Can Santa even carry this much hair gel?

Christmas is coming up (all the writing tutors I've learned from would say not to start with such a generic opening...). Starting tomorrow, the tíos and tías go on vacation, and all the high school and college kids --and us volunteers-- take over watching the kids through the año nuevo.

Buying presents for the kids over the last few days turned out to be an interesting process. The questions that it raises are surprisingly tough: how do you find a balance between giving presents in a way that stimulates their excitement, but without being too over-the-top or making them think that you're just here to buy stuff. On other words, somewhere between making them feel excited (which is certainly a worthwhile thing to do), while also making the present part of some larger process of growth.

After brainstorming a variety of ideas, Leila and I laid out the best possibilities in a spectrum, from 'Most short-term/most obnoxious' to 'Most long-term/most emotionally meaningful'. In order, my options were:

-Candy
-Hair Gel (they love their spiky hair here)
-Boxers with cartoon characters/soccer logos on them
-Printing photos of the kids that I've taken
-Photo albums in which to put those, and future, photos

With Leila's help, I ended up with the photos and photo albums, and candy. We decided that the candy would last short term; then, even if many of them wouldn't be thrilled with a photo album, if it could be meaningful for a few kids, that would still be better than something that loses its meaning for everyone after a week.

I'm scared that it will be a less popular choice in the short term, but I guess learning to keep in mind and work towards that long-term growth is part of why I'm here...

But then Leila came up with how I could also get hair gel cheap, thereby cementing both the meaningless and deep sides of my Christmas gift. Which is how I ended up with this:
It's something like 10 pounds of hair gel (which I'll split into little containers for each of the 23 kids). It's so big, there's actually another normal size hair gel container suspended inside this one.


Well, ¡Feliz Navidad y Año Nuevo!

Every once in a while...

Every once in a while, I find myself in a situation that makes me feel 'This is really cool'.

The other night, sitting at our volunteer house picnic table, eating a homemade bagel with strawberry jam, drinking a beer, and reading good poetry, was one of those moments.

So I tried to take a picture:
And, to prove that it was good poetry (though I should be reading more poetry in Spanish- any good ideas?), here's one of the Langston Hughes poems I was reading:

Juke Box Love Song

I could take the Harlem night
and wrap around you,
Take the neon lights and make a crown,
Take the Lenox Avenue busses,
Taxis, subways,
And for your love song tone their rumble down.
Take Harlem's heartbeat,
Make a drumbeat,
Put it on a record, let it whirl,
And while we listen to it play,
Dance with you till day--
Dance with you, my sweet brown Harlem girl.

El Espiritú Aventurero...

...is the Spanish translation of "The Spirit of Adventure", a key phrase from the movie UP, which I just watched the other day. And I'm not sure if it's just my English degree that made me see this, but the movie's story and symbolism really addressed some of the issues and frustrations I've been having here lately.

When Señor Fredricksen (I watched the movie in Spanish) goes off on the adventure he and his wife had always wanted to have --by tying a bunch of balloons to his house to make it fly-- he's so intent on his goal of getting his house to Las cataratas del paraíso that he's not able to see the crazy adventure that's going on around him (involving talking dogs, exotic birds, crazy kids, etc). And it's not until he actually accomplishes his ostensible adventure that he realizes that, in the process of getting there, he actually missed out on the 'Spirit of Adventure' that was the whole reason for going off in the first place.

At which point he has to --both emotionally and literally-- throw out all the baggage that's keeping him weighed down, so that his house can fly again and he can go save his boyscout friend Russell (it took me a while to figure out the name they were saying in Spanish).

In the same way, I've recently been struggling with feeling like I'm not doing things right, like I'm not giving my whole self in my work here, like I should be taking more advantage of being here. But the movie helped remind me that all of these are expectations of how I'm 'supposed to be'. They're expectations which turn into frustrations and thereby actually make it harder to be open hearted, harder to remember the Spirit of this Adventure.

An adventure which is, as I like to put it, "learning to be open-hearted in the middle of Honduras with a bunch of crazy orphans" (actually, I just added the 'learning to' part after finding myself struggling with the kids almost immediately after finishing these thoughts).



What I wrote down in my notebook after finishing the movie reminded also me of Toni Morrison's Song of Solomon, which I recently finished. (And, to be honest, I also just like the idea of comparing Toni Morrison and Up). Learning to fly is also very important at the end of that book: flying as a way of reaching your dreams, and also of breaking free from the emotional/historical/literal chains that bind us.

One of the cool things is that, in the book, the purpose of flying isn't so that you can fly away from the world (which the main character, Milkman, is trying to do the whole book). Rather, learning to fly is a way of being more fully part of the world. And our ability to fly is based on our dreams, and on the emotional connections build with one another-- connections that make us feel respected and loved, and dreams that give us motivation and excitement.

Which, I think (I hadn't planned out this part), brings me back to why, for me, maintaining my 'Spirit of Adventure' is so important: that through that spirit, I can try to help the kids feel the same way, help them to find those connections and dreams which will allow them to fly. I like that idea- though of course writing it is much easier than enacting it.


*The English major in me also makes me feel like I need to note that this is a pretty rough interpretation of Song of Solomon, which --without the balloons and talking dogs-- is a little more morally ambiguous than Up...