Hard to love...

I´m here for six months.

I kept thinking that sentence to myself about every five seconds throughout my first week or two here, generally followed by the thought, "WHAT WAS I THINKING??!!!". In those first few overwhelming days, six months seemed interminable, ridiculous, like it was the longest stretch of time I´d ever spent anywhere ever and it was never ever ever going to end. (If you can´t tell, what my mother calls "Em's tendency to be melodramatic" happily survived its travel across the Equator quite intact...)

Ever since I accidentally blinked and found myself six weeks in, however, the phrase "six months" hasn´t felt nearly as long. I mean, sometimes it does, but other times as I ponder it I realize that it´s actually a relatively short amount of time.

What's really taken me by surprise is that so often I think "six months", when I find myself starting to love things here.
I've been finding little places around Cochabamba that feel like "mine", you know- this plaza, that café; I'm starting to feel at home in this city, and then I think, "Six months, I'm only going to be here for six months". Who knows if I'll ever come back to Cochabamba- how much am I going to miss these streets, these parks?
I start opening myself up to the girls at Mosoj Yan and taking the first steps at forming the kind of relationships I have with my high school girls from home. Then my mind goes to December and how, unlike with my girls from home, these relationships sort of have a time limit. What does forming close relationships look like when I don't have two or three years to plan on with them?

With virtually every relationship I've ever formed before I've had at least the hope of permanency... lived in the same town my entire life, went to a four-year college. I don't generally have a hard time loving people or places quickly. I've been surprised by how hard it is for me here to fully let myself love and be loved without paying attention to the mental countdown in my head. I've been really surprised at how present the temptation is to guard myself, to stay just a tiny distance away so that I can have a Really Great and Positive Cross-Cultural Experience, but not be in great pain next semester. Or maybe even a little bit of pain, forever.

My great friend Nate, who spent last year in Ethiopia on a HNGR internship, copied the following quote into my HNGR devotional book (emphasis' are mine):

"Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable."

-C.S. Lewis

I prayed that quote for him and the other interns last year, and a couple weeks ago I copied it into the first page of my journal here because I realized I needed to be praying it for myself, too. I've found myself turning to it frequently, rereading the words and reminding myself of the charge, love and be vulnerable.

It's really the only choice...

I really like this prayer.

"O Tree of Calvary,
send Thy roots deep down
into my heart.
Gather together the soil of my heart,
the sands of my fickleness,
the stones of my stubbornness,
the mud of my desires;
bind them all together,
O Tree of Calvary;
interlace them with Thy strong roots;
entertwine them with the network
of Thy love."

-from Celtic.

Pics!!

Since I fail miserably at sending out email updates (for some reason blogging takes less emotional energy, I think because I can pretend no one will actually read it...), here's some pics of my host fam and house! Ones from the internship will come later, after my awesome friend Danae posts them on FB for me to steal...

Cute cute host parents (Don Nicanor and Doña Felicidad).


Beautiful host sisters... Dimelsa, age 13, and Noemi ("Nena", or Baby), age 9 (but 10 on Wednesday, she would want to make sure I pointed out.)


Crazy host siblings. The boys are Ivan (11) and Danny (15). Ivan was not quite as into the whole posing-for-the-camera thing as everyone else...


My happy rooommmm! I love it.


Nena cooking "cena" (dinner).


Sisters knitting on my bed... I'm not sure why they both look kinda grumpy in this pic. They're not, I promise.


See, now Dimelsa's happy like normal :-) She's so much fun.


Me with Nena. This is a common position. "Caigame!" ("Carry me!") was one of the first phrases I learned to recognize quickly...


Me with my host dad. When he sees me he says, "Loca!" which means "Crazy girl!" and I say "Loco!" ("Crazy man!") back, and then we laugh and he kisses me on the head. I love my host parents a lot. Note my host mom cooking bread in the back... we eat A LOT of bread (see a few pics down...)


Me with the padres.


And here they are both shoving bread in my face. While this picture was taken as a joke, the sentiment behind it (trying to feed me ALL THE TIME) definitely is very for real. Trust me.


The beautiful prayer flag Sarah sewed as my going-away present... it hangs above my bed and I pray the prayers on it in the mornings.


So... that's a visual glimpse into my Bolivian life! It took so ridiculously long for the pics to load it may be the last one shared for awhile...

LOVE and miss y'all. So much. :-)

Bits!

I should probably write a blog entry actually really detailing what I'm DOING here. Except... I'll put it all in an email update. That I'm going to send out. Eventually. Really!

But um, here's a small, completely random sampling of some of my HNGR activities...

*Making homemade pizza in the kitchen of Renovación (the girls home I'm working in!) with the girls while rocking out to Beatles music, some of which was in Spanish (hilarrrious)
*Getting my nails painted by the girls- they look awesome.
*Learning the plot lines to several Bolivian soap operas after weeks of watching them every afternoon with the girls AND at night with my host family... and worse, starting to care ("Oh my gosh! I hope her half-brother survives the drowning or else her mother will lock her in the wardrobe again!"). I can now sing the theme song to the channel ("Más cercaaaa de tííííí!") perfectly. It makes my host sister laugh.
*Hiking up a gorgeous mountain with a bunch of other students and teachers from my language school on Saturday. This was such a sweet day... beautiful scenery, fun people, and we spoke in Spanish but it was low-pressure because we're all learning.
*I saw a bunch of monkeys in a tree!
*I also learned how to squeegee a kitchen floor.
*Which is more fun than squeegeeing the bathroom floor... WHILE showering. Which I have also, by necessity, learned how to do.
*I'm so busy and really enjoying myself that I'm hardly homesick at all, which REALLY surprises me (and probably surprises those of you who walked me through my weepy freshman year even more!). But in those moments when I am? Oh man, if someone handed me a plane ticket home (or to Wheaton, Alabama, or Hungary, for that matter!), oh MAN, would I take it. Good thing no one has yet, because an hour later when my host sibs come to cuddle on my bed or I'm cracking up with one of the girls at work, I think six months isn't SO long after all :-)
*I brought a Bilingual Bible, which is really nice to have for church and reference... but to my surprise I NEVER want to read the Spanish side. I've actually avoided it like the plague. Jesus-in-English for me, please. I told this to one of the missionary couples I'm getting to know and they said it's actually very normal... for people in culture shock, we want to pray in our "heart language"! Makes me understand even more why Bible translation into even tiny dialects is SUCH an important thing,
*I am SO SO excited about my independent study, which is just starting to take shape. I think it's gonna be about the girls' perceptions of s-xuality (spelling it that way so I won't get censored on y'all's bloglines)... what messages does s-x send to them, what are they looking for in it? Still early stages but fascinating and important to me, and hopefully helpful to MY's HIV/AIDS prevention department- one of my goal's for the project.
*Last night (I'm staying at Reno with the girls overnight for two weeks, along with another volunteer, while the normal woman who does it is on vacation- definitely different and hard as well as really special... more on it later... maybe)... ok so last night, we watched Pride and Prejudice in Spanish!! The Keira Knightley version!! I love it so much. We get to finish tonight. I'm excited.
*I have lost enough weight in the last month that my clothes noticeably don't fit. Like, if I stand still long enough my jeans fall down to an inappropriate degree. I was slightly concerned about this as I'm more or less doing nothing but eating uncomfortably large portions of carbohydrates at every opportunity, but my Spanish teacher reassured me that it's normal... yes they eat nothing but carbs here, but it's all natural and fresh food. So just by cutting high fructose corn syrup and preservatives, etc., out of your diet (without meaning to), you lose weight. I decided that buying new jeans would be kind of a hassle, though, so my strategy for dealing with this is to get addicted to this Bolivian chocolate bar called Gobanzo. Oh. M. Gee. They may be my favorite thing about HNGR thus far. OK, maybe not, but they're pretty fantastic. I'm averaging about three a day and thus expect my clothes to be fitting again in no time! ;-)
*My host parents pat me on the head and call me "mi hijita" ("my little daughter") a lot. I love it.

Moooore Birthday!

This week was (the awesome) Chester Anthony Mancini's 21st birthday!


Super sadly, we were not all together to take him out for bowling and Chinese food, as is the ultra-hardcore Wheaton College version of celebrating a 21st birthday. So he must get a blog post of old photos instead.

Chet and I had an awkward meeting during orientation week freshman year (if you really want to hear the story, y'all can hunt him down because this is my blog and I like to make myself sound cool, not awkward. Usually.), after which I turned to my roommate and said, "That guy thinks I'm weird now, doesn't he?". To which she replied, "Umm... well... it's okay, you'll probably never see him again."

Thankfully, her prediction was wrong. Not only did I see him again but we developed one of my closest and most fun and encouraging friendships at Wheaton.

This is despite the fact that we are "fundamentally different" (his words, not mine). They came in the context of going out for dinner one Sunday night. He, as the driver, wanted to know something lame like where we were intending on going. I, as the planner, of course had thought we would all just decide that once we were actually on the road. When he expressed concern that he didn't actually know which way to drive, then, and I expressed confusion about why this would bother him, the classic comment was made.


He was my "Big Sibs" partner- a Wheaton tradition where two sophomores take a group of new freshman into the city during orientation week. He patiently put up with my making him carry a sign like this:and making our group refer to themselves as "Team Awesome" (and do a corresponding chant), and balanced out my hyper-enthusiasm with actual helpful information about adjusting to Wheaton and making sure no one got lost.


Chet...
*has one of the biggest hearts of gold of anyone I know and would do absolutely anything to help someone in need.
*He is one of the quickest people I know with an encouraging word and is never embarrassed or hesitant to point out positive characteristics, growth, and ways he sees God at work in others.
*He also has been a source of challenging words at times for me, and I've so appreciated the ways he's refused to let me wallow in self-pity or insecurity (Story: I sent out an overapologetic text message once, over nothing in particular. This was immediately following a series of conversations about all of us needing to trust each other and ourselves more, which I was conveniently deciding to forget about in favor of the asking for affirmation. Instead of replying to it, he walks in to our apartment to hang out later that night, looks straight at me, and kindly but without preamble goes, "So, I thought we were done being insecure about Thursday dinners." This might not be that funny to anyone besides our apartment and the boys, but it was kind of awesome timing, and definitely what I needed to hear.) At times when I have asked him for honest feedback and he's given it, he's never made me feel judged or looked down upon but instead manages to help me see ways I can grow but also ways I am growing. It's a hard thing to be able to do, and it is truly a gift he has.
*He's way funnier than he gives himself credit for. Really. Were we to ever have dance parties in our apartment, which we definitely wouldn't because they are against the rules, but hypothetically were we ever to, and he came, you would definitely agree with me.
*When I need to remember the Gospel, he is one of the first people I go to. Many a text message has been sent to this kid (I'm sure not only by me) asking for a Scripture reference or a reminder of truth when I'm feeling stressed or scared, and he is always quick to give it.

*We loved living in the apartment right across from him this year and nights when he would come hang out and drink tea and do homework at the kitchen table were one of my favorite parts of junior year.
*He gets especial props for several times where he did so just because I had to stay up late to finish a paper and I was bored and falling asleep being the only one up.
*And also for being willing to come out of his apartment late at night in pouring rain when my roommates and I needed someone to take our picture.

*He's been one of the most consistent people reminding me he's praying for me over HNGR.

Consistency, is, in fact, one of the biggest things I appreciate about Chet. I was describing a bunch of my friends to someone recently and when I got to him I started thinking about how I would say that he is truly a rock in our group of friends. He is consistently present, encouraging, friendly, available to help or hang, and seeking God, and we all appreciate it so much.



Even though he managed to avoid both the Canada and the Minnesota road trip with ridiculous excuses like "two months in the Middle East" and "family vacation". Really?


We love you, Chet! Wish I could see you to celebrate.

Missing People

I found this passage totally by accident, and it has meant a lot to me so far in my time here. Every line I read, I was like, "Oh, that´s good. Oh, that helps. Oh, true.¨And finally just decided that I love the whole thing, so here it is. I know it´s ridiculously long for a blog post, so I will just say that the first paragraph is my favorite (but I learn different things and am challenged in a different way by each part every time I read it... which this week has been almost every day...).

"When you ´love´ someone or ´miss´ someone, you experience an inner pain. Bit by bit you have to discover the nature of this pain. When your deepest self is connected to the deepest self of another, that person´s absence may be painful, but it will lead you to a profound communion with the person, because loving each other is loving in God. When the place where God dwells in you is intimately connected with the place where God dwells in the other, the absence of the other person is not destructive. On the contrary, it will challenge you to enter more deeply into communion with God, the source of all unity and communion among people.

"It is also possible on the other hand that the pain of absence will show you that you are out of touch with your own deeper self. You need the other to experience inner wholeness, to have a sense of well-being. You have become emotionally dependent on the other and sink into depression because of his or her absence. It feels as if the other has taken away a part of you that you cannot live without. Then the pain of absence reveals a certain lack of trust in God´s love. But God is enough for you.

"True love between two human beings puts you more in touch with your deepest self. It is a love in God. The pain you experience from the death or absence of the person you love, then, always calls you to a deeper knowledge of God´s love. God´s love is all the love you need, and it reveals to you the love of God in the other. So the God in you can speak to the God in the other. This is deep speaking to deep, a mutuality in the heart of God, who embraces both of you.

"Death or absence does not end or even diminish the love of God that brought you to the other person. It calls you to take a new step into the mystery of God´s inexhaustible love. This process is painful, very painful, because the other person has become a true revelation of God´s love for you. But the more you are stripped of the God-given support of people, the more you are called to love God for God´s sake. This is an awesome and even dreadful love, but it is the love that offers eternal life."

-Henri Nouwen (shocker), from The Inner Voice of Love

Now I know I'm really HERE!

I just spent twenty minutes of my Spanish conversation class explaining to one of my teachers why I love Henri Nouwen so much. It ended in me trying to translate some of my favorite titles into Spanish and her promising to look them up.

Hol-lerrrrr!

Happy Birthday to the Coolest Woman I Know...

...My mother.

Who's amazing.

And who I miss. A lot.

Happy to be on the beach, her favorite place...

If you know my mom, I'm sure you think she's amazing, too. (And if you don't know her, you should meet her, I promise you'll laugh a lot and definitely be fed way more food than you knew you needed!).

In a thank-you note to my mom for a graduation present, my BFF Christina wrote,
"You're every girl's dream best-friend's-mom. Funny, but true!" (I love that).
It is true. From genuinely caring about my friends' lives and providing a sympathetic ear (or indignant comment, if the story is one of a jerky significant other, for example), offering to let them live with her for the summer to complete a Baltimore internship, driving everyone around for the entirety of our middle-school careers, or just providing mountains of nachos and slice and bake cookies, she makes all of Al's and my friends feel comfortable and cared for in our home.
For homecoming one year, we planned a sleepover at my house. Unbeknownst to me, one of my good friends had not-so-great a time at the dance and went home early. She called my house and asked my mom what time she was expecting the rest of the crowd. My mom's reply? "Oh, I have no idea, but come on over and hang out with me!". I walked in a couple hours later to find them snuggled under a blanket watching a movie. Obviously.With my roommates at Macaroni Grill this winter :-)


This year I had a bad cough that resulted in a scary ER trip and a million and five blood tests, etc. It turned out to be nothing serious but she still wondered if she should come out to school to be with me. I assured her no, absolutely not, I was fine... hung up the phone... ran into my freshman roommate and burst into tears that I wanted my mom. Her response was, "Emily, I know your mom. She'd want to come." I called her back and only managed to say, "Mom... can you come?" before starting to cry again, but I needn't have worried- she'd already bought a plane ticket. She was there 18 hours later to hold my hand and take me to the doctor and just be with me in that reassuring way only moms have. (This story still makes me tear up just to write.)
Checking on her poor sick daughter...

She's incredibly inclusive. I love that we had a rule growing up that birthday parties either had to be small or invite the whole class- none of this who's-in-who's-out business. If it was more work for her, so be it, rather than have anyone's feelings be unnecessarily hurt.

She came to visit Wheaton in October and we had an awesome time... she was extremely proud of herself for painting this beautiful mug with palm trees on it:


She's one of the most encouraging people in the entire world. My entire life I've found cards in my backpack, sock drawer (true story), on my pillow for no particular reason... "Dear Emily, I am so glad I am your mom, Love, Mom", "Dear Emily, I love you more than the moon and the stars, Love, Mom". When I got to Bolivia I opened my suitcase and sure enough, there was a card for my first night.


She's hilarious and playful. Take this for an example:
(If you can't read it, the sign says, "Please take care of me, Thanks, A Little Green Suitcase"). Similar notes have been left from "Your Messy Room" and "The Dishes You Should Do".

One time she was having a dinner party and decided there's no reason that life should be boring just because they're not teenagers anymore... so as a throwback... she made it hippie themed... complete with costumes and a joint-rolling contest (using oregano!). (Don't be mad at me for posting that, it's hilarious).My mom with some of her cool friends who she has hippie-themed dinner parties with... Oh! At a baseball game... that's another thing... she's obsessed with the Orioles.

She makes me cool birthday cakes with hearts on them like this:If I were there I would make you a cake, Mama!


Throughout my senior year of high school, she packed me a lunch every day, and of course the napkin always read, "Have a Great Day Love Mom!!!". This is a big joke in our family... after Allie's last day they had a big ceremonial Last-Lunch-Packing Moment of her motherhood career... and then the next week Al sheepishly remembered that her finals actually went over the lunch period and would she mind continuing this job just a few more days? She didn't mind.


She loves surprising the people she loves. Last summer when I lived with the Maloys one time after a bad day at work I came home to find a Kohl's bag hanging off the doorknob with my name written on it and a pretty pink shirt. (And of course, a note that read, "Love, the Shirt Fairy"). Frequently in my school days she'd show up at lunch with take out from Panera or Mad City.

One hard summer in high school, she woke me up one day with, "Get up, we're going white water tubing". She'd decided the moping needed something fun to shake itself off and had googled "Day Trips near Maryland", found a place that offered affordable river activities, and within an hour drove us off to West Virginia for the day. It's still one of my favorite memories.


She puts up with me even at my most weepy, irrational, or irritable, and knows when to make me finish whatever's stressing me out and when I need to take a break. The day before I left, she took one look at the overwhelmed expression on my face and said "I think you need a bagel and hummus" and whisked me off for lunch, even though we still had so much to do. The tasks were easier after that, as she knew they would be, in her mom way.

She's ridiculously competitive and annoyingly good at Scrabble.

She's one of the most creatively talented people I know... she sews like an expert without ever using patterns and can put a room together in a way I've never seen anyone else do:
The gorgeous quilt she made me for my freshman year of college.

The wall in our kitchen... who else would know how to put pictures together like that??
Our home is beautiful because of her efforts.
(She also figured out how to hang the curtains in my impossible-to-hang-curtains-in dorm room so well that half the floor copied).



This is the Goldberg Girls out to dinner for her birthday last year, at the restaurant where we always have our celebrations. When I talked to her this morning she told me that she and Allie are going there tonight, and, in her words, "It kind of sucks that you won't be there". I agree.


I miss my mom sooo much... but I couldn't do this trip without her love and support. Despite the fears and hassles that come with having a kid traipsing across the world, she has provided consistent encouragement, support, snuggling, detail-provisions (Visa application, anyone?), and always the belief that I can do this. We all need our moms to believe in us and mine always, always does, even when I don't believe in myself. I'm so, so, so lucky.
She's one of the most compassionate, integrity-filled, thoughtful, funny, caring people I know and she's done an amazing job showing me and Allie that she loves being our parent.

OK... now I'm crying. I miss my mom.

I love you more than the moon and the stars, Mom.

Come in! Enter my small life!

"Lord! Give me courage and love to open the door and constrain You to enter, whatever the disguise You come in, even before I fully recognize my guest.
Come in! Enter my small life!
Lay Your sacred hands on all the common things and small interests of that life and bless and change them. Transfigure my small resources, make them sacred. And in them give me Your very self."

-Evelyn Underhill

I love this prayer and have been praying it all week. It was sent to me in a card by my beautiful friend Katerina, and the words she wrote are just as wonderful:

"...When you feel hindered by your own resources, remember that our Lord is a God of small things. God will allow constraint of God´s own self to enter and make useful and holy the small amounts of love that you invite God to use and bless. What humble divinity we serve! What to us is all impatience and frustration and guilt, to God is an occasion for grace, for abundance (remember the loaves and fish?) and for Christ to show through you."