30 right now... you're there with the choir practicing NOW? Um... (shrug)... okay!" Grabbed the guitar, hopped a mototaxi down to Las Brisas and practiced with them. Friday, was exhausted. Saturday: taught one little girl from my 5th grade choir a voice lesson in Delicias at 10 am, the others didn't show up. Conversation group. Played guitar in the Mass at Brisas. Did not register surprise at the fact that there was a dog wandering around the church, but found its huge head and little stubby legs hilarious. Went with Sara to the house of a friend of her mom's who was doing an actividad (you know, have a restaurant for a day, sell meat and potatoes and lettuce to everyone you know for 7 soles each in order to get some money together... like y'do.) Ate in the house sharing an armchair with Sara; this armchair plus a strung-up sheet was the wall between the kitchen and the bedroom, the floor was dirt and the roof tin and the walls just boards. Went back to my house and chatted with Sara about being 20-somethings and looking for our vocations in every sense. Confirmation group, then Luis Alberto's house for HIS actividad, better than the first one because his mom cooks awesome.
sunday played guitar in Mass, conversed in English with Enrique, went and taught my last IRFA class in the afternoon. Little party to end the semester. Talked to one of the other volunteer teachers who left her family in the selva 4 years ago and hasn't been back since, sweet, tiny, thin and kind of depressed. Choir rehearsal at night in which I sang one of my original songs which Dante helped me translate into Spanish, and then arranged voice parts for Andrea Bocelli's Con Te Partiró.
At least twice during all this wonderfulness, I squished a flea with my bare fingers. little suckers come wandering out from under your pillow like they own the place.
Monday, August 18, 2008
Tambogrande and Mancora
After getting back from Iquitos, we spent two nights in Lima before heading up north. One of the nights was a Friday and me, Rebecca, and Celina went out clubbing in Barranco. Rebecca made me all pretty (that's her gray shirt and her makeup job I'm wearing), but nevertheless I was snubbed by a Clark Kent lookalike (think Smallville) who started dancing with me in order to invite the three of us to go to the other disco next door, and once there started dancing with Rebecca and did not look my way for the rest of the night. However, dancing is dancing, one can't be too particular. The day after the dancing, Rebecca headed to the airport to go see Cusco and Machu Picchu, and Celina and I ran out the door at 5 pm in a miserable Lima drizzle--me dodging the Confirmation catechists who were ringing the doorbell wanting things from me, as is their custom on Saturdays at that hour--and as it were, shaking myself free of their clinging grasp and oh-so-Peruvian "pity me" whine, and running down to the corner to get a taxi to the bus station in the center of Lima. Once we were there, breathing free at last like the backpackers we were, Celina realized she'd forgotten her toothbrush. So with 20 minutes before the bus was supposed to leave, we ran three blocks down the street in the dark and the drizzle to the nearest pharmacy. We got there, the lady showed Celina the toothbrushes she had, and Celi goes, "Do you have blue?" I almost died. This was the overnight bus trip I'd reserved a week in advance, with ID'd ticketing, seat numbers, dinner and breakfast served on board, kind of like an airplane... NOT the kind of bus where you miss this one, you can get the next one. I wasn't about to miss it and give up my 95 soles for a blue toothbrush. Luckily, we made it back in time, toothbrush and all, and got to watch Legally Blonde on the way up to Piura.
I was proud of myself for being able to get us to Tambogrande without guidance (thanks to Katie, my fellow NDMV working up north, for the advice on getting the Tambogrande bus from Piura.) My friends Maria and Carlos were still there, of course, and we hung out as if it'd been a month instead of ten months since I'd been there. They even took us dancing in Tambogrande's one discoteca (being able to look out through the gap between the wall and the roof and see the stars while dancing: priceless.) Celina really enjoyed seeing the rural North, so different from Lima. My favorite moment was going around the countryside with Sister Meg in the truck, visiting catechesis groups and seeing the little caseríos, tiny groups of houses where farmers live out in the middle of nowhere. And riding in the back of the truck of course. In Lima, they only let men do that. Our second day in the north, Celina and I took a colectivo from Tambogrande to nearby Sullana to visit Rubén and Elena, the family that stayed with us earlier this year! It was great to see them again and to see them in their own home, 
although you can still feel the gaping hole in the family; they're still trying to regain their feet from the blow of losing their mom. I didn't talk to Rubén much because he kind of went off and did his own thing while the adults talked. We had great ceviche and chicha de jora, and then Celina gave us a ride in the family's mototaxi, and Elena and Mili and little Iara took us around Sullana all afternoon. I'd thought we were coming back that same day, but it got late, and before we knew it we were staying the night. I bought some snacks in a grocery store while we walked around town, because apparently this family's not used to eating dinner--lunch at 2 pm is it for the day! I also randomly found an awesome jacket and had to borrow Celina's 50 soles to buy it, and we were counting cents for the colectivo ride back to Tambogrande the next day. 
although you can still feel the gaping hole in the family; they're still trying to regain their feet from the blow of losing their mom. I didn't talk to Rubén much because he kind of went off and did his own thing while the adults talked. We had great ceviche and chicha de jora, and then Celina gave us a ride in the family's mototaxi, and Elena and Mili and little Iara took us around Sullana all afternoon. I'd thought we were coming back that same day, but it got late, and before we knew it we were staying the night. I bought some snacks in a grocery store while we walked around town, because apparently this family's not used to eating dinner--lunch at 2 pm is it for the day! I also randomly found an awesome jacket and had to borrow Celina's 50 soles to buy it, and we were counting cents for the colectivo ride back to Tambogrande the next day. 
the river behind Sullana at sunset; me and Elena with the river
(The colectivo rides, by the way, are awesome. Colectivos are station wagons, in which at least two people are expected to sit in the front (besides the driver), at least four in the backseat, and up to three or four guys who pay half price to ride in the trunk. They have a whole language of honks and hand signals by which the drivers communicate with people standing on the side of the road asking to be picked up. Our driver passed by someone signalling and pointing at a trussed-up (dead?) goat on the ground beside him... for all I know, he might have picked up the passenger and the goat if the colectivo weren't full already...)
After another day in Tambogrande, we said goodbye to Sister Meg and headed back to Piura to get Rebecca at the airport. She came off the plane giddy from her awesome Machu Picchu adventures and with lots of pictures. Although she'd gone by herself, Cusco is so full of tourists that she found a group of cool Irish guys to hang out with, and thus has pictures of herself at Machu Picchu. So then we were down to just 2 more days of vacation, and after a 3-hour bus ride, we got to Mancora very tired and ready to lie on the beach for 2 days.
And that's almost what we did... Mancora was quiet, the weather coolish at night and not too hot in the day, and the water clear and warm. The sun came and went. Celina and I had our own personal trainer for beach-exercise mornings (and jump, and squat! Walk it out! ;) love ya, Rebecca!) and there was plenty of time to lie around on the beach later in the day, eat ceviche for lunch right on the beach, and shop (a lot) for jewelry in the little artisan stands up and down the main street. I got a henna tattoo, FOUND a shell with a natural necklace-hole in it on the beach, and got it made into a necklace. (I also got a ton of mosquito bites, mostly on my FACE, because our room had no screens to keep the little buggers from coming through the wooden lattice around the door! I've never been so grateful to concealer in my life.) 
That's us drinking the juice out of a coconut and then eating it! Sunburned? Who's sunburned? Not me. That charming pinkness you see faded into something resembling a "tan" (insofar as I can ever be said to tan). Rebecca, meanwhile, learned painfully that the tropical sun is stronger than the sun in the US... but didn't look burned at all. On the right you can see my gorgeous all-natural shell necklace! aka, free jewelry present from GOD. hehe. I was really, really thankful for the opportunity to rest and just escape from Lima. When we got back I crashed into bed before Rebecca even left for the airport, and mostly stayed there for the next 18 hours.
Wednesday, August 13, 2008
The Selva
So, we left Iquitos by car, drove an hour and a half down to a little river-port town, got into a motor boat, and two to three hours later (I had no idea of the exact time during any of our time in the jungle) we were in canoes being paddled by our guides to the campsite. It was a few little houses on the riverside, one for guests with two mosquito-netted beds on the floor of each room, another for the guides who basically live there, and a dining room. 
I never expected to go to the Amazon Rainforest and feel at home. But to my surprise, I got there... and felt totally comfortable, like I'd lived there for years! More 
than comfortable, I felt I belonged there. I guess it was just like going back to my childhood of tramping around the backyard woods in boots... except that this isn't just woods, it's SUPER MEGA AWESOME WOODS!! There were those giant trees you always see pictures of, and monkeys, and tarantulas, and river dolphins jumping, and tons of beautiful brilliant butterflies, and bright-colored birds. No jaguars or anacondas though. Just around eight million very determined mosquitoes. We lived slathered in DEET for two days.
than comfortable, I felt I belonged there. I guess it was just like going back to my childhood of tramping around the backyard woods in boots... except that this isn't just woods, it's SUPER MEGA AWESOME WOODS!! There were those giant trees you always see pictures of, and monkeys, and tarantulas, and river dolphins jumping, and tons of beautiful brilliant butterflies, and bright-colored birds. No jaguars or anacondas though. Just around eight million very determined mosquitoes. We lived slathered in DEET for two days.Our activities included: seeing the river dolphins and swimming near their island (Rebecca tried to start personal-training me on this island, which meant I ran around and did jumping jacks and jump-squats (aka "torture") in my bathing suit on a stretch of sand in the middle of the Yarapa 
River.); going out by canoe at night to see animals and discovering a very very large river rat; walking around behind the guide, Lucho, who cut through the plants with a machete when necessary, to find the monkeys on "monkey island" and play with them (they're so used to tourists they will come down from the trees and climb you or, I got the feeling, fight you if necessary for the bits of banana and oranges you have in your hand); and going actually camping camping the second night.
River.); going out by canoe at night to see animals and discovering a very very large river rat; walking around behind the guide, Lucho, who cut through the plants with a machete when necessary, to find the monkeys on "monkey island" and play with them (they're so used to tourists they will come down from the trees and climb you or, I got the feeling, fight you if necessary for the bits of banana and oranges you have in your hand); and going actually camping camping the second night. YES THAT IS A REAL MONKEY I'M HOLDING! Ok, so he didn't like me, he liked the banana...
That second night was definitely interesting. The guides whacked vines off the trees with their machetes to string up each person's hammock, then strung mosquito netting around the hammocks and put a plastic tarp up over each one. Then it started pouring so hard that each person had to get in their little house, the dinner fire went out, and that was that until morning! Rebecca and I passed the time singing Disney songs from our neighboring mosquito nets until the rain got too loud to hear. And then there was nothing to do but sleep in our little coccoons, and wait for breakfast in the morning. I was a little concerned about being bitten on the butt by mosquitos when I went out to pee in the middle of the night... but luckily I wasn't. And apart from that I knew there was nothing to be afraid of in the woods.
The first night, in a way, was more incredible, because of the stars that seemed to be FIGHTING FOR SPACE in a sky crowded like a football stadium! Huge, brilliant stars that looked like they'd invaded the territory from another sky only that day... because clearly there were never that many of them every other time I've looked!...
I also got to take a shower in the river, on a bright sunny blue-sky day, and feel like a mermaid. :) And talk to the camp shaman, who told us about plant-medicinal cures for everything including cancer, who on the first night could be heard singing a low chant as part of an ayahuasca ceremony for one of the tourists who was feeling brave enough to try it. (Ayahuasca is a plant that makes you see visions... I was put off even considering it by the fact that it also makes you throw up.) And I got to talk to--ahem, I mean, I got to see--trees like this one.
The food was plain but good: rice and fried sliced bananas at almost every meal, plus maybe some chicken, eggs, or else an ENTIRE FISH (gutted, but still, there was the head and tail so it counts as entire!!) battered, fried and put on your plate. Everything was fried and if not for all the walking, I'd have gained weight. As it was the backs of my legs got really sore from all the clambering around in boots, and my arms from rowing in the canoes.
The food was plain but good: rice and fried sliced bananas at almost every meal, plus maybe some chicken, eggs, or else an ENTIRE FISH (gutted, but still, there was the head and tail so it counts as entire!!) battered, fried and put on your plate. Everything was fried and if not for all the walking, I'd have gained weight. As it was the backs of my legs got really sore from all the clambering around in boots, and my arms from rowing in the canoes.
I was sad to leave. But as I couldn't really have afforded another day, it was just as well that our plane back out of Iquitos was on Thursday night...Monday, July 28, 2008
Tomorrow
is our AMAZON JUNGLE TOUR!! 3 days 2 nights in the jungle! I can't believe it, I never thought I'd be doing this since I didn't come prepared with camping gear, etc, but the professional guide company arranges all that. We spent all morning booking the tour, talking to different agents, negotiating prices. There's a guy from Te
xas here who runs a restaurant called The Yellow Rose of Texas, but he used to be the director of tourism for the city, so he gave us all the best names to go to and told us not to pay more than $35 or $40 per day. So after our 
Rose of Texas breakfast we got our Amazon tour worked out!! We're going with a young couple from Denmark and a Peruvian guide named Alex who is very cool.The rest of the day we've spent wandering around Iquitos looking for things like a long-sleeved T-shirt for those jungle hikes--which involved me trying on a lot of men's t-shirts to the amusement of the Peruvians working in the stores; the women's ones are too tight for jungle hiking!--a
nd the artesanía market, which involved a cool bus ride that let us see a lot of the city. We've seen the Amazon River, houses built on stilts, awesome cloud formations, rain and sun at the same time, a rainbow, and almost best of all, it smells like summer rain! AAAH! Plus Iquiteños using mototaxis and motorcycles like Americans use SUVs--constantly and recklessly! 
These are all pictures from the city of Iquitos itself.
Sunday, July 27, 2008
I'M IN IQUITOS!!
aka the AMAZON RAINFOREST!! Woo-hoo, so long gray chilly Lima, hello warm humid jungle!
The Tree of Life is found in Iquitos. Fyi.
The Tree of Life is found in Iquitos. Fyi.Rebecca got in at 4:15 am on Saturday and I went with Carlos the taxista to get her at the airport. It was cool to see her reactions to seeing Lima for the first time--it reminded me of how I felt over a year and a half ago, coming out of the airport and driving down along the whole stretch of highway next to the ocean, from the north side of Lima to the south... the desert sand, palm trees, the sandy rocky cliffs towering on the side of the road. Yesterday we walked around Tupac a lot, went to the market (poor Rebecca the vegetarian, walking by the stands with chickens cut open and dangling by one foot with all their organs on display looking like little multicolored squishy balls! that and the entire pig hanging on a hook on the corner of the meat row...). She was tickled with the mototaxis but we didn't get to ride one just then.
We walked up to the house in Delicias and looked out from the roof over the recycling yard behind the house, which basically looks like a huge junkyard, with the family that owns it walking around in the junk and sorting things, kids running around in the yard throwing rocks at the random roosters strutting through the recycling... all the brown and dustiness and half-built houses... and about a mile downhill, the hazy blue-gray ocean on the horizon. Plus the randomness so Peruvian I couldn't ever have arranged for her to see these things: a guy getting off the back of a bus with a huge wheel, just this wheel that looked like the back half of a bicycle; a dog wandering around in church and scooting under the benches; a musical/dance show set up in the middle of the street for Fiestas Patrias (Independence Day holidays) that included dancing bears (not actual bears, people in bear costumes) and dancing girls...
Then Saturday afternoon we spent getting her a ticket to Cusco, because Machu Picchu is just worth seeing. This task took us to Jockey Plaza, the ritziest mall in Lima, which is exactly like an upscale American mall. A bit different from the mercado. By the time we got home we were so exhausted we went to bed at 9 pm.
I wasn't even going to go to church this morning, because I'm on vacation, and if I'm there (I thought) I'll get dragged into leading the music, with everyone asking me what number every song is as if I had it all in my head, while THEY are the ones holding the notebook that has such things written down. Grrr, so typically irresponsible...! But the thought of not going made me so sad, like something missing in you way deep down. What can I say? I'm hooked, a church junkie. I need my Jesus fix!! But I also needed to just go and sit and not be in charge of organizing music for once. So Rebecca was my excuse. We sat in the back together and I pointedly ignored the choir's not-too-subtle glances in my direction. The music really was kind of pathetic without guitar, but that wasn't MY fault (at least not exclusively). Other people could have been there to play. Padre Kevin, the totally awesome visiting English priest, even gave Rebecca a public welcome, much to her embarassment. She then had to get used to all my friends and lots of random people as well greeting her with the cheek-kiss.
And then this afternoon was the flight! And we got off the airport and it was WARM and HUMID, almost like this time of year in Washington DC! I haven't felt real warm summer weather for so long! The kind that just wraps you in humidity and soaks heat, instead of cold, into your bones! It's warm and there's no AC in our hostel (The Hobo Hideout!!! hehe), but I'm loving it after the Lima chill. Plus, check out the awesome jungle bungalow accomodations!
We walked up to the house in Delicias and looked out from the roof over the recycling yard behind the house, which basically looks like a huge junkyard, with the family that owns it walking around in the junk and sorting things, kids running around in the yard throwing rocks at the random roosters strutting through the recycling... all the brown and dustiness and half-built houses... and about a mile downhill, the hazy blue-gray ocean on the horizon. Plus the randomness so Peruvian I couldn't ever have arranged for her to see these things: a guy getting off the back of a bus with a huge wheel, just this wheel that looked like the back half of a bicycle; a dog wandering around in church and scooting under the benches; a musical/dance show set up in the middle of the street for Fiestas Patrias (Independence Day holidays) that included dancing bears (not actual bears, people in bear costumes) and dancing girls...
Then Saturday afternoon we spent getting her a ticket to Cusco, because Machu Picchu is just worth seeing. This task took us to Jockey Plaza, the ritziest mall in Lima, which is exactly like an upscale American mall. A bit different from the mercado. By the time we got home we were so exhausted we went to bed at 9 pm.
I wasn't even going to go to church this morning, because I'm on vacation, and if I'm there (I thought) I'll get dragged into leading the music, with everyone asking me what number every song is as if I had it all in my head, while THEY are the ones holding the notebook that has such things written down. Grrr, so typically irresponsible...! But the thought of not going made me so sad, like something missing in you way deep down. What can I say? I'm hooked, a church junkie. I need my Jesus fix!! But I also needed to just go and sit and not be in charge of organizing music for once. So Rebecca was my excuse. We sat in the back together and I pointedly ignored the choir's not-too-subtle glances in my direction. The music really was kind of pathetic without guitar, but that wasn't MY fault (at least not exclusively). Other people could have been there to play. Padre Kevin, the totally awesome visiting English priest, even gave Rebecca a public welcome, much to her embarassment. She then had to get used to all my friends and lots of random people as well greeting her with the cheek-kiss.
And then this afternoon was the flight! And we got off the airport and it was WARM and HUMID, almost like this time of year in Washington DC! I haven't felt real warm summer weather for so long! The kind that just wraps you in humidity and soaks heat, instead of cold, into your bones! It's warm and there's no AC in our hostel (The Hobo Hideout!!! hehe), but I'm loving it after the Lima chill. Plus, check out the awesome jungle bungalow accomodations!
We took a mototaxi from the airport to the hostel, and wow, the driving here is just like Lima, except the vast majority of vehicles on the street are motorcycles or mototaxis. There are palm trees everywhere and it's hard to see anything else because, well, it's dark. Will check back in at some point after that changes. Also, odd but nice detail: I don't really feel hungry like I normally would in Lima after eating what I've eaten today. Not as cold = not as hungry.
Let my two weeks of backpacker-adventurer-being begin!!
Let my two weeks of backpacker-adventurer-being begin!!
Monday, July 21, 2008
Confi = :)
Our group acting out an imaginary trial of parents by their teenagers... just one of our fun, life-examining activities in Confi!Yesterday I got a nice break from playing the guitar at Mass in the morning: we had the first of this year's jornadas, or workshop-type meetings, with the teenagers in the first year of the Confirmation program from all four sectors of our parish. Normally each sector meets separately every week to talk about that week's topic, but this was an opportunity for all the participants to meet each other, hang out, and... mostly just meet each other. At the preparation meeting with the catechists, I was all like, "What's the topic? Who's going to talk about what? How are we going to give them good, deep moments of reflection, etc?" Instead, the main focus of the day was dinamicas. Dinamicas are group games kind of like ice-breakers, but way more elaborate and usually silly. My fellow catechist Any is the queen of dinamicas. Some of her classics:
"Casa-Inquilino." Two people hold hands to form the house, and one person stands in the middle as the inquilino. (An inquilino, it seems from context, is either a renter, or a post that the house is constructed around. Living in another language makes life so much more interesting sometimes.) One person is left out. The person outside calls out either "Casa," "Inquilino," or "Earthquake." If they say Casa, the house, without letting go their hands, runs to find another inquilino. If the caller says Inquilino, the inquilino runs to find another house, and the caller ducks in too, leaving a new person out, a la musical chairs. If the caller says Earthquake, the houses break down and everybody scrambles to form new groups of three. (some Peruvian reality there too.) If you're left out three times, you have to dance La Bamba at the end, in front of everybody.
"The Postoururi Iceberg." This one has some environmental conscience to it. Each group of five or six people receives five or six pieces of newspaper, which they place together on the floor. When the caller says Postoururi Iceberg (a famous iceberg in Peru's Andes), everyone stands on top of the newspaper. This accomplished successfully, one of the sheets of newspaper is taken away, and everyone has to stand on the now much smaller iceberg. And so on until you're all hugging each other, balancing on tiptoe, picking people up, etc. to all fit onto one sheet of newspaper at the end. The group who touches ground with a foot first has to dance.
And my personal favorite, "The little kitten" (el gatito.) The person who's "it" chooses a victim from the circle. They go up to that person and start acting like a cat. Meeeeoooowww, pawing, rubbing up against their leg, etc. If the person laughs, they become "it" and have to go be a cat to someone else. This is hilariously embarassing and a truly wonderful icebreaker, in terms of actually breaking the awkwardness in a newly formed group. I highly recommend it for corporate meetings, if anyone out there is running such things.
Besides the dinamicas, we sang (translation: Kathleen spent an hour and a half frantically typing up a song sheet the day before); saw a depressing video about kids who work on the streets in Lima to survive; listened to a VERY brief talk on the dimensions of reality that we talk about in Confirmation: personal, family, social-political, and religious; and had no time to reflect on those dimensions in groups because we'd started too late and the coordinator wasn't there to move things along. (Remind me to complain later about the way group leaders in Peru tend to leave everything to everyone else, and then yell at everyone else for their incompentence, claiming that "my being late wasn't actually being late, it was to see if the catechists could live up to their responsibility and run the meeting themselves," a sort of putting the underlings to the test... and the underlings accept it, even blame themselves for not measuring up! This is not the first time this has happened to me and I strongly strongly disagree with this management style.)
The whole thing was kind of disorganized (SURPRISE), but it was really fun. At one point I also ended up doing a skit with a group of jovenes about roosters, and then changing the words of a popular song to present our group as The Roosters who wake up the world to live passionate, religious lives. I couldn't believe how enthusiastically all the groups made up dances to introduce themselves to the rest--really good dances, too! It looked like they were ALL members of a cheer team or dance squad. You'd never catch a group of American teenagers willingly dancing in front of their peers. But Peruvians just have rhythm, and for them it's natural, they're not ashamed of it. Some pictures of the group presentations:
"Casa-Inquilino." Two people hold hands to form the house, and one person stands in the middle as the inquilino. (An inquilino, it seems from context, is either a renter, or a post that the house is constructed around. Living in another language makes life so much more interesting sometimes.) One person is left out. The person outside calls out either "Casa," "Inquilino," or "Earthquake." If they say Casa, the house, without letting go their hands, runs to find another inquilino. If the caller says Inquilino, the inquilino runs to find another house, and the caller ducks in too, leaving a new person out, a la musical chairs. If the caller says Earthquake, the houses break down and everybody scrambles to form new groups of three. (some Peruvian reality there too.) If you're left out three times, you have to dance La Bamba at the end, in front of everybody.
"The Postoururi Iceberg." This one has some environmental conscience to it. Each group of five or six people receives five or six pieces of newspaper, which they place together on the floor. When the caller says Postoururi Iceberg (a famous iceberg in Peru's Andes), everyone stands on top of the newspaper. This accomplished successfully, one of the sheets of newspaper is taken away, and everyone has to stand on the now much smaller iceberg. And so on until you're all hugging each other, balancing on tiptoe, picking people up, etc. to all fit onto one sheet of newspaper at the end. The group who touches ground with a foot first has to dance.
And my personal favorite, "The little kitten" (el gatito.) The person who's "it" chooses a victim from the circle. They go up to that person and start acting like a cat. Meeeeoooowww, pawing, rubbing up against their leg, etc. If the person laughs, they become "it" and have to go be a cat to someone else. This is hilariously embarassing and a truly wonderful icebreaker, in terms of actually breaking the awkwardness in a newly formed group. I highly recommend it for corporate meetings, if anyone out there is running such things.
Besides the dinamicas, we sang (translation: Kathleen spent an hour and a half frantically typing up a song sheet the day before); saw a depressing video about kids who work on the streets in Lima to survive; listened to a VERY brief talk on the dimensions of reality that we talk about in Confirmation: personal, family, social-political, and religious; and had no time to reflect on those dimensions in groups because we'd started too late and the coordinator wasn't there to move things along. (Remind me to complain later about the way group leaders in Peru tend to leave everything to everyone else, and then yell at everyone else for their incompentence, claiming that "my being late wasn't actually being late, it was to see if the catechists could live up to their responsibility and run the meeting themselves," a sort of putting the underlings to the test... and the underlings accept it, even blame themselves for not measuring up! This is not the first time this has happened to me and I strongly strongly disagree with this management style.)
The whole thing was kind of disorganized (SURPRISE), but it was really fun. At one point I also ended up doing a skit with a group of jovenes about roosters, and then changing the words of a popular song to present our group as The Roosters who wake up the world to live passionate, religious lives. I couldn't believe how enthusiastically all the groups made up dances to introduce themselves to the rest--really good dances, too! It looked like they were ALL members of a cheer team or dance squad. You'd never catch a group of American teenagers willingly dancing in front of their peers. But Peruvians just have rhythm, and for them it's natural, they're not ashamed of it. Some pictures of the group presentations:
This is me and my group, the Roosters (we were given that name... and had to find each other in the crown by going around making rooster noises, just like everyone else was making the noise of the animal on their little card...)
In our weekly Confirmation meetings, there's always a good chunk of dinamicas time, as well as singing, a topic of discussion such as family, parents, finding God in our personal history, friends, etc. I'm really enjoying the group and glad that I can contribute with my guitar (as always!) and by leading the Bible reading section (usually). Even in Spanish, I feel more at home with the read-and-reflect than with the dinamicas or with spontaneously talking in front of the group.Rebecca comes this Friday! and my kiddies are singing the national anthem at the Fiestas Patrias celebration in the school, and then-- My Vacation!
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