Tuesday, November 20, 2007 I’m here in Chile and not at the family reunion for a reason. I just need to keep reminding myself that.

Tuesday, November 20, 2007 I’m here in Chile and not at the family reunion for a reason. I just need to keep reminding myself that.

I slept in till about 10:30 and spent the morning working on my paper. I went to mass at noon at the Jesuit church nearby and had almuerzo with Olga after. At 3 I walked to Nuestra Casa, where Patricio, Alejandro, Nicole and Angelica were all outside working on two mosaics outside the door. One side is says Nuestra Casa with the logo and the other side says “Community Center Trampoline”. They invited me to help and I ended up finishing the “Community Center” with blue letters and a white background. Victor, a 28 year old goof ball, helped me by holding the tile pieces while asking me about my family etc. When I told him I have an older sister that studies nursing and that we look a lot alike, he decided he was going to move to the US and marry Sara. He was spent the rest of the afternoon talking about my sister the nurse and how she can teach him English and take care of her. It was actually hilarious and everyone got a kick out of it.

Around five I cleaned the cement of my pruny hands and we did the drugs and alcohol presentation. More people came than ever before (I think there were about 7, plus Lorin and another volunteer). During the presentation I realized they know more than I do about the subject (obviously) and I felt like it was kind of a flop. But at the end Nivaldo, who is only 21 years old, started talking about his therapy that he is in with Hogar de Cristo (the huge Catholic service organization started by Saint Alberto Hurtado in the 70s). Talked about how he started drinking when he became homeless when he was 16 because the older men he lived/worked with encouraged him to drink. He was an alcoholic for 4 years and 4 months ago started the therapy. It’s once a week and he says he hasn’t drank since. All the money he used to spend on alcohol he now uses to buy food and take care of himself. I realized that even if they didn’t get anything out of the presentation, at least it opened up a little bit of dialogue about the possibility of therapy and rehabilitation and maybe planted a seed to encourage some of them to quit or seek help.

After the presentation Lorin did her little English class. She taught them how to say the basic conversational things: what’s your name, where are you from, how old are you, what do you like to do, my name is…, I’m from… , I am …years old, I like to… It was fun to hear them pronounce it all and even though they probably don’t remember anything, they definitely enjoyed it. Afterwards we hung out for a while then walked back.

Tuesday night Jaclyn and Nick, my two gringo friends in my Education class came over to study for our test the next day. I literally hadn’t studied at all because I’m taking the class pass fail and I’d gotten better grades than I’d expected before hand. So they got to the apartment around 9:30 and Olga made food for all of us (of course a mini-feast) and we chatted and ate until almost 11! Jaclyn has been in Chile a whole year and has been dating a Chilean almost the whole time and they are in love. So she was telling us about how he is trying to get a tourist visa to come visit her over their summer (from Dec. to March). But apparently it is almost impossible to get a tourist visa for young men without resources because they assume you are going to stay illegally and work. But they are both strong Christians and decided that if he gets the visa and can travel, they will stay together. If not, they are taking it as a sign from God that they aren’t supposed to be together and they are going to end it. It was sad to hear Jaclyn talk about it because it’s obvious they really love each other, but she seems to have a good perspective on it. On the other hand Nick has been dating a 30 year old Chilean (yes, 10 years his elder) the past 4 months but he has no intention of staying with her when he leaves. Olga had lots of advice for the both of them and all four of us spent the time cracking up. She really is hilarious and all my friends love her.

So at 11 we finally started studying but it was really more of a conversation about the quality of the class. Our teacher is super Catholic and she can tend to be a little preachy in class, which Nick doesn’t really like. We talked about her Sexual Education theory (obviously, abstinence only, but more controversially her strong opinions on gender roles and the distinct roles of a mother vs. a father in raising their children). Anyway, they left around 12:30 to take a bus home and I went to finish my poverty paper. So in all, I studied about 2 hours of the test. Oh well!