Striving for More

There's more to my life in Tacna as I know it than I can see right at this present moment. Nothing too philosophical to that statement, simply a reflection as I sit in my new home, the jv house where Emily and I have finally moved into a month after our arrival. It is hard to sum up my first month here because there are days where it feels like I've been here for months and there are days where I feel I have just arrived.

There's more to the bread man on a bicycle that strolls through my neighborhood with the biggest basket you have ever seen piled high with an assortment of breads. There's more to my familia Pilon of a host family that I lived with for three weeks.  There's more to the community of support that surrounds me.  I hope there's more to living in the upstairs room ( we like to call it the penthouse) where I am awakened to the sounds of Tacna and its people early in the mornings. There's more to the awesome team of people I will work with who so enthusiastically zumba-ed with me at the end of the year Christmas Compartir (get-together to share food & most often times dance). There's more to buying corn at the market (say choclo not maiz, “para pollo” means to feed the chickens, not to cook chicken..) Most importantly though, there has to be more to the horn I hear in the neighborhood that sounds like its straight out of Narnia! Quite a lovely surprise when I found out that the Narnia horn announces the arrival of none other than the ice cream man (who sells ice cream out of a bright yellow banana looking cooler/tri-cycle).

As I have dived head first into a new country, a new place to call home, it is no surprise that there have been things that I have had to become accustomed to.  For example, when we have menu here (lunch at the market, or any restaurant) the names of dishes will sound incredibly foreign and asking the casera (hostess) what's in it... well you really are better off just picking a dish and being surprised because 99% of the time it's very different than anything you've ever had and unless it's cuy (guinea pig) you will probably like it. (*disclaimer* some people actually enjoy guinea pig, my 5 yr old host sister loves it, I however am too accustomed to having a cuy as “ una mascota,” a pet... hmm)

Besides trying new foods and learning new spanish words like “chompa” meaning sweater, this Christmas I was blessed to be living with a new family who I shared the holiday with, my host family (3 aunts, 2 uncles, 1 grandpa, 2 little daughters, 1 cousin around my age with an 11 month old baby, 3 dogs, 1 cat, 4 kittens all under ONE roof).  The other volunteers have always told us of how great of an opportunity it is to have a host family and how wonderful the experience is.  After learning to be ok with being a guest, not feeling bad about being given things, and after some dancing with my new little sisters I think I finally got comfortable.

When it came time for me to move out and into the jv house, it was a flashback to move-in day at Spring Hill minus all the stuff.  7 people in a small taxi pulled into Habitat, my neighborhood.  With promises to visit and dance again and much gratitude for their hospitality, I took a picture with my host family outside our house and hugged them goodbye.

My little sister Mikaela started crying and hugged me tight and I knew,

I knew there was more to this. More to this whole host family thing.  SO much more to these two years where I will visit my host family and BE a part of their lives. It is so easy for them to call me their new sister and for every extended family to ask to speak to me on the phone and also wish ME a Merry Christmas. I learned so much from them in such a short time about culture and about life.  They were given to me just as I was given to them. But they also learned from me, the cuban-american from alabama who paints her eyebrows on, whose cooking skills amount to tres leches cake, and likes to dance. 

In fact, there's not much more in this life that you need than good people, the one's who take you in, care for you, feed you, love you, offering you THEIR best. Their best may not be your best but its given with all their heart.

Con Corazon baby.

***me and my host sister Mika pictured above :)

A Grateful Heart: Un Corazón Agradecido

The gratitude I had this thanksgiving certainly weighed heavy on my heart this time around.

 I am incredibly grateful for being able to spend this holiday with my family, for the gift of these last 4 months, for the journey that lies ahead, for all the beautiful people in my life (new friends & old friends alike), for those who donated to my Send Me to Serve, for the incredible support team that stands behind me, for closing one chapter of my life (always remembering the experiences Spring Hill College provided me-forming me and shaping me into who I am today), for every trip I took since, for visiting the people I love and just BEING with them, for one of my last tastes of America being a slice or maybe two of my all-time favorite pumpkin pie (thanks Ileana!) 

 As I savored one of my favorite bits of the holiday, I like to think I have savored every moment since my invitation to JVC back in April. It's been a wild ride, taking a leap of faith after I was accepted into grad school and remembering to follow my heart and that peculiar pull in the right direction and trusting it was where God wanted me to be no matter what it meant. It didn't steer me wrong. I said goodbye to the place where I grew so much, the hill, where part of my heart will always lie, on that avenue of the oaks (even though we didn't get to walk down it on graduation day as tradition has it) I got to stand beside two of my best friends as they married the loves of their lives, reveling in the beauty of those hot summer days and the beauty of unconditional love. I got to spend a whole month with my best friend/my cousin/my sister with graduation festivities, weddings, and visiting the happiest place on earth together (Disney) for the first time since the baby days!

Today I give thanks with a grateful heart for the time well spent and now for arriving in Tacna safely and jumping in to this whole new world that is this desert.
Black Friday was my departure day and I was packed a week in advance weighing my suitcase countless times. My last week in the states included blissfully attending a bonfire with my brothers and old friends, picking out the Christmas tree with my parents and helping mom decorate it as tradition has it.  After thanksgiving dinner, dessert was at our family friends house also as tradition has it.  Last year's black friday was commenced with a shopping extravaganza so of course this year needed its own mini black friday festivities.  After an hour of galavanting around Target (including hidiing in a bed of body pillows for a brief silly moment) I was ready to take my nap before my 6 am flight.  When time came, I found myself in a hug line saying goodbye to my parents, brothers and family friends (basically my second family of 4 other brothers and my little sis Nicole (who are SO amazing for coming to send me off at 4:30 am!).  Though I don't like to dwell on the intensity of the moment because there are really no words that do it justice, I know that as soon as I left security, this was it, the time was here, was real and a whole new world lied ahead.  This is my life now. A Jesuit Volunteer sent to serve the people of Tacna, Peru.

 I finally slept for two hours on the last leg of the trip, lima to tacna, and awoke in awe to the sands that lay below me, the sand dunes (Cerros) of the Atacama Desert that streches into Tacna, Peru and a pretty big chunk of the Peruvian coast if not all of it!  After Emily and I loaded up our luggage onto luggage carts, we simply turned the corner to find the exit of the airport and our new family of Jesuit Volunteers (Megan, John, Allie, Thomas, Kelly) running to open our Bienvenidos a Tacna Emily & Christie banner as soon as we walked their way. Fr. Fred Green was even at the airport to greet us! He is in his 90s and the most loved Jesuit priest of Tacna, who built the Jesuit schools Miguel Pro and Colegio Cristo Rey!  The Centro Cristo Rey's van, from this point on known as the “white pearl” caravaned us and our luggage to our new home in the neighborhood called Habitat with Pedro, a volunteer from Spain as our chauffeur. Since my arrival I have encountered so much here!

 It's mango season here (mango is my all time favorite fruit)!

The Spaniard volunteers are the Jesuit Volunteers' best friends.

Arguing with the Spaniards can be anything from whether putting a banana in the fridge speeds the ripening process up to just yelling at each other for the sake of being loud..

“Choquelo” is the equivalent of saying “high five”

Peruvian herga or slang is very prevalent and hard to understand but will supposedly be learned over time...

Public transportation and the mercado are “experiences”

I had a pretty amazing hamburger the other day topped with palta (avocado) sauce, chimichurri sauce, & papitas (fries) from a street vendor who has a history of being our friend and is a treat for us every now and then.

I am planning to write a blog post solely dedicated to the sounds of tacna (stay tuned)

stray dogs are EVERYWHERE

it doesn't rain here, it mists instead (I experienced my first mist the other day)

Ceviche was my first meal here and I absolutely loved it! I may have to frequent the corner restaurant more often..

There are more than 150 types of corn “choclos”

my favorite at the moment is “canchitas” (a certain type of corn that is popped like popcorn and served with Ceviche and as a snack)

Chicha morada is a juice made from purple corn, lime and sugar that is served with every meal even at El Pollon, the Peruvian version of a Pollo Tropical (fast food (cuban) in Miami ) except its equip with a bowl of french fries, a full chicken on a platter and a bowl of artfully displayed salad avocado included and chicha morada.

John's host brother Fernando is bound to make fun of my cuban spanish speaking accent countless more times.

TacBloc, otherwise known as the Tacna JV house, my new home, has the best brownie recipe of all time! Seriously they get better every batch and I will definitely be pocketing the recipe.

Jeff Thielman, a former Jesuit Volunteer, founded the Centro Cristo Rey del Nino y adolescente where I will work part-time (looking forward to reading his book “Volunteering with the Poor in Peru” soon)

January will consist of what's called Mes de Mision where high school sophomores participate in mission work in an impoverished area in the outskirts of Tacna, possibly referred to as “the woods” with little or no trees, running water is not a thing, nor will any form of communication be...

Vinani and Baranquillas are both outskirt districts of Tacna and proyectos of the Centro Cristo Rey that I may have the opportunity to work more closely with which I am very excited about!

So as this week comes to an end, I await another week of ICO, In country orientation, where I will accompany Kelly to work at Fe y Alegria in the mornings (the school I will work at) and possibly teach english class with her this week and I will accompany Joanna (an independent U.S. Volunteer from Chicago who is pretty awesome) at the Centro Cristo Rey where I will work in the afternoons! I will learn more about my roles at each placement site soon and will officially begin work there in mid-February. Until then, I will live my host family until Christmas time when I move into the JV house once Allie, Thomas, and Kelly leave us to head home to the states.  I will also be attending several despedidas where I imagine I will be fully immersed into food, dancing etc..

Peruvians are incredibly welcoming and are just the sweetest people. I have been welcomed with open arms and a kiss on the cheek by every person I have met (of which I hope to remember everyone's names sometime soon)  The same goes for the Peruvian children! Being greeted on the street with an “Hola Miss!” or “Hola Profe Christie!” just warms my heart even if the hugs and besitos make me arrive late to every destination. :)

So until next time my family and friends as the Peruvians say, much like the Italians (who interestingly enough had some influence here back in the day) . . .

Ciao!

Powerful beyond Measure

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, and fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people will not feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It is not just in some of us; it is in everyone and as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give others permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.  -Marianne Williamson 

(a quote shared with me by one of my best friends Caro, currently a 2nd year JV in Belize around this time last year, funny how much more it means to me now, a whole year later)

Reaching the t-minus 1 month mark before my departure came at me ¨slowly then all at once¨  (to quote the beautiful love story that is TFIOS )  However, I am forever grateful for the opportunity to encounter Boston and Cape Cod at that very milemarker with some of my favorite peoples embarking on the same adventure, some on different continents, the jesuit volunteer international journey none the less.  The JV Class of 2014.
The group that joked about having a late departure reunion-love fest in Kansas (what we saw as the only convenient place to host because it served as a midpoint for the west coasters, east coasters, midwesterners & southern gals)
Next thing you know, here we all are staring at the galaxy of stars above us on the Cape and realizing that most of us will have a whole new set of stars to look at in just a matter of a few short weeks (pretty cool huh?)
Time on the Cape was spent reflecting on this transition period, bonding over the experience, living in community, cooking, reading, resting, tea-drinking, playing card games, participating in a murder mystery game, visiting Boston, watching the World Series, making s´mores, walking the beach, exploring and just spending some good quality time together.  We even phoned some of our other late departure friends who couldn´t make it to the reunion.
What struck me most about the weekend though were two things:
1) how well we all lived together.
 It makes me more excited to live in my community come the end of the month as well as cook meals (between the 9 of us, we had some pretty delicious recipes & everything just ran so smoothly)
2) as cheesy as it sounds, how much we shine. as individuals and together. We really do bring out the best in each other, maybe even challenge each other in a good way of course.

You could say we´ve only known each other for two weeks
but it sure feels like a whole lot more.
the beginning of a beautiful friendship I´ll say...
and I´ve got a feeling that it´s powerful beyond measure.

When the Heart Waits

Hi friends, Happy Friday :)  

So JVC has been sending us resources all throughout this time before our departure since that first email of acceptance into the program.  It has become especially important in these waiting months since the Big O and since there hasn't been one for a while, I was pretty excited today when I received that familiar manila envelope.

Here is a quote I want to share with you all from Sue Monk Kidd's When the Heart Waits: Spritual Direction for Life's Sacred Questions  that really hit home for me.

"When you're waiting, you're not doing nothing. You're doing the most important something there is.  You're allowing your soul to grow up. If you can't be still and wait, you can't become what God created you to be"  

**image taken at Wanderlust 108 this past weekend in Atlanta
http://wanderlust.com/yoga-festivals/ mindful time well spent with one of my best friends Lauren sporting flash tattoos and my new handprinted "Con Corazón" tank :)

Que Viva Cristo Rey

Que Viva!

So as part of this JVC journey, JVC requires each JV to set a goal and fundraise before their departure.  So with the advice of JVC to share our stories, that's exactly what I did. After fundraising at my local parishes' masses this past weekend with a 5 minute speech to the parishioners after communion, I gave my speech one last time at the Spanish mass.  Kudos to my dad for telling me to end it with "Que Viva Cristo Rey" As I stood up that one last time, still nervous even though it was the fifth time up on that podium, when I reached the end, I looked up from my paper and I said it, 

"y finalmente, que viva Cristo Rey"  "and finally, long live Christ the king"

The overwhelming "que viva" that was heard in that moment was the perfect way to end my weekend and my fundraising efforts. 

"mi corazon esta contento"

 "my heart is happy" 

Having people of all ages thank me for inspiring them is something I wouldn't trade for the world. 

I am incredibly grateful to all those who have donated to my SMTS fund making my new adventure possible.  But more than anything, thank you for reminding me why I am doing this.  Leaving behind the comforts of the US in just about two months, I will be making a sacrifice but its a mindful choice to live simply and for the people that I serve. There's something about understanding what sacrifice is that drives me and hearing the conviction in that "que viva" of the spanish congregation was quite the fuel to my passion.

So here's to living in the magic of the present moment as my recent readings of Thich Nhat Hanh have brought me to see and remembering that "A donde el corazon se Inclina, el pie camina" 

where the heart inclines you, your feet will take you.

THANK YOU

for sending me to serve.

P.S. Here's a picture of me and my Tacna buddy taken at the Big O, Emily and I will be in Tacna together living and working for the next two years as JVs. :)  
Her worksite/school is named Colegio Cristo Rey and I will work part-time at el Centro Cristo Rey del Niño Adolescente.

The Big O

Be awkward, dorky and stupid...
     Those were among many of the words of advice the JVC and RDC Class of 2014 encountered during our Orientation (better known as the big O) this summer at the University of Scranton. This beautiful quaint town believe it or not, became like a new home for us volunteers as we cherished the ice cream of DeNaples Center, laughed, smanced and tornadoed on the floors of Gavigan Hall, and simply lived alongside our now new 'family.'

   But what did I really learn these past weeks? 

     Attending about 3 lectures a day, engaging in morning/evening prayer and daily mass, hosting and attending community nights, listening and learning and practicing silence are among the many things that we "did."  However as Scott's (a Rostro de Cristo volunteer serving in Ecuador for the next year) shirt once said, "aspire not to have more but to be more."  These words from Archbishop Oscar Romero have challenged me.  It's not about all the knowledge that I now HAVE thanks to these past two weeks of orientation.  It's about how am I going to BE for these next 4 months awaiting my departure. **The same stands for the amount of things I think I HAVE to pack when really it is (in simple living terms) about what is it that I need to just BE**

    Midway into our 2 weeks at Scranton, 40ish of us volunteers were met with a challenge.  The challenge to be silent for a total of 38 hours.  A challenge that not only did not allow us to speak to each other but did not allow us to make eye contact, smile or hug each other either.  Talk about going against every aspect of southern hospitality!  I related the feeling to that of the practice of being a bad listener that I had experienced earlier in the week.  As a fellow volunteer discussed a minor problem of his to me, I had to sit there and act uninterested to fit the mold of a bad listener (sorry Eddie!).  It was awkward, made me feel like a dork and it sure seemed silly.  But, it was natural to feel uncomfortable in this position of doing everything in your power to ignore the person right in front of you. So naturally, this silent retreat seemed even more daunting of a task.

      Boarding the school bus to the Chapman Lake retreat center may have been one of the scarier moments of my life.  Silly I know, but I had no idea where this bus was going and it sure seemed like nobody told the bus driver about the silent business because he looked rather confused. AAAWKWARD.  But what it comes down to is trust.  As a Jesuit Volunteer, I am entrusting myself to the organization of JVC and all its branches but most importantly to God.  God brought me here, God's going to walk me through it.  So let's fast forward to my "walk with God."

      It is amazing what a whole day with God can do to you.  I woke up the first morning of our silent retreat with a sense of adventure. When I needed to clear my head I decided to go for a run around the lake.  Our gracious host, Campus Minister Kathy, had explained to us in our silence that the path around the lake ran about 4 miles and was pretty hilly.  Those hills were no joke.  My run with God quickly turned into my walk with God.  Upon completing the "trail of death" as many of us volunteers liked to call it (once we could speak again), I was excited to sit in an ENO for the very first time (very comfortable hammocks of nylon like material). Ian had left a note at lunch explaining to everyone that we were allowed to use his hammock.  However, there were two hammocks hanging outside and Ian did not specify what color his was... So of course I totally sat in the wrong hammock and as I was swallowed whole by it (it was a double) I laughed at myself-silently of course. Still it was glorious.  As we all broke the silence together at the end of the retreat sharing our experiences, we were closer.  Despite being apart essentially for the past 38 hours, we experienced this silence together and were brought closer because of it.  

    I couldn't imagine experiencing these last two weeks without these amazing volunteers by my side. We truly lived.  The talent show hosted by Tanzania's community had me crying in laughter and some of us *cough cough* Ian, even rolling in laughter.  JVC Prom (Encounter) #community, brought out the best tornado and smance in us.  We were told that it's ok to suck at our job sometimes but to give ourselves to it.  Like the words of one of my favorite songs, I Lived shoutout to One Republic, "I hope that you fall in love and it hurts so bad, the only way you know is to give it all you have"  Here's to being the person who loves (#Susan) because "our humanity is 'indeed' greater than our expertise."

Thank you Scranton, I have everything I need, well. . . . almost.  :)