Quarterly Review 6 - Video

It helps, now and then, to step back

and take the long view.

-Prayer Honoring Pd. Oscar Romero

Last quarter I introduced a new element to the Quarterly Review – the video. It's a chance to step back and see what's happened in the last three months.

The song this quarter is “Rather Be” by Clean Bandit.* I love this song from the first time I heard it because it's not often that you hear a real violin on a pop radio station. Clean Bandit's whole sound is a cool mix of synthetic and acoustic instruments. Anyways I picked the song for a very specific reason.

After an evening of hanging out with my friend Bobbi and his family I wrote to another JV about the night: “... I had that feeling of rightness, or peace, that you get every now and then (you get those right? Or is that just me?). Just for that moment I felt like I could live here forever.” I can't live her forever, nor do I want to. But for now, there's no place I'd rather be.

Key events this quarter include:

• April – month of birthdays. We celebrated the birthdays of Hna. Rosario, Karla (who is young woman dancing with Hermana), Fabio (a Spanish volunteer), and me. All in the course of 8 days.
• FyA No. 44 events. We've got students dancing at the first day of school party. There's flag waving from the day of Sports and Games. There's little kids dancing at the Mother's Day pageant. Plus some images from the Holy Week retreat and a group shot of the Youth Group.
• Mountain Climbing. Once again there's a selfie of Lauren and me and on top of a mountain. This time the climb was up the biggest mountain in the area, Qoriorko (The Golden Mountain). It was very satisfying to check that climb off my Peru Bucket List.
• Holy Week. I know that there's a full 5 minute video exclusively for Holy Week LINK, but I couldn't leave it out of the Quarterly Review video because it happened, and Holy Week is kind of a big deal.
• The Doctors. Note that when we move into the section of pictures of the doctors the song says “we're different and the same.” The doctors are lots of fun. They're very generous to us and they do some good work here. They're some of the only Americans we will socialize with all year. There's lots of good similarities. But we're also very different in the ways we think about service and are at very different points in our lives. Loved having them here, glad they aren't a permanent fixture in Andahuaylillas.
• Señor de Qoyllurritti. Of course will see plenty of pictures from the pilgrimage (the post is in the works). But just like with Holy Week, this is a BFD and I would be remiss if I didn't put it in the video. Plus, I needed the pictures to fill up the song time. The solo shots in this section of the video are of Pd. Eddy, Iban (the French volunteer who lives in Ocongate), and Bobbi (the friend who dances on the pilgrimage and invited me to come along for the whole spiritual and physical journey).   

*I'm pretty sure using the song in this way doesn't violate US copyright laws, but according to the email youtube sent me, it may violate Pakistani copyright laws. We apologize to the committed Peruben fanbase in Paskistan, and are working round the clock to make this video available to you.