I ate the Pounder!

That was on a man's T-shirt today at our work site. One way or another this gluttonous declaration made the journey from a New York hamburger joint to Santa Cruz and ended up on a Bolivian construction worker applying the final touches to a new pre-school funded by American churches. This school is the work placement for Arelis, a volunteer with the Mennonite Central Committee (MCC) in Bolivia (the same thing my friend Allyn is doing). Arelis had convinced Allyn and I to come help the workers and teachers prepare the school for its scheduled opening on Monday, which I am very doubtful it will be ready for. Our help turned out to be six hours using a machete and sharp shovel to remove a 10 x 30 ft patch of weeds which the director's husband later questioned if it even needed to be removed. Errgh. In any case, it was probably good for me to do some hard labor since I can't remember the last time I actually did manual work, but it was not fun to get sunburnt.


So yeah, I'm in Santa Cruz, Bolivia, which is apparently the largest city in Bolivia due to a recent boom in the local natural gas industry, but it certainly doesn't look it. Buildings in La Paz are taller, and the central plaza in Santa Cruz is not huge, but rather small and friendly. The city lies in the jungle, so it is very warm and humid here. My jeans get sticky after walking around in them all day, ick. After arriving here on last Friday, I have seen the zoological gardens (they have real toucans!) seen Allyn, met her friends Arelis and Corrie, and seen some real in-the-flesh Mennonite colonists. The colonists are white, wear overalls and polyester dresses, speak in low German, and pretty much keep to themselves. They are quite surprising to see walking around the streets in the sea of dark Bolivian faces! Anyway, I am staying at MCC's small campus here, which is quiet, peaceful, clean, and cheap. Photo: Corrie, Arelis, me and Allyn

During my free time here I have been spending quite a bit of time preparing for my year as a Jesuit Volunteer or Young Adult Volunteer which would start this August. I have, at this point, sent in my applications to JVC, JVC Northwest, and Presbyterian Church (USA) YAV and have done interviews with two of them. My job now is to learn about the various work placements and community experiences that each program offers and select one that fits me well. Just so you know, there is a possibility that I will be volunteering in another country, but lately I have been mostly looking at US placements, possibly working with immigrants and refugees, which would still allow me to connect to international issues. Over the past few days I have spent hours doing informational interviews with site coordinators, reading about site placements online, and reading about current volunteers' experiences on their blogs. After hearing from several of my friends who are doing a similar program this year, I have learned that not every program meets their volunteers' needs well, and not every site is a good match for its volunteer, so I'm willing to put in this time if it will help me end up in a program and placement that works well for me. Photo: section of peaceful MCC campus

As always, some of the best times on this trip have been with other people. Here in Santa Cruz I've been able to spend time with Allyn, who is just a great and really cool person. Allyn went on Whitworth's 2008 Central America Study Program, which, in case you don't know, is pretty much my favorite thing in the world. Also, she grew up in Ecuador until she was seven, which is pretty cool. I've also had the chance to meet some of the other volunteers here, and some MCC workers as well. A few days after I got here I met a couple from Harrisonburg, Virginia (fancy that, Uncle Clark!) who came because the wife was going to give a seminar on trauma and peace-making. She is a professor at Eastern Mennonite University, I believe. I learned that the two of them were MCC workers for three years in El Salvador in the early '80s, then a couple years in Nicaragua, and then for ten years in Guatemala. Wow!

However, my time in Santa Cruz has come to an end. Tomorrow I will catch a flight back to the mountainous and cooler (temperature-wise) Cochabamba, spend a week there and do more interviews, and then take a bus to La Paz, where I fly out in a little over a week. I'm already thinking about what it's going to be like when I return, and I know that one thing I will miss will be spending time with friends that are not only fun but also inspire and motivate me. Luckily, however, it might actually be easier to see these friends in the United States! I know of at least two that will be in Portland when I get back, and more are in Seattle where I might go during spring break. It will be great to see family, and also good to connect with more friends stateside.

Okay compadres, thanks for reading and have a great day.

I finally quote Nouwen!

As some of you now, I brought with me the book Gracias by the Dutch priest Henri Nouwen, which is a journal of his reflections as he traveled for six months through Bolivia and Peru in 1980-81 trying to decide if God was calling him to live in that part of the world. I LOVE this book because he describes and analyzes the places he visits from not only political, social, and economic perspectives, but from a spiritual perspective as well, which I think is often overlooked by many. Anyway, I find his writing on these countries penetrating and true, and I would like to share some thoughts on it. Here is a quote from my friend Anna, who is serving for a year in Peru through the Presbyterian Church (USA)'s Young Adult Volunteer program, of her thoughts on a passage from him:

The other day a new found friend asked me whether I felt uncomfortable walking around the city because of the unwanted attention. I told her that for me, uncomfortable was just the new comfortable. The truth is, in just one year of living here, I won’t manage to blend in – I look different, I sound different, and I have different cultural norms. The beauty of this, however, is that it’s okay. The common bind of humanity is far greater than our differences. In the words of Dutch priest Henri Nouwen, “it is good to be and especially to be one of many. What counts are not the special and unique accomplishments in life that make me different from others, but the basic experiences of sadness and joy, pain and healing, which make me a part of humanity.” He wrote these words while living Peru. Here in Peru, I, too, have found people with whom I can laugh, tell secrets, contemplate the state of the world and of God, and share dreams.

These words, both Nouwen's and Anna's, resonated deeply with me the first time I read them. I seem to always go through a period at the start of a journey in a new place where "sticking out" bothers me, and I want to fit in. After a while, though, I learn to ignore the stares and accept my "difference." Of course, it is possible to recognize in any country, including one's own, that "what counts" are the parts of ourselves that we share with all human beings, but it is easier to recognize this when you are in a foreign setting where a common culture is absent and those deeper threads of humanity are the only things that you share with the people around you. I think back to an interview with the lead singer of the group Rupa and the April Fishes who said, when talking about patients she saw in the hospital, that she recognized the similarities she shared with them: "we all bleed, we all grieve, we all cry [paraphrased]." Though people appear very different in other parts of the world, everyone shares some basic human traits.

Short blog post today. Tomorrow morning I am off to the airport after a last-minute change of plans to try to get a ticket to Santa Cruz, Bolivia. A cousin of one of Katie's housemates is also going there on her way to Argentina, which provoked my decision. I will stay there for a few days, see my friend Allyn (who was at the congress) and then come back through Cochabamba to La Paz.

Also: my pictures have captions, now! Click on the link under "About Me" on the right.

Hostels can be lame

I started this post ranting about some loud English-speakers in my hostel who seem to have an exaggerated preference for the f word, but found myself unable to pinpoint exactly why I had a problem with them. They seem to be following the typical hostel schedule: stay in a place for a couple of days where you meet some people from other countries, drink together and go out dancing at some clubs. I often like to consider myself an "enlightened" traveler because I am staying here longer, speak Spanish, went to a congress, etc., but the truth is that I have participated in the hostelling itinerary while I've been here as well. And you know what? It can be fun. So what was it that bugged me so much about this group? Maybe that I see a little of myself in them and am reminded that I'm not as "enlightened" as I would like to be. Or maybe, since I've been living down here for a month now, I'm just tired of the temporal, superficial hostel lifestyle. Or maybe I just don't like the f word.

Anyway, the hostel that I'm at is actually a pretty good one. My friend Mesha and I stayed at the other one in its chain in Cuzco (Peru) and had a great time with the exceptionally helpful staff, so I feel good about staying here. It just opened last year, has reasonable (though not cheap) prices, great location, free coffee and internet, and a good amount of people. It is incredibly easy to meet people staying in hostels. I call it the principle of accelerated intimacy. Because all the travelers are in an unfamiliar place, have at least some feelings of uncertainty and are generally interested in meeting other people, it is really easy to bond and find yourself eating dinner and chatting with someone you met a few hours ago. Because these relationships sometimes only last for a few hours, however, they can be tiring as well.

Having dropped off my friend Mesha at the airport tonight for flight home, I have tomorrow to myself. On the agenda: write, read, figure out how to "liberate" my cell phone so that I can use it in Bolivia. Say hello to Oregon for me, Mesha!

On another note, my dad asked whether the title of this blog refers to the book I am reading by Henri Nouwen, which is of his travels through Bolivia and Peru in the early 1980s. The answer is yes, though I decided, which I now regret, to leave the book in Bolivia, so I won't be referencing it for a few more days. My plan, though, is to incorporate passages from the book in this blog. The book is called "Gracias."

Speaking of books, I am currently halfway through Paulo Coelho's "The Alchemist," recommended to me by my friend David. I am reading it in Spanish, which yes I am proud of. Today I picked up "The Open Veins of Latin America" (in English) by the Uruguayan author Eduardo Galeano which I am looking forward to digging into.