Winter has found VE to be shrinking smaller and smaller, but we're all looking forward to greeting eleven new volunteers in September! The new volunteers hail from the US, France, Germany, Scotland, Italy, and Australia. I'm incredibly excited for them to arrive and for the beautiful chaos they'll bring. We're more prepared for this class of volunteers than VE has ever been, I think. We determined their institution placements (meaning, which children's homes, community centers, or schools they'll all work at), along with their VE committee placements about two weeks ago, and pretty much have their housing squared away. Starting in September, we'll be renting two apartments from my landlord right around Plaza Italia where the office (and my apartment) is, which should be quite exciting for the newbies, as they'll have the entire city center at their fingertips. I've also starting putting the Orientation schedule together, contacting the speakers who so generously donate their time to us every three months. We've got our chats lined up with the Santiago branch of Amnesty International, the director of Harvard's international studies office in Santiago, a Chilean history professor, and a social worker who gives a great presentation on the rights of children in Chile. I'm also working to develop a new workshop on behavior management, so I'm feeling positive about being able to provide that kind of training to the volunteers when they arrive. It's certainly not time to start getting anxious yet. Eeks.The upside of having a pint-sized VE for now is having a cozy, pint-sized winter Jornada. I was nervous, of course, because it was the first time I was solely responsible for the weekend retreat, but everything went smoothly, and my only mistake was not making time for myself. Next time I'll know to get up early and make a point of sitting and enjoying the mountains and pomegranate trees. It was cold in Cajón de Maipo this time, but because we were a small group, we could all huddle around the huge stone fireplaces and enjoy good conversation over s'mores and mulled cider. Normally at Jornada, everyone splits off at night when the official activities are over and I always feel a little disjointed, wishing we would all hang out together. To my delight, that's exactly what happened this time. There were rousing games of spoons in which my abnormally long arms were mocked ceaselessly when I never seemed to lose. The joke got so out of control, it became our theme for the traditional goofy group picture:
Another highlight of Jornada: the food! Brooke, my Entre Todas co-worker and an incredible cook, went all-out for her last act as VE's official chef. Not only did she go all-out, she went all-out GLUTEN-FREE! There were brownies, banana bread, empanadas (a Chilean "specialty" I'd never gotten taste), curry, Mexican lasagna, tortilla soup, quiche, and Brooke's famous pumpkin-chocolate squares. It was out of control. Once again I had that overwhelmed feeling I experience so frequently with VE: sometimes the high quality of the people around me is just too much to bear. Every single dish at Jornada didn't need to be gluten-free, but it was. Ah, but I gush.The weekend was relaxed, full of buena onda, and complete with a couple of intense games of ultimate frisbee. Although I took a few good notes for changes to make next time, I felt good about how the retreat went. Here's the group of us that stayed after the activities officially ended on Sunday afternoon to hang out and enjoy the good company (read: leftovers):
Even though I didn't take all the time I needed at Jornada, it was a good chunk of time to spend with good people and remind myself that life goes on even after your core group of friends leaves the country. It's been a harder transition that I thought it would be, adjusting to life without a few of my first best friends from my own class in December. Two of my roommates and closest friends left, followed by my friend Lindsay, who had really been my go-to, all around fastastic friend here. I've realized how much I relied on these folks for affirmation since they've been gone. It's become an office joke (with a lot of truth) that I take things personally, and without Linsday to say, "You're doing such a good jobbbbb," I do seem to question a lot of what I do. At least this is something I'm realizing about myself and can aim to work on. That doesn't mean it wasn't brutal to see my friends go, though. Here are Lindsay and I at her good-bye party the night before she left, she wearing the get-up I bought her, giving her a taste of her own medicine:
In terms of my Chilean pals, the girls at Entre Todas are challenging and amazing as ever. During one of my recent afternoons there, I danced along with them as one of the tías taught a dance she choreographed to Michael Jackson's "Billie Jean." The tía was a dance teacher at one point, so it was practically a real jazz class, which was a hoot. My attempts at these types of dance moves are endlessly entertaining to some of the girls, so really everybody wins. Plus, trying to explain to a group of teenage girls what the lyrics of "Billie Jean" mean was another top moment in Mariah history.I'll close this post with a few visuals! In my last post, I talked a bit about the riots that occur in Plaza Italia (aka 15 floors down and a few yards to the right from my apartment) after important soccer games. Here's a photo of the crowd in the middle of the intersection, followed by one of the riot police using some type of water blaster, as well as tear gas:
And finally, because keeping life a little silly is very important to me, here are a few photos from our good-bye party for the VE volunteer house (to be replaced by the two VE volunteer apartments). It was very traditional for residents of the house to take photos of themselves in this spot in the kitchen with various funny props, then post the photos in this same spot. We had quite a collection, though it had already been taken down in these photos. As another way of saying good-bye, we took a final series of kitchen photos. Here are a couple favorites of mine:
The guy with the broom? He's my boss. Life could be worse.
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