Finally

Alright, this is going to be a long post but I have a lot of stuff to cover. I will try to keep it organized and provide a short title to each separate topic so that you can pick and choose what you want to read. I know that if someone told me to read their blog and then they posted a novel, I wouldn’t be too interested. So pick and choose what you want to read, but please, unless you are incredibly bored with lots of time on your hands, don’t try to read this all at once.

Why am I here?

That’s a very good question. During my senior year I didn’t know what I want to do after I graduated. I looked into and applied to several things; graduate school in engineering, Teach for America, going back to China and teaching English, and of course the Saint John’s Benedictine Volunteer Corps (BVC from here on out). I got into a couple of graduate schools but I wasn’t sure that engineering was what I wanted to do and I didn’t want to spend two more years in school if my heart wasn’t totally in it. Going back to China was appealing but when I found out that I had gotten into the BVC and that Cole and I would be the first members to volunteer in Chile I figured it was an opportunity I couldn’t pass up.
I didn’t know much about Chile before coming here and I knew even less about the community I would be living and working with, the Manquehue Apostolic Movement. The BVC usually spends people to live and work in Benedictine monasteries (becoming a monk or even being Catholic is not a requirement). However, as I will explain a little further on, the Manquehue Movement is not a monastery but a lay Benedictine community. Last year a couple of monks from Saint John’s came down to Santiago for a Benedictine education conference put on by the movement and both parties decided it would be a good idea to add Chile to the destinations for BVC volunteers.

The Manquehue Movement

The Manquehue Movement was started in 1977 by a man named Jose Manuel Eguiguren Guzman. During his mid-twenties Jose Manuel (whom I have met and he is an amazing person) began studying the bible with a monk and he eventually was put in charge of a confirmation group. Jose Manuel taught this group to read the bible in the same way this monk had taught him. The whole point was to discover how God spoke to them through the bible. An intense friendship formed within the group and they all wanted to get out and change the world so they formed this movement and named it Manquehue, which is a large hill in Santiago and means “place of the condor” in the native Indian language. Today Manquehue runs three schools, a women’s shelter, and a library all in Santiago as well as a retreat center in Patagonia. There are more than 900 people in the movement from various walks of life and in various forms of commitment. At the center of the movement are the oblates that have made a stable commitment to the movement. The Manquehue movement prays the Divine Office (the usual pray schedule in Benedictine monasteries) and follows the rule of Saint Benedict (they don’t exactly follow it because no one does that anymore). Also, within education, they are very involved in Tutoria and Lectio Divina, which I will explain.

Lection Divina

Lectio Divina is a kind of bible study that Manquehue does. I have been doing it for a while now but I still haven’t really gotten the hang of it, so I will probably go into more detail with it later. Basically we get together everyday at San Lorenzo, the school I work at, and we do Lectio for about 45 minutes. We refers to me, Cole, and about a dozen other people from the movement who work at San Lorenzo. A bible passage is read aloud, in Spanish obviously, and then each person reads it over a few times themselves and reads the notes and similar passages. This process is called scrutinizing the reading. The whole point of Lectio, at least I think, is to figure out what the bible is saying to you and how it applies to your life at this time. We then pair up and people give echos to each other, where they basically explain how they see the passage and what it means to them. Although I have an English bible, Lectio has been tough because I have to translate my echos and I am finding it hard right now to apply the readings to my life. But I am realizing that the bible is a pretty cool book, even if we are reading St. Paul’s letter to the Galatians, which is not too exciting.

Tutoria

I am not exactly sure what tutoria is all about right now either. I work in the office with all the other people who do tutoria, but right now its not my main job. A lot of ex-alumnos (alumni) of San Lorenzo work in tutoria. Basically they go into each class for about an hour each week and teach the kids about the bible and religion. I have “helped” with the tutoria sessions for kindergartners and jr high students, but I still don’t really understand it. Kindergarten sessions seem to consist of the kids running wild and jr high sessions are mostly playing football with the kids.

The Schools of the Manquehue Movement

The movement runs three schools here in Santiago – Colegio San Lorenzo, Colegio San Benito and Colegio San Anselmo. All of them are K-12.

Colegio San Anselmo

Cole and I visited San Anselmo for three days during our second week here, as part of our process of getting to know the movement, their work and their schools. San Anselmo is out in the suburbs of Santiago and is a very nice looking school. I think it must have the most space of all the three schools and has some beautiful hills in the background. It’s the newest of the three schools and was built in 1995. It’s a private school and while I don’t know how much tuition is I think most of the students who go there are pretty well off. While at San Anselmo Cole and I sat in on some English classes, one of which was with an intense guy from Canada whose form of discipline was making the boys leave class, run out to the football (soccer) fields and back (all the classes have boys and girls separate until high school) It seems like there is little discipline and respect for rules in the classes but this guys tactics seemed a little too harsh. Cole and I also helped out with the school’s track team. We ran a couple laps around the fields with the little kids, did some hurdle drills with the older students and even ran a couple of 400´s with one of the sprinters (I threw down a 75 second 400 and while I wasn’t that exhausted afterwards, I realized that I was no longer in the shape I was during track in college). The female coach of the track team happened to be the Chilean pole vault record holder and just missed qualifying for the Olympics this year. However, I didn’t know this until after I had left the school. One day after work at San Anselmo Rodrigo took us home the long way through some beautiful hills outside Santiago and through some nice suburban areas that looked almost American except for the lack of large lawns and the fences completely surrounding the houses.

San Benito

San Benito is the oldest of the three schools, built in 1982. It is located in Vitacura, another nice neighbourhood, right next to Providencia. (the neighbourhood I live in) Cole and I didn’t have much to do at San Benito so we pretty much just hung out in Tutoria with Louis. We did go to one religion class and an English class where we accompanied the students to the library where they were doing research for a paper. We also “helped out” with the schools track team. I was the first one to show up for practice and I had a little communication problem with one of the coaches. I kept trying to tell him that I was there to help with practice but he thought that I was asking him to help me train. So he kept telling me to do a few warm up laps and then he was going to make me run some 200´s. I kept asking him where the other students were that I was going to be running with and he just kept telling me to go run. Finally one of the other coaches helped me out and explained to him that I did not need a coach. I helped out by running a few four hundreds with one of the middle distance runners.

San Lorenzo

San Lorenzo is by far the school most in need of help out of the three. It is located in Recoleta, which is a rougher neighbourhood outside of downtown Santiago. It is a very poor area while I haven’t seen any crime or felt unsafe at any time in the area; I have been told that Recoleta can be a little rough at night. All three schools are private but while San Benito and San Anselmo rely on tuition money, San Lorenzo is financed by the movement and by government assistance. The school itself is pretty nice but the facilities are not nearly as nice as the other schools. There is an athletic field, a tennis/basketball court, church, library, cafeteria, etc. From above the school probably looks somewhat like a big “E”, with elementary school, jr high, and high school classrooms divided into three different areas, more or less. Its actually primero ciclo (1st- 4th grade), segundo ciclo (5th – 8th grade) and medio (high school). In between the three rows of classrooms are patios that the kids have their recess on. The students have a short (15 minute) recess every 2 hours or so. Its nice because all the students stay in the same room for the entire day so it lets them get outside and burn off some energy (which they have a lot of) every so often. Because Santiago is in such a nice climate, their aren’t any hallways and the classrooms just open up to the outside. Football (soccer) seems to be a pretty popular activity during recreo (recess), but more about football later. I hope my lame attempt at describing what the school looks like helps.
Although the students are very poor and have a lot of social and economic problems to deal with, especially at home, they are happy and loving and full of energy. Even though I knew I was going to be working at San Lorenzo and despite the fact that the other two schools are much nicer, I knew right away after touring all three schools that San Lorenzo was my favorite. It was the only school where the little kids (especially the kindergartners) would run up to me, hug me, and call me Tio (uncle).


Casa de Gringos (my house)

I live in a sort of guesthouse of the Manquehue Movement. Living in the house right now are
· Rodrigo – the guest master for Manquehue and our contact person here, is the head of the house
· Andres – an oblate of the movement who works at San Lorenzo
· Vicente (Vicho) – a college student who is an alumni of one of the Manquehue schools and I believe is now in the process of becoming an oblate
· Cole
· Me
There were also some other gringos living at the house when Cole and I arrived but since I am posting this so late, they have all left by now, but they were –
· James – an “old boy” of Ampleforth.* I didn’t get to know James too well because he left a couple of days after I returned to Cambridge where he is studying natural science. *Ampleforth is an abbey and high school in England and they have had a relationship with Manquehue for many years now. There are several committed members of the movement who have come from Ampleforth and students from the school come to Chile to volunteer during their “off year” between high school and “uni” (college). Old boy is the British way of saying alumni.
· Rupert – another old boy of Ampleforth, he left a week or so after I got here to start college at Durham in England. He worked at San Anselmo and Cole and I hung out with him during our three days there. He was quite the character and loved to talk.
· Louis – also an old boy of Ampleforth, he is French but went to school in England. He worked at San Benito and left a little while after Rupert
· Paul – the only other American in the house, Paul worked at San Lorenzo with us and was great in showing us around the school when we first got here. He is from St. Louis and went to Priory High School, which is run by a Benedictine monastery and also has a relationship with Manquehue. He left just a few days ago to go back home and return to college in Tennessee.

We live in Providencia, a very nice part of Santiago right outside the downtown area. We live right at the intersection of two streets called Pedro de Valdivia Norte and Los Conquistadores. Pedro de Valdivia was the Spanish guy who founded Santiago and Los Conquistadores is pretty self explanatory. So I think its pretty ironic that Cole and I and the other gringos live at the intersection of these two streets. (at least I think that’s irony, I never really understood the literary definition when we talked about it in jr high English class, and that Alanis Morisette song didn’t seem to help things) The neighbourhood itself looks somewhat European except for the fact that all the houses in the area either have fences or walls completely surrounding them. In fact, every house I have seen in Santiago is this way. The house is located between the Mapucho River and San Cristobal Hill. The river itself isn’t much to look at, just some muddy water flowing through an artificial concrete canal (there is a big project underway to clean up the river) but there are nice green parkways on either side. San Cristobal Hill is pretty big, although nothing compared to the Andes in the background, and from the top you can see pretty much all of Santiago. I ran to the top of the hill a couple of weeks after getting here and although the 25 minutes or so of going straight uphill were tough (especially since I haven’t been running that much here) the view from the top while the sun was setting over the city was amazing. You can walk, bike, drive or take a cable car to the top of the hill so there were a lot of other people up there enjoying the view. I hope to go back up soon and get some pictures to post here, although they probably won’t do the view any justice.
The house itself is quite nice. Its got the usual; living room, dining room, kitchen, bedrooms, bathrooms, and the somewhat unusual; a room to pray in, no central heating, one TV which we rarely watch, although after over a month here these things no longer seem unusual at all. Cole and I share one of the bedrooms. It’s not very big but since we pretty much only sleep in there its just fine. Our bedroom opens up onto a little patio in the backyard. We cook our own breakfast in the morning (more about the food later) and the meals on the weekend but we have a maid who makes our dinners so we just put the dish that she made for the night into the oven when we get home. She also cleans, does the laundry (jackpot!) and makes the beds! I guess it’s fairly common for Chilean homes to have maids. (I’ll say a little more about this later)

Retreat Weekend

The first weekend we were here Cole and I were invited to a retreat for all the ex-alumnos of the schools of Manquehue. (San Lorenzo, San Benito and San Anselmo) Chileans refer to students as alumnos and to former students (what Americans would call alumni) as ex-alumnos, which was confusing for me at first. So anyway Rodrigo took Cole and I, and the other Gringos (who were all still here at the time) to a retreat place/resort thing on the Pacific Ocean for a retreat with at least 100 college students and other members of the movement. We got there at night and so I didn’t realize until morning when I was walking around that we were actually right next to the ocean.

Lake Superior is neat, but the ocean is way bigger. Enjoy this picture because it is the only one you will see on this blog for a while. It took forever to upload.

The retreat itself isn’t that interesting to describe. It was a lot of bible study (Lectio), prayer, church and talks in Spanish that I didn’t understand. There was one talk that I unfortunately was struggling to stay awake in and afterwards we broke off into our groups to do some activities about what we had just heard. Since everything was in Spanish I had no idea what was going on and when we separated from our groups to answer some questions individually I struggled to understand the questions and then just sat there until everyone came back. Rupert, who was in my group, asked me if I at least understood the questions and I told him I didn’t understand anything – questions, the talk, the group activities. He just shook his head and laughed.
I know it may sound like I am just bitching, but the retreat was actually fun and interesting, despite all the Spanish and church stuff. I got to meet and talk to a lot of Chilean people my age who were all very nice and interesting and seemed to all have this deep desire to get something more out of life. I was able to go for a nice run along the ocean. I mostly stayed near the beach but at one point I cut thru a lawn and onto the dirt roads of the streets which would have been great to run on except that there were about half a dozen stray dogs wandering around. I also realized I didn’t know where I was going so I decided to avoid that altogether and return to the beach.
We also had a little party/celebration on the last night of the retreat. About 10 hours after lunch (I’ll get to the crazy eating times later, at least they are crazy to me) we went into the main building where most of the talks were and there were Chilean flags everywhere and tables set up with wine, salsa and bread. We eventually ate some empanadas (fried bread pocket stuffed with meat, onions, eggs, etc. Kind of like Hot Pocket only much much better) and watched some skits that were put on by the various groups of ex-alumnos. Some queca dancing followed and the whole thing didn’t get over until around 1 am, at which point they busted out the prayer books and we recited Compline (the last prayer of the day). At first I was confused at this but then I realized that this whole retreat was about getting closer to the word of God and that we had spent most of our waking hours in the church and I realized that this was not out of the ordinary at all.

Second Weekend in Santiago

Our second Friday here in Santiago happened to coincide with Paul’s birthday and although Cole and I weren’t around for the festivities that happened at San Lorenzo, because we were touring San Benito that day, we were able to surprise him by taking him out to dinner that night. We all tricked him into thinking we were going to volunteer that night. We got him good! So all of us (Rodrigo, Andres, etc) went to a pizza place called Los Insaciables. (the insatiables), an all you can eat pizza restaurant. The servers come around every so often with a new pizza and although it was thin crust and tiny, and with some interesting toppings (fish, vegetables, etc.) and you pretty much had to eat whatever they were serving at the time (not really a problem for me) it was pizza baby! And all you can eat, and we even got a couple of beers to wash it down with. Plus they played some great 80´s music and I started to feel a little homesick.
The next day, Saturday, Rodrigo took Cole and me on a little tour of downtown Santiago. We took the metro (our first experience on it, everything went fine) to Santa Lucia hill, an old fort right near downtown with some good views of the city. We also checked out Plaza de Armas, the main square right in downtown. The old part of the city obviously has a lot of Spanish-influenced architecture and so it looks a lot more “Latin American” than the part of the city that we live in.
On Sunday we had a little bbq at the house because Rupert would be leaving us soon. We had some other people in the movement come over and we roasted some large cuts of meat on the grill. We also had some pebre (salsa), churripan (hot dogs kind of) and some chicha (kind of like a hard apple cider).

Some things I miss

· American music – I don’t listen to much music right now. Pretty much all I have is what we sing and play during prayer and mass, and whatever may be playing on the radio or one of the computers in Tutoria – which is usually Raggaeton (not sure if I spelled that right) which is like Latin American dance/techno/club music
· Peanut Butter
· Milk – they have milk here but it’s different.
· Running – I am still running and trying to get back into the habit of running everyday, but I miss everyone on the cross country and track team and the regularity of practice everyday at 4.
· College
· Family
· Friends

Some things that are sweet

· Having my laundry done for me
· Sopaipillas – it’s like a pancake but made out of a donut, and you can put cane sugar syrup on top, amazing. But if you eat too many you wake up feeling like a bomb went off in your stomach
· Pebre – delicious salsa, I ate it out of a jar with a fork once
· Manjar – I guess it’s like dulce de leche, but since I have never tried that I don’t know. Anyway, its delicious
· Not having to do homework anymore
· The kids at San Lorenzo – I swear these kids have an unlimited supply of energy and are almost always happy
· Not having a lot of stuff and living a simple life
· Not watching TV – this is kinda sweet. I am glad I am no longer a slave to cable TV and all the crappy movies they play that I have already seen a dozen times but still want to waste my time watching. I do miss some of the good TV shows like Family Guy, South Park, The Daily Show, and being able to see the news in English. But its been nice to have a break from TV for a while

Some things that are different

· Eating meals 6-7 hours apart
· PDA – I see a lot of couples getting close on the grass next to the river
· Houses with walls and fences around them
· Mountain bikes – my neighborhood is a little upscale and on the weekends I see a lot of people in outdoor performance clothing riding around on big fancy mountain bikes. I haven’t really figured this out yet. It seems a little strange coming from the US where people usually ride road bikes or fixed gear bikes in the city. The pathways along the river parkways are dirt but they are pretty flat and packed down, and there is the big hill near my house, San Cristobal, but the only time I see bikers on the hill is when they are flying down the paved road that runs from the top to the bottom. So far I haven’t seen any terrain that would necessitate a dual suspension bike, unless they were going to take it off some sweet jumps and get like three feet of air.
· Pace of life – I don’t know if the stereotypes of South American life are true, but from what I have heard, at least from Chileans, it seems like Chile doesn’t exactly fit the mold of the rest of South America. However, I have noticed that the pace of life is much slower here and schedules are not strictly followed like back home. Our first couple of weeks here if Cole and I had to be anywhere, we would arrive a few minutes early. We did this because 1) it seemed like the polite thing to do and we didn’t want to be late 2) we are accustomed to being on time or even a bit early to things and 3) we didn’t really have anything better to do. However, we soon found out that being early wasn’t necessary. We then started showing up on time to things and still this was not all that necessary. It was only until we started showing up a few minutes late did we realize that things rarely start on time. And they rarely finish on time as well. Right now it seems like Chilean people like nothing more than to sit around and chat with each other, which is great but sometimes I just want to get things done. I should mention that this isn’t really a problem for me. It’s nice having a more relaxed schedule. I am by no means whining. I am merely pointing out what I have observed. I will probably discuss this more when I get a better feel for how things work here.


Coming up next...Food, the weather, and maybe even some stories from my trip to Patagonia and my new projects at San Lorenzo. (all these things have already happened, I am just way behind)