The First Youth Group "Meeting"

The first youth group meeting was scheduled for last Friday. I took the first 10 minutes of every 3^rd, 4^th, and 5^th year religion class to pass out a trifold and explain the idea. In my one-on-ones with students I encouraged them to come. A few told me they would.

I stood outside my office at 3:30 as the dismissal bell rang. I wished students a good weekend as they streamed past. I could even greet many by name!* Soon only a few students were left. It looked like no one was coming. I called a 5^th year student over to ask for some ideas about how to get students to come next week. We talked for a few minutes, then she went to talk to her friends.

About 10 minutes later the girl and 5 of her fellow 5^th years came up to me.

“Profe, we have happy news and sad news. Which do you want first.”

“The sad news. So that there can be a happy ending.”

“The sad news is that we can't come today, so there won't be any youth group.”

I had already guessed at this. “Oh no! And the good news?”

“The good news is that we are all going to come next week. And we'll make sure to encourage our friends to come with us. AND we'll make an announcement during the morning meeting on Monday.”

I told them that it sounded like a fine idea and promised to give 2 packs of cookies to any of the six of them who brought a friend. Then I had them write their names in my notebook so their commitment would feel more official. I gave them each a pack of cookies** and sent them on their way.

Obviously I'm disappointed that things didn't start last Friday. But I'm hopeful that these students will come through today. I know a few of them and they are the leaders of the school. As students who have studied at this school for as long as 13 years, their word probably carries more weight than mine.

Starting something out of nothing is difficult. This will be the first time the school has had a youth group. I was very nervous when that dismissal bell rang and I watched students stream past my office and out the gates. 2 hours later, when I finished up and walked out the gate myself, I felt hopeful.

*Names are hard for me. Names are harder when you have over 300 of them to learn.

**I have a big box of cookies to hand out as a snack at youth group meetings.

Noted with Translation - #Discipleship

No, I'm not talking about Twitter. Literally,
I would appreciate it if you followed me.

My Job(s) for the Year

Let's talk about my job this year. I have two official titles: Profesor de Religión, and Sub-coordinador de Pastoral. These roles are related, but distinct. JVs have taught high school religion at FyA44 before, but the context has changed since the last JV who taught high school religion.

Follow the jump to read about my multi-faceted role at the FyA 44 high school.

Noted Without Translation - Real Talk Edition

*Thanks to the Best

Sunday Night with Crotchless Pants

You probably aren't wondering what the 2016 communnity did last night, but this is my blog and that's what I want to write about, so I'm telling you anyways.

There is a room on the second floor of our house that has served as the dumping ground for unwanted clothing. For the past 5 years outgoing JVs have left behind shoes, socks, shirts, and pants that they didn't want to bring back to the States. The idea behind leaving things instead of throwing them out is that perhaps future JVs may want those items. It sounds like a reasonable idea. It sounds like a good way to cut down on waste. It sounds like a thoughtful thing to do.

But it isn't.

The thing about being thoughtful is you can't half-ass it. For example: It would be very thoughtful to take my friend out for dinner on his birthday. But if my friend is a vegan, taking him to Shake Shack isn't actually all that thoughtful. My intent is good, but my delivery is lacking. My heart's in it, but my head isn't.

You have to whole-ass being thoughtful. I have to think through that the concept of Shake Shack is contrary to everything my vegan friend believes in regarding food. Outgoing JVs should think through the consequences of leaving lots of outfits behind. Here's some of the issues we encountered going through those clothes last night:

1. Not everyone wears the same size. A good pair of jeans is only useful if it fits you well. Otherwise it's useless. It seems silly to leave some clothes on the off chance someone with your seam waist, hip, and inseam measurements is going to move into the same house you once lived it.
2. Donations are done until they are donated. The fallback idea for the clothes in this room was that if no JV wanted them, they could always be donated. Imagine if I had a bunch of clothes I didn't want. I dump them off at your house saying "if you want anything take it, then donate the rest." I'll leave your house feeling good about myself. I gave stuff to my friend and I made sure stuff would be donated to other people who need it. You watch me walk out your door feeling confused. Why are you now responsible for my unwanted things? Why do you have to go through the work of sorting through my stuff in order donate it properly? In reality, all I've done in that situation is cleaned out my own space by pushing my crap onto someone else. It's kind of like the pink ring in The Cat in the Hat Comes Back
3. So many crotchless pants. How it was possible to wear out the crotches of so many pairs of pants is an interesting question, but it's not the one I want to address. Here's my question: Who thinks that anyone would want pants with more patches on the croth than there are pockets? That's thoughlessness on a new level. No one wants your old crotchless pants. Period. Got it?

It's a bit of a tradition in the Mountain House for outgoing JVs to leave crap behind. One of the most memorable thoughtless gifts received from outgoing volutneers in the last two years was a used razor. It's a tradition that I want no part of. That's why one of my goals for this year is "Don't leave crap behind for the 2017 community." Because intentional community doesn't mean leaving my mess for other people to clean up, even if they aren't people I'll be living with.* 

This is my public promise to Lauren, Rachel, and the 2 JVs who will move in and replace Erin and me: I will not leave anything in the house that you don't specifically ask for. I will take charge of properly donating any clothes I don't want to take back to the States. And for goodness sake I promise not to leave you any crotchless pants. 

*BTW, this is basically a microcosm of the global issues that lead to global warming. Past generations have left messes that the current generation has to deal with. 

Noted Without Translation - How Not to Do Multilingual Options

I saw someone talking about the Whole30 program on facebook and wondered what the heck it was. Turns out it's a fad diet. But this caught my eye:

Ever heard the line "It's not enough to have your heart in it, you have to have your head in it too." ?

This is an example of having your heart in it (we translated our thing into Spanish so more people can access it!) without having your head in it.

Election Results

Peru had their first round of presidential elections on April 10, less commonly known and Benmas Eve. The top two candidates have been officially selected and will face off for the top job on June 5th. Here's a look at the two candidates.

Keiko
Keiko Fujimori (pronounced Foo-He-More-E) is the daughter of Alberto Fujimori. He's the man who defeated Mario Vargas Llosa in the 1990 election. His two biggest achievements are defeating the Maoist terrorist group The Shining Path, which had been terrorizing Peru since 1980, and restoring stability to the economy. The latter was achievement by the implementation of harsh economic policies known as "Fujishock." 

His most infamous achievement is the autogolpe (one of my favorite Spanish words which literally means "self-coup") of 1992. Congress was ruled by an opposing party, making it difficult for Fujimori to implement his platform. The approval rating of the legislative branch of the government was sitting low at 17%.* So on April 5 Fujimori used the military to shut down congress and suspend the constitution. Apparently the coup was popular enough that Fujimori called it ""not a negation of real democracy, but on the contrary… a search for an authentic transformation to assure a legitimate and effective democracy."

In July of 2009, Fujimori was convicted of human rights violations and sentenced to 25 years in prison (which is the standard maximum sentence in Peru). For more on Alberto Fujimori, check out his wikipedia page. 

It's imporant to talk about Alberto Fujimori's presidency when looking at Keiko's candidacy because she was not a simple bystander to all this. After he parents divorced, she served as the youngest first lady in the history of the Americas from 19940 to 2000, a period of time that included this...

"From 1996 to 2000, the Fujimori government oversaw a massive family planning campaign known as Voluntary Surgical Contraception. The United Nations and other international aid agencies supported this campaign.^[75] The Nippon Foundation, headed by Ayako Sono, a Japanese novelist and personal friend of Fujimori, supported as well.^[76][77] Nearly 300,000, mostly indigenous, women were coercively or forcefully sterilized during these years.^[4]"   

...as well as other human rights abuses by the Fujimori government. Keiko has been noncomittal about whether or not she would pardon her father. Keiko's funding has been a hot question, and the Panama Papers revealed that she is funded by dirty money. 

On April 5th (anniversary of Alberto's self-coup), there were massive anti-Keiko demonstrations in major cities all across the country. Just as Trump is seen by many to be dangerous in the States, Keiko is considered dangerous in Peru. She was the leading candidate in the April 10th election, and it will be interesting to see if anti-Fujimori sentiment will be enough to defeat her.

PPK (Pedro Pablo Kuczynski)
PPK came in second on April 10th. He was a businessman in the US (he had dual citizenship until he renounced it very recently as part of his presidential bid) before moving into Peruvian politics. He résumé includes work at the IMF and in the administrations of 2 different Peruvian presidents. His punny party, Peruanos Por el Kambio (Peruvians for Change), was created in anticipation of these elections.** 

I know a lot less about PPK. He was seen as having the best chance of beating Keiko, and is popular among left leaning voters. Most of my friends from Lima are rooting for him, and have been for some time. If I learn more about him over the next two months, I'll let you know.

*For comparison, according to Gallup, the US Congress approval rating right now is 13%. 
**This is normal in Peruvian politics. Parties are built around candidates. Many parties only last one or two election cycles. The institutional concept of political parties that we have in the US doesn't really apply here.

Sunday Song - The Shepherd Song

This seems like the most appropriate song for the feast of the Good Shepherd. Unfortunately I don't a recording of an old friend of mine singing this song, so this version from Mississippi will have to do. 

Shout outs to the Good Shepherdesses who taught me I was kind, good, and important.

Happy Birthday Me!

My 24th birthday was on Monday. It was thoroughly celebrated on 2 different days with 4 different cakes and 7 choruses of Happy Birthday.

On Saturday we had a small gathering at our house with some local friends. Fabio, the French volunteer in Ocongate, came down for the weekend. And Babbi and Mari and their children came as well. We had sourcream chocolate chip cake (a Driscoll-Hill family favorite) and played a lot of Spot It.

On my actual birthday, Lauren cooked up the last of the cinnamon roll dough left over from Easter. At school Hermana Rosario had the entire student body sing to me during the weekly meeting. At 11:00 I went over to the parish where there was singing and cake. Then I went back to the school for 2 cakes to celebrate all the teachers who had birthdays in January-April. In the evening we had mass at Hermana Rosario's house. She made a delicious meal and we had a pretty good chocolate with passion fruit frosting cake.*

I looked at last year's birthday post to see what reflections I had:

I remember my birthday in Peru two years ago. It was a hard birthday. I was too focused on what I didn't have, on how far I was from home. This year I saw clearly all that I have here. I'm cared about by many people here. There is much to celebrate, not just my continued non-death, but my full life.

This I feel the same, but "ever so much more so."  This year I have friends who have known me for awhile. This year I know what I'm doing. This year I've got my feet under me almost all the time. Monday I completed the only "life year"** I'll spend entirely in a foreign country (probably). It's been a year of challenge, joy, frustration, growth, and so much love.

Thanks to everyone who makes this life such a wonderful one to live.

Best cake award goes to Lauren for bringing me the taste of home with the sourcream chocolate-chip cake with chocolate glaze.

Best rendition of "Happy Birthday" goes to 5°A who made so much noise banging on their desks (or in a few cases lifting desks and banging them against the floor) that I was afraid my boss would walk by and send me back to Boston.

*Peruvian store bought cakes are generally terrible. I don't know if it's because they make the cakes too far ahead of time of if they just don't have good cake recipes in Peru. But most cakes are dry and flavorless. The tres leches cake at the parish and the chocolate cake at Hermana's are the two best store bought cakes I've had here.

**Here defined as one brithday to the next.

Noted with Translation: Peruvian Spanish 101 Edition

What a controversial comedy sketch can teach us about mercy

We've heard the Resurrection story so many times, that there're no surprises in it.

The thing with familiar stories is that you can take it for granted that there was only one way for things to happen. Jesus comes back, hangs out with his buddies, then ascends to heaven after a month and half. A few years ago SNL made a very controversial sketch about a different way things could have gone down post-resurrection.




DJesus Uncrossed upset a lot of people. But not me. It's important to realize that the sketch is making fun of Quentin Tarantino's love for bloody revenge stories; the joke is that he'd take Jesus, the epitome of peace and mercy, and recast him as a vengeful warrior.

The post-resurrection story we see in DJesus Uncrossed is very different from the one we know. But it makes a certain amount of sense from a basic human perspective. Jesus was tortured to death (unjustly). He gets a second chance at life and decided to avenge himself. We love that kind of story. How many people cheered on Tony Stark when he told Loki "We may not be able to protect the earth, but you can be damn sure we'll avenge it"? How much money has Tarantino made off of revenge fantasies like Django Unchained, Inglorious Bastards, or Kill Bill? We like revenge.

It's easy to think that even if Jesus came back on Easter Sunday ready to turn the disciples into an army they would have talked him down and brought him back to the core message they'd been hearing from him for the last 3 years. After all the apostles were peace-loving guys who would never hurt anyone...

"Then Simon Peter having a sword drew it, and smote the high priest's servant, and cut off his right ear. The servant's name was Malchus." -Jn 18:10

Oh right. Just two days before the Resurrection Peter, the future pope, was brandishing a sword and cutting off ears like muggle version of Severus Snape. Peter would probably be all ready to play the role that Brad Pitt gives him in this sketch.

But none of that happened. Jesus didn't come back for Roman blood. Peter became the first pope and instead of leading a violent revolution against Rome, spread a gospel of peace and mercy. Djesus Uncrossed shows just how remarkable Jesus and his crew were - they were stronger than hate, tougher than any Tartantino hero on the vengence warpath. They were loving, merciful, which was a bold and difficult choice considering all that happened to them.

In this, the Year of Mercy, let us pray to be even a fraction as merciful toward our enemies as Jesus was to his.


*Except for Thomas, who was out doing....what?

Belleza por Todos Lados - Alfombras

Alfombras are a key part of the Good Friday celebration in much of Latin America. Alfombra literally means "carpet," and can refer to the carpet in your living room. But here, alfombra refers to a carpet made of flower petals on the street. People put hours of work into collecting flowers and creating beautiful images on their street. Then the Good Friday procession comes and passes over the alfombra and it is destroyed in a matter of minutes.

I participated in making alfombras both last year and this year. I think they are a beautiful meditation on impermanence, and an indication of the strong dedication to faith that people have. Though I do wonder if stipping thousands of flowers of their pettals every year is good for the local ecosystem.

Here are pictures of some of the alfombras made for Good Friday:

Noted with Translation: How to vote in Peru

1. Present your national ID card to the president of the table. This is the table that you first come to when you enter the polling station.
2. Receive the ballot folded and signed by the president of the table.
3. Enter the secret booth to vote.
4. Deposit the ballot in the amphora.*
5. Sign and fingerprint the list of voters.
6. Receive your national ID and verify that they have glued on the new hologram sticker.

The box on the bottom reads:

• It's obligatory to vote.
• You can only vote with a national ID card.
• Persons over the age of 70 are not obligated to vote.

*I had to look up this word in English. It's got a long definition going back to the Ancient Romans. But in this case it's a ballot box.

Upcoming Peruvian Presidential Elections

A local PSA to prepare people for Sunday's elections

Sunday, April 10, is election day in Peru. Understanding any election is difficult. Understanding an election in a foreign country is even harder. So if you really want to know about Peruvian presidential politics, this blog is not your best source. But I do want to explain the bits that I do understand because it's interesting to see how another democracy works.

Pascua Juvenil

3rd - 5th year retreat on Holy Thursday and Saturday

I have two roles at FyA 44 this year. The first is as one of the 2 religion teachers at secundaria. The second is as the sub-coordinator of the school's pastoral program. The first task of this second role came in organizing students to participate in a mini-retreat called Pascua Juvenil (Youth Easter).

The retreat was pretty easy to organize. It's a program run by Jesuits who are still in formation, so we requested 2 scholastics to come to Andahuaylillas for Holy Week to run the retreat. I also had to explain the retreat to all the students and pass around a list for them to sign up. Finally I had to make sure they got permission slips.

The retreat itself was a good experience. The kids who came enjoyed it and got a lot out of it. There was time for play and time for reflection on the mysteries of Holy Week. The problem was that so few kids came.

Part of the difficulty in getting participants was the school calendar. Holy Week fell on the 3^rd week of school; and Holy Week means a shortened week for the observance of the holidays. Last year there was school Monday through Wednesday. This year we only had school on Monday because of teacher meetings on Tuesday and Wednesday. This means I had 11 days to get teenagers interested in coming to school on a holiday weekend. If you've worked with teenagers, or if you were a teenager, you know that's a difficult task.

The benefit of having a small group at the retreat was that it created more opportunity for me to get to know some of my students. But we don't want future retreats to have such low attendance. I'm not too concerned about participation in retreats that happen later this year because there will more time to pique students' interest and convince them that the retreat is worth the sacrifice of time.

As for last week, we just reminded ourselves that wherever two or three are gathered in His name, He is there. 

1st and 2nd year retreat on Good Friday

Holy Week Video

Holy Week in Andahuaylillas, 2016

The plaza of Cusco on Holy Monday

My second experience of Holy Week in Andahuaylillas could not have been more different from my first. All the traditions were the same, of course, but the meaning of them was different for me.

Last year I was new to Andahuaylillas. Everything about the celebration of Holy Week was new. I was observing a culture that I did not yet know. Catholic means universal, but there's a lot of diversity within the Church, and that was so clearly on display during Holy Week.

This year I'm not new. The celebration of Holy Week isn't new. I've seen (almost) all of it before. So this year I was able to enter more deeply into the mysteries of Holy Week. I wasn't as distracted by the role of participant-observer because I knew what to look for. And what I looked for was Mary.

Last year was the first year I really gave Mary's experience during Holy Week any real thought. This year it was almost all I focused on. When did Mary arrive in Jerusalem? Was she filled with pride to see the crowds her son drew? Where did Mary celebrate the Passover Seder? Was she there the next day when the crowd shouted out “Crucify him”? Who held her as her son was slowly murdered before her? When did she receive the good news of the Resurrection? Did Jesus come to her, or did Mary of Magdala come running to knock on Mary's door before heading to the Upper Room because she knew that a disciple's grief pales in comparison to a mother's?

In the processions of Good Friday and Easter Sunday, I and many other people in Andahuaylillas walked with Mary. We walked with her in her son's funeral procession. We walked with her when she was dressed all in white for the joy of Easter.

There are two moments that are most striking to me from the Triduum in Andahuaylillas. The first came at the end of the Good Friday Procession. In front of the crowds on the steps of the church, Mary's statue is brought forward and bows before the glass coffin that contains the statue of Jesus. It is a moment of grief. A moment of defeat.

The second came at the end of the Easter Sunday procession. The host, the Risen Christ, leads the procession around the plaza and up the steps of the church. After the host is brought into the temple, the statue of Mary is turned around to face the people. This time she kneels to the crowds – a gesture of gratitude for the accompaniment given on Good Friday. She is brought into the temple facing backwards, constantly looking towards the crowd. In that image I see Mary taking on the role of intercessor. “You walked with me on my darkest day,” she says to us “I will not forget you on yours. I will walk with you, and I will tell my son to help you.”

Both those moments are shown in a video that I'll post tomorrow. The rest of today's post will explain all about the celebrations shown in tomorrow's video and my reflections on them. Follow the jump to read about my 2^nd (and last) experience of Holy Week in Andahuaylillas/Cusco. I know this post is really long, but I especially encourage Catholic readers to read all of it. There's a lot that US Catholics can learn from Latin American Catholics.