Soul Food

Earlier this week, I tried my hand at a new recipe when it was my night to cook dinner-- bacon mac and cheese, a homage to the recent losers of a cooking show I've been following. I may have forgotten to strain out the milk clumps, and it may have momentarily caught fire in the oven, but overall it was a pretty tasty turnout. It felt like a soul food success, but some other events this past week have reminded me how much more is involved with feeding the soul.

In getting the students I work with involved in community service, I've discovered a wonderful ministry that makes sandwiches right next door to my house.  Stopping by before work to help them out has been a huge boost for me as well, because while the work I do at school is surely service, there's a different sort of joy that comes from seeing a stack of sandwiches pile up, and it's the sort of fulfillment I hadn't realized how much I missed.

Another group I've recently joined is the El Paso Young Adult Ministry. I've been going for a few weeks and it's given me a familiar type of happiness that I felt doing clubs in college. This past meeting, they did a service project that was, again, making sandwiches. It's an easy task for a big group of people to participate in, and one that has a quick payoff in terms of impact visibility.

We prepared about 35 brown paper bags, each with two sandwiches, a piece of fruit and Capri Sun. It was a pretty quick project in terms of prep. Then what we did was split into three groups, pile into groups, and drive around El Paso in search of homeless people to whom we could give food. This was different from any other service I'd done, where it was generally under the supervision of some certified non-profit. I'll admit I was honestly pretty nervous, because it was late at night and I didn't know my way around, no one really knew where I was, and I'd just watched a terrifying documentary on the violence in Juarez.

At the start of our expedition, we were sort of driving in circles and unable to find anyone. It was a weird sort of game: "Is that someone?" "No", "No", "Yes!!"

The first legitimate homeless we encountered were two men in a sort of walled-in parking lot. I felt like we must have seemed really suspicious driving up to them, but when we rolled down the window and asked if they were hungry, they seemed happy to take the brown bags. The one thing I remember about our first 'find' is that they had a cat carrier, and a small cat sitting between the two. I've missed my cats these two months, and it was a sort of humanizing connection I hadn't expected to see.

The second pair of people that we encountered was when we were walking around the downtown section on foot. We'd spotted them driving by, but had to park a ways away first. As we approached, I held back, because I was anxious about being the first one to start conversation.

Him: "Can you spare any change?"
Us: "How about some sandwiches?"

The expression on his face has been in my mind all week. How many times have I completely ignored someone asking for change on the streets of Philadelphia? Too many, and I've known this for a while now. The surprise and gratitude in his voice was overwhelming as he thanked us. He spoke clearly, though his companion, a woman he described as from New Orleans, was harder to understand. His name was Lester, and he asked us about a concert going on nearby, shook all of our hands and asked our names. We spoke for a while but then pulled ourselves away, explaining that we had to distribute the rest of the bags. We wished him a good night.

Our third and final stop for the evening was in response to a call from another of our groups, who had run out of bags. We joined them at 9th and Oregon, a street on the very extreme edge of the United States border. There, along a low stone wall, were at least 20 men trying to sleep. Some had blankets, most were cushioned by cardboard boxes.

I was uncomfortable. I didn't want to stay and gawk at their situation; I wanted to distribute the remaining bags as fast as possible and head home. But the group insisted in heading down the line together, so I did. When we were nearly finished and walking back to the car, one man from the line stood up and walked towards us. He wanted to know who we were and why we were doing this. When we explained it was an organization of 'Catolicos', he misheard and thought we said 'Alcoholicos', and joked (I suppose it was jokingly) that "Todos aqui son alcoholicos", "everyone here is alcoholic".

And then when we gave him his food bag, the last that we had, he didn't want to stop talking. His name was Guillermo. His wife and 5 year old daughter had both died in a short period of time, and he couldn't find work anywhere he looked. He was angry at God, he was fighting for justice, and he was in an immense amount of pain. He cried, and was ashamed of it. He talked with us for about a half hour, all in Spanish so I couldn't always keep up. At the end we prayed together, and he embraced us all.

On the drive back to where all our cars were waiting, we passed by where we had seen Lester earlier. He was seated on the concrete edge of a building, head bowed, and looking profoundly alone.

I'm not telling this story because I think I did anything great. I don't want anyone to compliment me for taking an hour to give some people food. I know there is so much more to do. I'm writing this because I want you to consider Lester and Guillermo, the woman from New Orleans and the men with their cat. They are the heroes of a story that has never been told, a tragedy that unfolds every day. The 'soul food' I make reference to in the title is that of human interaction, of being considered worthy of conversation and existence.

In the way that everything seems to come full circle, the day after I did the food distribution, I found this news segment that features a non-profit I used to work with back home. About a minute in, one of the guests explains that he goes to the kitchen not because he needs food, but "the socialization of people, and talking to people."

My all-time favorite song is called Everybody, by Ingrid Michaelson, with the lyrics of "everybody wants to love, everybody wants to be loved." It's such a simple idea, and one that resonates with me deeply in times like this. Love people, everybody. We all just want to be loved.

Some Weather We're Having

It's been a while since I posted, so here's a funny story.

When I first arrived in El Paso, I was greeted with a rainy weekend. It wasn't a big deal, but I quickly learned how much people here appreciate rain. It's a desert and most of the time one of the sunniest places in the country. It's even been nicknamed 'Sun City'. The place doesn't really know how to cope with rain, because they're not used to it, so on that drizzly Saturday morning I tried to take a walking tour, businesses and restaurants were shut down, a farmers market cancelled, and essentially every conversation was focused on the weather. When the rain stopped but the clouds lingered, all I could hear was what a nice day it was.

That's right: cloudy days are nice days, especially in the summer, and everyone congregates outside to celebrate not being burned to a crisp. They rejoice at how green everything is going to be, and in truth the sandy landscape did become a bit more vibrant. Still, after that first rainstorm all I could hear was how strange it was.

It's essentially the weather opposite of Ireland, where it's almost always raining and sunny days are a cause for huge excitement.

As much as I was reassured that the rain was most unusual, and I'd miss it soon enough, this has been a particularly rough 'monsoon season' for El Paso. And every time you think "surely that's the end of it", there comes another midnight rainstorm and cars crash and teachers at school are told not to mark anyone late because of flooding on the highways.

Since I live right next to my workplace, this hasn't had any sort of substantial impact on my commute. The biggest difficulty I've faced from the rain was about a week ago, when the gymnasium of the school took on a lot of water somehow. The weight room was flooding, and I was called in to help sweep everything out before it infiltrated the beautiful new hardwood floor in the main gym, recently completed and a big source of pride for the school community.

If you've ever had to do emergency flood control before, you'll know it's not the most satisfying task. I don't mind doing manual labor, and while transporting the sandbags from one side of the school to the other was difficult, it was easy to see our progress. Sweeping out the water, though, seemed Sisyphean at times. Each big push of water out the door just made way for more to fill up down the hallway, seep into a nearby locker room, and in general swill around my flip-flopped feet.

It was dirty, it was tiring, and it was yet another unexpected task in my volunteer time. In a way I had to laugh and remember how during orientation they told us to be prepared for everything. I don't know what other surprise natural disasters will come my way, but I'm trying to take it each one week at a time. The gym was saved though, and that was a great feeling. It makes for a funny memory too, I think!

The moral of the story: if anyone tells you it never rains in El Paso, they are either lying or have been hibernating this summerfall.

Trouble Brewing

Disclaimer: there have been some very interesting and blog-worthy events the past few days, but I'm having trouble sitting down and writing them out. Something about sharing my posts on Facebook recently has made me somewhat intimidated about writing in a way that's really silly. But I'll 'craft' a good story out for you all soon.

But first, here's a funny story that won't fit in a tweet and I wanted to share. I may move towards shorter posts in the style of my favorite blog, but hopefully keep up the longer pieces too.

So this weekend I have been lazing around the house with the excuse of a sore neck (I think I slept on it funny), rereading Harry Potter and eating oreos. Tonight I discovered Scrivener, a super cool writing tool that's described as 'photoshop for writers'. It massively improved my day and I hope it will inspire me to actually move on some projects I've had in mind. 

Anyway, so tonight I was diligently following the complicated tutorial for the program, and at one point it told me to go get a cup of tea and a biscuit. I obeyed, and went upstairs to get myself a nice cup of tea and a piece of 'soda bread' that one of the Brothers makes that tastes phenomenally close to Irish brown bread.

But for the tea...they don't own a kettle, which I've come across before. No problem, I would just boil some water in a pot, this time using the one with the little lip so it pours easier. I set it to boiling and wait for a few minutes, but it's making a funny smell. Lots of things in the house make a funny smell so I wasn't super concerned, but I took off the lid to look...

And there was a boiling bug in my tea water! Writhing and dying all horribly.

So I poured it out and decided I would just microwave my water. I went into the cabinet and rifled among the teas, passing over chai for green tea and pulling it out happily. One of the Brothers says,

"Green tea, eh?"

"Yeah," I say, smiling. "It's really good for you."

"Good." he says. "That's been in there a while."

Curious, I check the bottom of the box. And then I have to laugh. "Brother, guess when this expired."

"When?"

"February 2006."

That's been my Saturday night, everybody. But now I have a nice mug of microwaved regular tea that doesn't even expire until November this year, some bread, and an ice pack for my neck. Stay tuned for more exciting stories like this. 

Found in Translation

Hi Readers-

In case you missed it, I was just featured on the shared blog for the national organization that runs my volunteer year! It's a departure from my usual slice of life updates, and goes into more of a reflective overview of the whole experience.

Check it out here! (I hope the link works- I was having trouble connecting to the website earlier.)

I'll have another post up soon talking about the anniversary of 9/11, and how we memorialized it on campus for a group of students too young to remember the day.

Happy Birthday to Me!

Many of you already know this, but I recently celebrated the start of another year. Birthdays are an exciting deal for me, which is funny because I don't normally like being the center of attention, but I feel like that one day a year I have full liberty to shine bright and proud because I did survive another year of existence, darn it. This might say something about my self confidence levels (shine every day!) but regardless, I really like birthdays.

As my mom wrote on a heartfelt Facebook post that day, I've been travelling since I was sixteen, but this is the first year I've ever been away from home on my birthday. (Not counting the first year of college when I watched 'The Hangover' in the Basil's lounge with a bunch of people I'd just met, and a few of whom would 3 years later turn out to be my best friends).

In addition to being away from home for my birthday, it was also the same day as our first retreat for the year, a stressful and chaotic day that deserves it's own post. So the few days leading up to my birthday, and the morning of the day itself, were busy in a unique way that also made me pretty homesick.

But the magic of birthdays is-- people take it upon themselves to tell you they love you that day, and it can do wonders for one's mood. :) I received a package from my mom with two pillow pets that had been abandoned in the airport when I first left home, among other goodies. My phone was the busiest it'd been in weeks with well-wishers, and after the retreat I went out to a wonderful dinner with my community here, and then out with some new friends afterwards.

I also received cards! A few by mail the day of, and just today, I got a package from my sister at college stuffed full with handmade birthday cards from so many incredible people at school that it made me want to cry. So my blog shout-out for mail will be pretty long this week, but all of you deserve it and I love you.

This is a shorter post, because I just finished writing a long one for the shared blog of my volunteer program, which should be online soon. I'll make sure it's up here too for future reference! But I wanted to thank in an extra way everyone who worked hard to make my birthday special. Thanks for the cookie cake, Harry Potter pillows, moonshine, Nepali bracelet, and most of all for the messages of care and joy. They mean the world to me. :)

Here is this week's mail shout-out: it's a great one!
Thank you to Ms. Peters, Grandma, Grandma, Maggie, Aimee, Mom, Dad, Aunt Peggy, Tyler, Katie and Adam, Larry, Jenn, Lynn, Jess, Heather, Krystie, Amanda, Tim, Julia, Susie, Alexa, Kelly, Anna, Mary, Katie again, Adam again, the Coyles, one person who's signature I can't read (sorry! I will ask Maggie), and the Breakfast Club. Your cards and notes are all hanging on my wall next to me as I type this, and I couldn't be happier.

And thank you, reader, for making the start of this year, both in school and my life, a wonderful one.

Chasing Waterfalls

Hello readers! I hope you all had a great Labor Day weekend. I definitely did, although there were a few points throughout when I thought to myself, "this is the most laborious day ever." Let me explain.

This weekend I traveled to Tuscon, Arizona, to visit some other volunteers in community who are starting their year off there as well. It was great to reconnect with them, and even though we'd only met in July for about a week, seeing some familiar and friendly faces was a nice boost at this point in the year. We left school on Friday afternoon following an intense pep rally (more on that later), and then traversed the Texan, New Mexican, and Arizonan deserts for about five hours. I was dazzled by cacti-- saguaros (!) the typical picturesque kinds, stark mountain landscapes and a surprising abundance of life. We passed through pecan groves and salt flats, and each little road-stop town had it's own kind of Wild West claim to fame.

When we finally arrived, we were able to visit the school there (and witnessed an adorably awkward HS dance), and later on, see some of the sights of Tucson. It's a similar city to El Paso, but more spread out and definitely hotter. The biggest adventure was the next day, when another volunteer and I decided to undertake a hike to 'Seven Falls', because some of her students had said it was cool and the pictures we found on Google looked really pretty.

Upon arriving at the park entrance, we were greeted with a sign that outlined the amount of time you should set aside for each of the separate trails: about an hour for the nature walk, 3 hours for a different one, 5-6 for a more challenging path, and then for the waterfall hike: 'all day'.  In our minds, they couldn't really mean all day- that was just to warn off lazy walkers, or something.

How very wrong we were. In retrospect, starting on a 12 mile mountain trek during August in Arizona at 11 am was not the best idea. The heat was brutal, and we soon found ourselves downing our limited supplies of water, I was reapplying sunblock like mad, and within about an hour of starting out we began to ask everyone we met just how far it was until the waterfalls. It was far.

There were a couple casualties as we went along. I sat on a cactus at our very first water stop, in a kind of ridiculous cartoonish way that left me pulling out needles and awkwardly telling concerned passers-by that everything was okay. (It wasn't, really.) The sunburns were surprisingly minimal, but the blisters have yet to heal. To beat the heat we would hide in tiny shadows under a protruding rock wall, and spent about 15 minutes chatting with a photographer on the edge of a cliff as we caught our breath and hid from the sun. The very best cool-down was about halfway along when we sat in a little stream and natural pool, for really a long time, and it was perfectly magical.

After seemingly endless hours, we finally got to the waterfalls. They were 7 stacked on top of each other, a little less majestic than I'd pictured but still the most welcome sight I'd seen in a while. We had to scramble down a bunch of rocks to get to the bottom pool, and then swam around and finished our lunch. I then had the bright idea to climb up the waterfall to get to the higher levels, which was cool and dangerous and my friend slipped down and now is sporting some terribly impressive bruises. Our photographer friend seemed quite concerned from afar.

At the very eventual end of our hike, we collapsed on the stone bench at the visitors' center. We started about 10:30 am, and finished at 6 pm. It was brutal, I won't be doing a trek that intense again soon, but there was a definite feeling of accomplishment when we finished.

I have a lot of mountains coming towards me in this year ahead, and it's going to be long (and hot), but I know that if I find some little pools of water scattered around, I'll be able to make it through. Thanks for reading, and for writing (newest mail shout-out goes to Alexa!) and for all the support in every way. I couldn't make this climb without you. 

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.