Enter to Learn

I feel like an adult.

I remember growing up (I'm not growing up anymore?) and asking my mom when she realized she was an adult, because I was very concerned with recognizing the cutoff when it came. She said something along the lines of knowing that she was definitely an adult at the time of our conversation, because she had kids, but she wasn't sure when the defining moment was. When she got married? When she had a job? My mom is a high school teacher, and these past three weeks of working in a high school have been really helped me understand her experiences, as well put my own school days into a new light. (Why can I say school days in the past tense?)

When I started this job about a month ago, I remember asking friends how in the world I was old enough or qualified enough to be a faculty member in a high school. Weren't we just there?

I had another version of this post halfway written from a few days ago, which I've put on hold for the time being. It was titled 'Leave to Serve', which goes along with this post's current title. A big Lasallian mantra of education is the notion of 'Enter to Learn, Leave to Serve'. All last week I was giving presentations to the students about their new community service requirement, which was fun and draining. The best part of it was the hope that the students, especially the younger ones, would be some sort of inspired and see the service requirement instead as an opportunity to do good and grow from it. I'll share later what I talked about, and more on why service is so important to me, but the past few days it's really hit me that while I'm doing a service year, I'm absolutely still in the 'Enter to Learn' stage of the equation.

Suddenly being a grown-up is pretty scary. I'm fortunate enough to have the safety net of this structured program, but I really feel for my friends who are out there 'in the real world', trying to find jobs, holding onto their dreams and sense of purpose in this big society that's now infinitely more complicated.

I'll get you some more story-filled post soon, with pictures of the exciting borderland. (I'm hopefully going to Tucson this weekend!) For now though, this is just some thoughts to say that I'm nostalgic for my alma mater already, though I know the past four years prepared me for this moment more than I know.

This is to re-acknowledge, for myself, that growing up is an ongoing journey. It's no single moment or magic switch. The quinceanera is a big tradition around here, but there's no one coming of age moment when you can be finished with learning, or are suddenly an expert on life.

I've been humbled these fast few weeks, and I hope I continue to be. I've started to tear up over inspirational teacher-things, I recently felt a weird protectiveness over these kids at a football game, and I feel an immense responsibility not to let them down. Those are symptoms of becoming a Responsible Adult, I suppose.

So I'm still learning. One day at a time. Thanks for following along. :)

P.S. During my brief quarter life crisis this afternoon, I played lots of songs from back in the day...meaning high school 5 years ago. Kelly Clarkson and P!nk can be ridiculously empowering. Also, yesterday a faculty member told me I was really young because I remembered seeing the LoTR movies in theaters as a kid. You can't win.

Welcome to the Borderland

I should be sleeping, but I'm feeling sort of homesick and not able to right now. So I realized I could lay in bed feeling sorry for myself, or get up and use that awake time to write about a bunch of the reasons I have to be happy. I decided to try out the second one. :)

Living in El Paso has it's perks. Before I committed to going here for the year, I'd been thinking pretty seriously about trying to spend this first after-college year somewhere abroad. Kenya was the plan for a little bit, but when that fell through, I was looking around elsewhere too. I'm really happy with my decision to do this program in particular (I still haven't figured out if it's professional to name it, though you probably know anyway...), and one of the coolest things is being in this completely bi-cultural community. When people back home ask about Texas, I need to explain that it's more of a Mexico place than cowboys and cacti- although I have actually seen both of those as well!

This Saturday I ventured in Ciudad Juarez, the Mexican sister-city to El Paso. Depending on who you ask, they're really one big city with a pesky international border down the middle, or at least it used to be that way. About 30% of the students in the school where I work cross the border daily from home to class, which is a piece of cake going from the US to Mexico, we didn't need to show any documentation or speak to anyone at all. Coming back home way way slower, I was uncomfortably reminded of crossing the border into Palestine; it was tense and tedious, and much harder without an American passport. 

For the day in Mexico, I proudly wore my Neighbor to Neighbor t-shirt in the spirit of some sort of symbolic good neighbor vibes, which turned out to be a sort of stupid idea because it was dark in color and surprisingly hot for a t-shirt. It's pretty warm around here.

And the coolest thing is that I can still say 'around here' and mean both El Paso and Juarez. It took us about a 10 minute drive to get into Mexico, and I'm thinking pretty seriously about walking across one of these days. Although you could tell a difference between the two countries, in terms of infrastructure, the default language, and (surprisingly) the amount of foliage, there was also so much more in common. Right along the border in downtown El Paso is an area called Segundo Barrio, which is pretty much exclusively Mexican and Spanish-speaking, even more than the rest of town. This morning one of the Brothers brought me to an all-Spanish mass at one of the parishes there, which was a little hard to follow, but absolutely exuberant and full of life. They had so much music, and everyone acted like part of a family.

My rusty Spanish skills definitely got a tune up while I was across the border, and I certainly hope to practice more in the future. I had the very best tacos in my life, cordon-bleu themed sushi, and aguas frescas, which deserve a whole separate post but are basically fresh fruit juices that taste like heaven. Available in tons of flavors, yesterday I had both cantaloupe and cucumber! There were also spicy candies, pretty pastries, a knockoff IHOP, edible cacti, and a surprise giraffe in central park. 

We passed by the best university in the country, took pictures with a couple monuments, toured an interactive museum with a 3D video about space all in Spanish, and crossed an item off of my personal Mexico bucket list: visited La Equis. 

'The X' is a giant red metal X towering over the border. I've seen it every day here, often from afar but sometimes from just across the fence, and decided from my site visit that I wanted to get there before I left a year later. So I did- I just never thought it would happen so soon! I touched the base, and learned that there was a planned restaurant in the middle (you can see the space for it), but it never got completed because the whole thing gets way too hot and insulating it costs too much money. I spent a lot of our time there trying to get a good selfie with the structure, since it was my big landmark, but I failed pretty miserably, so my profile picture is instead a fake pyramid. 

No worries, I'm planning to hit up the real ones outside Mexico City sometime soon. I didn't get to see absolutely everything of Juarez yesterday, of course, but I know I'll be able to get back again in the future. It's the beauty of living right here! So yes, I have lots to be grateful for, and this whole year experience is a big one. 

Thank you for reading, and as always, comments are loved. ❤

Breaking Bread

As I write this, I'm preparing for a day trip to Mexico (read- procrastinating preparing by writing) and want to get out a few thoughts on events of the past couple days before I experience all the wonderful Juarez adventures and will need to write about that instead.

Yesterday was the first school-wide mass, celebrating the Assumption, and I was one of the main people in charge of seeing that it all went smoothly. So really, the first test of 'was this girl actually worth shipping out to the border'? And aside for a few awkward hiccups (I dropped the host), everything went pretty great! Several faculty members congratulated us on how well the students behaved, and it felt like the one of the first major hurdles was crossed.

During the time beforehand, there were some frantic getting-ready moments, but once the mass began, I felt mostly comfortable letting it proceed in grace. Always a metaphor person, I remember as a little kid validating the 'boring' time spent at church as a visit to a friend's house where we read a book, sang some songs, and then got a snack. While I of course understand everything much better now, at the core I still have a level of peace achieved through the mass that's hard to get elsewhere. And while it's not just a snack, the experience of sharing a meal is definitely central.

Which leads into the purported purpose of this post: food! It's the first thing everyone asks about when they try to talk about someone's travels, and it's certainly a major part of my life here.

From sharing a Pizza-hut field trip with a faculty member, visiting another teacher's sport's bar and getting free food (!) to experiencing 'authentic Mexican', to cooking once a week for my community, I've had a lot of food-centric times here. One of the best things about being home-home in Jersey is dinnertime with my whole family, sharing stories about our day. Living with the Brothers is sort of like that, in a funny way. One of them is an excellent cook, who I've been watching a lot of 'Chopped' with, and the rest of us try our best on varying levels. For me, the first two meals I made were fairly stressful, because while I'm totally in love with throwing whatever's in the fridge into my wok or blender, that wasn't quite going to cut it serving a bunch of other (grown-up) people.

So I turned to my Italian heritage and whipped up a couple of pasta dishes. The first, shrimp scampi, was a success even though I sort of made it up as I went, and the second- eggplant parmesean was one of my personal favorite recipes and a total hit! I still need to post the instructions to a FB group of volunteers striving to make community cooking work, and from where I plan to pull other ideas as soon as my couple of standard dishes run out. (Once I have more time, I will try to post a picture of it here too!)

As for the Mexican food, it's here, and plentiful. Taco Bell exists, but most of it is far from that. There's Chico's Tacos, an El Paso staple and totally weird-- greasy and delicious. We went to a nicer-style restaurant last Sunday as a community gathering, where I tried my first 'flautas', and earlier this week the other LV picked us up some homemade burritos from a student's mother who sells them each morning before school. It was fresh, delicious, and definitely authentic-- my mouth was 100% on fire!!! I'm not up to standard with spiciness here or anywhere, so I chased each bite of burrito with a giant spoonful of yogurt I'd brought for breakfast. (First I tried water- rookie mistake.)

Last weekend we also went to a huge church carnival a ways away in Clint, Texas, with of course had all your normal fair fare, as well as fantastic border stuff. There were churros stuffed with chocolate, famous gorditas with a huge line, patatas locas (crazy potatos) with hot-sauce and who knows what else, as well as my personal ridiculous favorite- corn in a cup full of butter. The gorditas lived up to the hype, though I'll probably pass on the corn next time. I'll write more about the fair in a following post I think- all sorts of cool cultural things going on there!

One of the common themes in all the meals described above is that they happened in community, not necessarily my living community but with people who joined together to eat purposefully. While I don't mind eating alone from time to time, those aren't the memorable dining experiences typically worth blogging about. I'm sure there will be many more food stories to talk about later and as the year progresses, but I've run out of time.

Heading to Juarez- read all about it soon!

Clean Slate

I am not a tidy person. Anyone who's ever lived with me or been close enough to see the inside of my room will know this-- although very few know what the floor looks like.

That said, for the past two days I have intentionally cleaned my room, and today I made my bed, did laundry, and vacuumed. Yes, mom, you read that right, I properly vacuumed for the first time since running over the cord accidentally-on-purpose 10 years ago.

This change of heart is partly because of the cluster of dead bugs in front of my door where I attacked the perimeter with Raid, and also something deeper that probably has to do with growing up and being responsible or something like that.

I've been introducing myself as 'Ms. Lastname', which is weird, as is purposely trying to obscure my identity right there. As an aspiring writer, I've been recently trying to gain all sorts of exposure to help publication, but now I've made my Twitter private and am close to doing the whole 'middle name' thing on Facebook, because although I don't think I post anything even remotely scandalizing, there's a whole new layer of accountability that goes along with working in a high school. I do hope to keep these blog posts open for all to read- and while I want to stay as true to life as possible, I'll have to tread a little more carefully.

But! Growing up hasn't been all red tape and accountability, or just super boring accomplishments like vacuuming. I've been going on real-person lunch meetings and testing my Spanish skills in everyday professional interactions. I've experienced a new level of freedom here, different from college in a nice sort of way. I'm within walking distance to downtown El Paso, technically walking distance to Mexico! I try to get out and about exploring as much as possible, including finding a new favorite tea house and reading/writing nook. I've been meeting lots of new people and for the first time in my life, am faring pretty great at staving off the shyness issue. With our new friend from Juarez, my fellow LV and I paged through a whole newspaper pullout advertising what's going on this month and circled about 50 events we want to get to. We picked up and drove to a wine tasting in New Mexico that didn't end up being quite what we expected, but those are the sorts of impromptu adventures I can't wait to experience in the coming year. (Side note- I've now been to four new states since graduation!)

Yesterday, the first day of school and my first day on the 'other side' of the school population, was definitely stressful, but today I feel like I'm getting into a nice routine. I'm seriously excited about the possibilities of collaborating with area non-profits and getting the students to become excited themselves about service, as well as helping them to grow spiritually. Everything is new, so that can be scary, but I want to look at it instead as a tabula rasa, a clean slate to begin again with the students I work with and my own path as well.

Blank pages are intimidating, but think instead of all the wonderful worlds they can hold. :)

[P.S., as promised- newest mail shout-out goes to Sam! Thanks for the surprise, I'll get you a proper reply soon.]

Silver and Gold

When I was a girl scout way back in the day, there was a song we always sang which went: "make new friends, but keep the old, one is silver and the other's gold." The past two days have been a powerful reminder of that tune as I'm striving to get settled in this new world. I've been blessed with connections in El Paso from a friend and a professor back home, and I'm living with Brothers who are respected community members and have access to a huge number of alumni and families of students.

Yesterday night, my fellow LV and I had dinner at the home of a friend of a friend who I met up with at my site visit in May. In addition to sharing a fantastic meal, it was great to chat with new people our age who knew the area so well, and hear more about the great work they're doing with local organizations. I had run into our host the day before at a gathering of local religious and non-profit groups, and it's always so cool to see how so many people working to make positive change end up collaborating and running together.

Today I was also surprised with another friendly face, a recent alumni of the school where I'm working. He was visiting the Brothers for dinner, and afterwards offered to take us LVs on a tour of downtown El Paso. I'd wandered around before, but having a guide who totally knew the city was a whole other experience. We found two free concerts, accidentally ran away from a billionaire, made plans to visit Juarez (Mexico!) next weekend, as well as check out a bunch of other cool local sites tomorrow, 'because they look so much better in the daytime'. It seemed like a stroke of incredible luck, but as the head campus minister at school is always reminding us, "God works in mysterious ways."

And like the girl scout song says, you have to keep the old friends too, and take good care of them because they're golden. After blasting out a plea on Facebook for mail and love, today I received my first letters! So here is the promised blog shout-out. I got an awesome summery postcard from the greatest blogger ever and a perfect panda card from my mom's best friend growing up. Katie and Michelle, thank you so much! I will send replies soon.

In continuing with my silver and gold theme, today I had a lovely long conversation with two of my best college friends, and right after hanging up from that, planned an upcoming skype date with another. Those are the kind of times that can really brighten up my day. (Even though it's pretty steadily hot and sunny...!) And I guess if old friends are gold, family has got to be...platinum? Diamond? I dunno, metal's not my thing. But yesterday I got to have a phone call with my whole extended family, including the part visiting from Austria! So that was wonderful but also a surefire way to make me homesick for the first time. (Today one of the faculty members asked me if I missed Wawa, and sad to say I hadn't been until he brought it up...)

There's going to be many more new faces and conversations in my future, some planned and others I can't even imagine. I'm going to work hard to build on these connections and really get to be a part of the community here, while also still holding on to the incredible people I have back home. It's a balancing act, but I think an important one to pull off. Thank you to everyone who's reached out to me, which extends far beyond the few listed in this post. I couldn't handle it without you, you have my love.

Until next time (hopefully soon),
Catherine

In the Real World

Excuses, excuses. I've been trying to write for the past several days, promise, but the lack of a computer has been holding me back. (My keyboard-less dinosaur was finally retired, and I should be getting a laptop from the school sometime next week). Yesterday, I trekked my way downtown to the local library with the intent of getting a card (because free books!) and also using their computers. As with any well-laid plan, though, I ran into hangups. It began to rain, the beginning of a short lived monsoon season, I was there an hour before it opened, and after finally getting inside was turned away from getting a card because I didn't have proof of an El Paso address. It was a disappointing start, but in other ways a huge success: I didn't get lost even once! Exploring and wandering around a new city is one of my favorite things to do in the world, and it's often one of the ways I keep in check my killer ability to end up on the opposite side of town. I did make it across the city, but this time, it was by choice.

The streets are conveniently grid-shaped, and the whole place is sort of on a hill. On an early walk this morning, I found myself up a lot higher than I'd intended, and when I got to a lookout point a ways up, I was pleasantly surprised at being able to pick out exactly where I needed to go. I live right next to the Cathedral, which has a pretty high green tower, and serves as a wonderful landmark wherever I end up. These walks will definitely be something I can get used to- though I should probably wear better walking shoes next time.

I'm playing catch up with this blog post because so much has happened since I landed on Thursday, not even counting the two weeks of LV training in Chicago. Those were inspirational and informative, and mostly just a great way to transition into this intense year of service. There were a group of second year volunteers who shared their stories and life lessons with us newbies, and the whole program was structured so that we were able to become comfortable, make connections, and feel supported in the year ahead.

Another brief rundown of life so far: I'm living with a group of Christian Brothers, four wonderful and hospitable men who've dedicated their lives to teaching in the Lasallian tradition. Along with another volunteer, we'll be a community for the next 10 months, sharing meals, prayer time, and overall life. I get my own room and bathroom, which I've decorated to be a really nice space. Last night the other LV and I went to one of those wine and painting classes, so I have a nice new painting on the wall, along with my Tanzanian khanga as a room divider, and a pretty wall sticker that reads 'Never Stop Exploring'. A downside is that the bathroom pipe leaks, and the shower water smells pretty sulfury...but you know. Living simply, hakuna matata.

Overall, life is good. I'm excited to start officially working tomorrow and finally get into the bulk of the work that sent me here in the first place. I'll be updating more frequently, and getting posts back to being a bit more themed as opposed to an overall recap. Comments are always welcome, and thanks for following along!

Life in Boxes

I always experience something melancholy around the time of packing for a big trip. It often feels monumental, and while each time it's different, I also know a tinge of familiarity in the transition troubles I seem to always face. I get very nostalgic and sentimental about all sorts of things, especially goodbyes and lasts. Some are seemingly trivial but very real ("Goodbye, dear books") while others are straight up ridiculous ("This is the last time I will load the dishwasher all year").

In a little less than 12 hours, I'll be on my way to the airport for a week in Chicago, and then ten months in El Paso. The border has been in the news a lot lately, and more than just me being hyper-attuned to immigration issues because of my impending trip. I plan to post about any insights I gain on the current crisis, as well as my own every day experiences and happenings. I hope I'll be able to make something interesting and informative out of this space, similar but distinct from my bygone Ireland posts. While I might not have too much of a chance to post again until I arrive in August, and I certainly failed at updating in the summer, I do promise I'll have quality writing here once I get properly settled in my new home.

I'm scared and excited, I've packed way too much, but it's time for the next chapter. As Hagrid said, and I like to reflect on during times like these: "What's comin' will come, and we'll meet it when it does."

Hasta luego, mis amigos.