A Luxurious Christmas, Indeed

I must admit, it was so nice to go back home to Seattle for a couple of weeks for the Christmas break! When I first arrived it felt so surreal. Although I'd only been gone four months, I walked into my room thinking, "Whose room is this?" On my bed was a matching purple bathrobe and set of slippers from my parents, since I had told them it was a bit of an adjustment not having indoor heating in the winter months in Mexico.

At the Volunteer House we started an inside joke regarding 'feeling at home.' For some reason in the house we have a tiny stuffed animal koala holding an Australian flag (probably a gift from a past volunteer). While we were hanging out in the patio, an American volunteer picked it up and showed it to the Australian volunteer. "Doesn't this make you feel so at home?" she asked. The question was too absurd and hilarious to forget. From then onward whenever we saw someone walking down the street with a Manchester United jersey, or a shirt with the British flag or the Beatles, we'd say to Alice (the British volunteer), "Don't you feel so at home?" Or when Andreas saw Danish butter he said, "I feel so at home right now." Basically anything brazenly or tackily and obviously related to where you're from counts as making one feel 'at home.'

Boy, but when I was in Seattle didn't I feel just so at home--all the time!!! Whereas in Mexico I'm constantly learning about the way things are done, how to do/get things, where to get things... in Seattle everything was such a cake walk! I knew the bus routes, the best restaurants, where to get last-minute Christmas presents. It was such a breeze. And the nice thing, too, is that I don't think I was away long enough to really experience any reverse culture shock. I just couldn't stop marveling at how luxurious and fancy everything was, from public transportation to restaurants to cars...just everything! And to be back in a big city again (San Miguel de Allende has a population of ~70,000 people vs. Seattle's 3.9 million), it felt good.

Christmas dinner!

I am very thankful for the time I had to spend with friends and family. My parents took pretty much all of the two weeks off of work so that we could hang out, so we went to the gym together and spent a lot of nights watching some great movies (like 2Fast2Furious). I think it was just nice to be back with people that have known me for years, because it can get kind of tough to know people and also be known with volunteers coming and going from week to week or month to month.

Without fault with every new person I met up with in Seattle came the exclamation, "You look so tan!" "Yup, no seasonal affective disorder for me," I would reply jokingly. God be with you, sun-starved Seattlelites. I am sorry.

Although it was sad to leave Seattle and say goodbye to my family, it's been great to jump feet-first back into work here in Mexico. I received a warm welcome from Miguel (he and his son picked me up from the airport), Donna (she baked me cookies!) and the volunteers (Laura and Adi left me kind goodbye notes and Macklin made me a welcome back sign). It was great to see the teachers and Angelica (the mother who helps clean the Volunteer House) as well as the children, Aldo and Mari Chuy especially.

We've got 10 volunteers currently with another arriving this weekend! So it's definitely a party. Happy New Year to you all! Looking forward to seeing what 2014 has in store.

Four-month Retrospective

For the past five years, in the first week of December, I log into my email account and find an email from myself, written exactly one year earlier (thanks to the online application FutureMe.org). This year was no different. On December 3, 2013, I was delighted to find a several paragraphs-long email that I had written in 2012, detailing my day to day life (I was working full-time with the King County Department of Community and Human Services) and making speculations as to what the future may hold. At the time, I was toying with the idea of graduate school at the University of Washington, but get this, towards the end of the letter I wrote "I MISS MEXICO. Lord, when will you take me abroad again?" God must have been laughing to himself when I wrote this, knowing full well that a year later I'd be three and a half months into working as the Volunteer Coordinator with Casa de los Angeles.

I am starting to 'get a hang' of things and reaching an equilibrium work-wise. I realized when talking to Laura, one of the Danish volunteers, that the reason I had such a deep crisis with the run of less-than-savory volunteers is that, as with most things in my life, I came into this job with some naive notions of what things were going to be like. Mainly, I assumed that because volunteers were coming to give their time to a charity, spending their own money to travel abroad, that they'd all more or less be 'decent' people. I hadn't accounted for the fact that some of them could possibly be immature, passive aggressive, neurotic, self-important or entitled. Just because these are volunteers, doesn't mean that the Volunteer House is exempt from the shitty-ness inherent in humanity as a whole. This isn't a utopian haven of only generous-hearted saints.

So I'm learning to embrace the ambiguity and lack of resolution in the fact that the Volunteer House will at any one time contain exemplary volunteers (conscientious, kind, go above and beyond), odd volunteers (enigmatic, tough to figure out), rude volunteers (openly selfish, prickly, uncooperative, complaining)--it's basically going to be a macrocosm of the world, morally/character-wise. So for me now, my only hope and expectation is to at any one time have just one, at least one, decent volunteer that will remind me that yes, there are actually altruistic people there... that are sincerely and genuinely altruistic, not just faking it (and are actually kind of nasty deep down, ugh, just terrible).

Another thing I'm learning is that some of the volunteers just aren't going to like me. No matter how much I may try and start conversations, try and be inviting, check-in regarding their experience at the daycare, there will just be something about me that fundamentally turns them off. And I've learned to let that go. I'm done with self-doubt and bending over backwards to please people. If they want to talk poorly about me to other volunteers and be surly toward me, that's whatever, man. Not my problem. I have enough people around me that are 'in my corner,' telling me that I'm doing a good job, that I'm just not going to worry about not being 'everything to everyone.'

I think a really neat part about my work is that through it I gain friends. I was struck today how nice it is to be able to get to know long-term volunteers well enough to the point that it's apparent in our conversations that we genuinely care about each other. You know how in some relationships there's quite a bit of superficiality, in the sense that if you ask a person, 'How are you doing?' and neither the question-asker or the question-answerer care about the answer?--neither person's heart is in it and it's more of a formality, a charade, 'going through the motions.' There's such a stark difference between stilted acquaintances and when there is genuine friendship, as in both parties are actually truly interested in what the other person has to say...

At first it can be hard to meet new volunteers, go through the small talk, and try and intuit whether the volunteer could be a potential friend, or just another person that I'll live with for a few months, they'll leave, and I won't really think about them much again. However, to get to the depth of actual friendship, that's something quite special... to be able to have real conversations about personal observations, reflections, family, friends, growing up... it actually reminds me of when I'm with my cousins, and we can just talk about anything and everything, and it's just so easy! I'm so glad to have met and spent time with Andreas (Denmark), Alice (U.K.), Adi (Israel) and Laura (Denmark). A+ people, all of them.

Thankful to have the opportunity to 'connect' with such outstanding volunteers and human beings. Yes, this job is pretty great. :)

Counting Down

The weather here in San Miguel de Allende has kept me in a strange warped vertigo when it comes to time orientation... I swear to myself it's got to still be August but no, today is the 8th of December, and it's in the low 70s and sunny. Truly amazing.

In less that two weeks I'll be back in Seattle. It's kind of strange! I was walking home from church this afternoon thinking, 'Wow, this is my life now. I'm in the middle of Mexico and this is my life now.' I go to the market to get fruits and vegetables and the guy working there recognizes me now. If I need something, I more or less know where to go to get it, and when I can get it (instead of arriving to a store only to find it closed). I have a weekly routine now; for example, Sundays afternoons are for tidying up my room and cooking a gigantic meal that I'll chip away at all week long until it's gone.

It's just kind of surreal. Mari was right when she told me in September, te acostumbras.

It feels a bit odd to not be with my family in December as everything is ramping up for Christmas. We have our traditions of decorating the house, watching our favorite Christmas films, etc. I asked my mom to send a picture of Fifth Avenue all decked out in lights downtown, because I missed it. Nevertheless, it's good to be here with the volunteers, where we're developing traditions of our own. Myself and another volunteer have put up twinkly lights in our room that blink on and off somewhat haphazardly (what more can you expect for 20 pesos?). I bought some pewter candle holders and cheap tapers (they literally smell like crayons) to serve as an Advent wreath (my Christ candle is currently a tea light--definitely need to work on that). I miraculously found some candy canes at the dollar store in Queretaro, perfect for making peppermint hot chocolate, and my red Glade apple-cinnamon candle smells like Christmas enough...

A bit of ludicrous American commercialism to get into the Christmas spirit.

Tonight is 'cake and ice cream night,' our second in the past month, where we as a group go to the grocery store, pick out a giant cake and a 4 liter tub of ice cream, and bring it home to eat while watching a movie of our choice. Last time it was Mean Girls but we're hoping Elf or Love Actually will be on so that we can really get into the Christmas spirit. If not, though, I'm always down to watch Pacific Rim. ;)

All this to say, life is good. Thanks for reading along.