The Hills Are Alive

On Saturday evening, I found myself in the middle of one of the most bizarre yet highly entertaining experiences I've ever had: a Sound of Music singalong at Hermann Park.

This has been on our community calendar for literally months at this point, it was probably the first thing we decided to do when we heard about all the things to do in the park. Rachel, Megan, Eva, and I grabbed some sandwiches to bring as a picnic, and off we went to claim our spot for premium singalong viewing pleasure.

Little did we know, we were not the only ones who had this idea. We figured that our arrival 30 minutes early would provide us with prime real estate on the lawn, but we were astonished to see that there were already at least 200 families already there! When we had been to other events in the park, there were not this many people, and both times we arrived late. We couldn't believe how many people had beaten us at our own game! Luckily, we still got a pretty good seat, and we set up our camp.

For those of you who don't know or don't remember, The Sound of Music, while a phenomenal movie,  is also about a million years long. 2 hours and 54 minutes, to be precise. We knew we had to be comfortable, and our sweatshirts, blankets and towels were exactly what we needed in order to set up a sufficient camp. We had plenty of extras to add padding as the evening went on, as sitting on the ground for that long can be somewhat uncomfortable.

Just as the movie was about to start, we were given little bags filled with everything we'd need- an invitation to the ball, cards to hold up during "How Do You Solve a Problem Like Maria?", our own sprig of "edelweiss," and a piece of cloth from the drapes behind Maria for playclothes. My most favorite treat in the goodie bag was a party popper, which we were instructed to pull at the exact moment when Maria and Captain Von Trapp FINALLY kiss. We had a great host named Erin, who told us to hiss when we saw the Baronness, boo at Nazis, cheer every time Julie Andrews walked in a room, and bark when we saw Rolf, because he's such a dog. There were hand motions for "Do a Deer," and we all swayed back and forth singing "Edelweiss."

I remembered how much I loved this classic movie, but especially in the beginning, I drew a lot of parallels between Maria and myself and my experiences here (if I have to be compared to Julie Andrews, I'll take it), especially towards the beginning of the movie. When Maria leaves the Abbey, she's looking for something more, and while she ultimately had a lot of hesitations about leaving, she knew that this new adventure was God's will for her. If that doesn't describe my entire packing/driving to Texas process, I don't know what does. I was devastated to leave home, friends and family, and while my days in the hills had to come to an end, I know that I'm on an important journey, and it's a step that will help me to discern what's next for my life.

When she finally gets off the train in Salzburg, Maria is skipping down the streets with her guitar case, singing what might be my favorite song in the entire movie, "I Have Confidence." She has confidence in herself to do the work she's been asked to do, taking care of these children who need a positive role model in their lives. She may not have any experience, but she knows that she'll figure it out, because she has a good attitude. The whole scene is joyful and freeing, but when she arrives at the gate of the Von Trapp estate, Maria is suddenly a bit overwhelmed. I love when she holds on to the gate and just takes it all in, but I love her reaction more: "Oh, help." The whole way here and the days leading up to my first day of school, I was feeling slightly overwhelmed yet confident in my ability to do this work. I pulled up to Cristo Rey that first morning, and I said a similar prayer as I got out of my car and walked into school as a teacher for the first time.

Maria confesses to the Von Trapp children that she doesn't know a lot about being a governess, and is overwhelmed by the rigidity of the children's lives and their uniforms... sounds familiar. She does things her own way, and while it is different from what the children might be used to, it works. Maria forms strong relationships with the children, and earns their respect and love over time by sharing her love of music and performance with them.

So, am I as flawlessly perfect as Julie Andrews throughout this whole experience? Absolutely not. I have gone through a lot of the same experiences, but probably a lot less gracefully, and with more tears and exhaustion than Julie ever lets on, but we can't all be practically perfect in every way!

Speaking of... Halloween is coming up, and I'm pretty sure I'll be going as Mary Poppins. That's a different story for a different day, but I'm pretty excited :). My days living up to the Julie Andrews standard continue, as it's the end of the quarter and I'm scrambling to get my grades in! It's a challenge, but sometimes I sit back and think about the fact that I'm here, as a JV, working for justice every single day. It's a dream come true, and as hard as it is some days, I don't think I'd trade it for anything else. As the Mother Superior tells Maria, "Climb every mountain... A dream that will need all the love you can give, every day of your life, for as long as you live." I'm climbing the mountain, and while it's steep at the moment, it's also beautiful and fulfilling. I can hear the sound of music, and I'm singing along.

Wandering

I have been immersed in the book From the Pews in the Back: Young Women and Catholicism, edited by Kate Dugan and Jennifer Owens for the past two days. I'm about 2/3 of the way through, and I will most likely finish it this evening. It's a book that I actually borrowed from my community member Megan, who borrowed it from a JV in the other Houston casa, Emily. It's a collection of different short personal stories about the female experience with Catholicism, both positive and negative, serious and funny.

I like it because some of the women raise the same questions about their faith that I have, and while they may not have the answers, it's at least a different point of view and perspective on the issue. I have been trying to really work on spirituality the most of the four pillars of JVC, because since leaving my faith community bubble at PC, I have felt really distant from God.

The distance actually started when I went to Ireland as a junior... I had just returned to PC from an amazing immerison experience in Kenya, been super active in PC Campus Ministry, and was feeling very much at peace with my faith and very spiritually connected. When I went to Ireland, I found myself in a surprisingly secular culture. I church-shopped, and while I found a church to go to for weekly mass, it wasn't a place I could really feel at home in. Six long months went by, and I was so excited to come back to Providence for the summer to really reconnect with the Friars and my faith.

Enter: one of the best summers of my life so far. I lived in a great house with Kathleen, and she, Kelly, and I shared amazing dinners, adventures, and conversations. We got closer with the Friars, especially Fr. Cuddy, and talked about and lived our faith through kind words and actions, and through pure joy. We had a tradition each night at dinner where we shared the "grace of our day." It was sometimes a person and sometimes an instance where we saw God in the day, but the grace of my day was most often our dinner conversation. I was propelled into senior year with a strong sense of faith again, and while the looming g-word (graduation) left me with slightly less peace than I had when I came back from Kenya, I felt connected to God.

Graduation was of course heart-wrenching (have you noticed I miss PC?), and I fell out of the habit of going to mass when I was home over the summer. I read a lot about faith, and was very excited to have this year to try to reconnect and get back into a good place with my relationship with God.

I'm definitely having to work harder than I was hoping, but that's not a bad thing. And I'm not just talking about at work, I mean with my faith. I go weekly mass, and I love our Sunday morning routine, but I miss my OPs and the community at PC. I just submitted an application for Spiritual Direction at a retreat center in Houston where the specialty is faith formation, and the best part is that it's free for JVs! In the mean time, I'll be praying, reading, and researching new ways to connect to God. The cool thing is that I am working for social justice every day while I'm here, and that is something I can very easily connect to.

This is a year of growth for sure, and I look at it as an opportunity to explore my faith. Not all those who wander are lost, and I don't feel lost- just wandering, looking for a place to get comfortable. I also know that my journey of faith is a lifelong one, and that this is just a stop.

Any book suggestions for me? I'd gladly take them :). And I promise If I read any other good ones, I'll pass them along to you!

Letting Go

What a jam-packed weekend this was! It might have been our busiest so far, and while I definitely should have gotten more schoolwork done, I was happy to be doing the things I did with my community.

Friday night was the big homecoming dance, and myself and four of my five roommates were chaperones. We had so much fun at the dance- I keep saying that I think I actually may have had more fun than the students! We got all dressed up to go, and we were so amazed by everything we saw once we got there. The theme was Alice in Wonderland, and the students did an incredible job decorating the gym! It looked really fantastical, especially for it being in a gym... there was a photobooth with Alice props, projectors with different scenes from the movie on the wall, and a fog machine with a lighted entryway when you walked in the door. The music was great, and the kids looked awesome. It was so funny to see my freshmen in their semi-formal attire, they looked great all dressed up! The juniors looked so very mature, and they are all really incredible dancers.

We couldn't leave the house without taking any awkward homecoming photos in front of the fireplace...

Saturday was a very eventful day too! After sleeping in from the exhaustion of our night at homecoming, we split up and did different fun things around the city. Rachel went to a community planting day at the house of another group of volunteers in the neighborhood, Eva and Cassie checked out the museum district, and Megan, Karen and I went to the Y where there is an outdoor pool! We basked in the sun for a while, because while you on the East coast were wearing your jackets and scarves, it was almost 90 degrees here in Houston. I worked out, and then got some solid grading done poolside. We had an evening of Boy Meets World and mac and cheese, and then went on an adventure to Market Square Park!

There was an outdoor concert with two really great bands, a parade of some of Houston's famous "art cars," and really great greek food and local beer. We had a lot of fun enjoying the park, and it was the first time that we actually got a sense of culture in Houston. It was a lovely evening to be out and about, and we went to two very cool bars near by after the concerts. All in all a fun, but very tiring night.

This is me and my direct roommate, Karen!

Today was a very typical Sunday, including mass, cleaning, and grocery shopping. The homily at mass was all about letting go, and how hard that can be. It especially hit home for me considering the fact that Tom and a lot of our friends are in Providence this weekend, and I really miss PC and my Friar friends. I am so happy at work here, and my community is filled with a lot of love, but I don't really love Houston as a city.  I know that there must be more it can give me, but right now, it's not giving me much to love. A woman at Market Square Park last night was wearing a t-shirt that said "It's OK to love Houston," and I wanted to tell her that yes, I wanted to love Houston, but I don't know how! It's hard to let go of home and Providence, and as I've said before: this year and my work are amazing, but I'm an East Coast girl at heart.

So I'm trying to let go of all the sad feelings I have toward not being in Providence or Philadelphia, and focus on trying to love Houston. I want to love it, I do, but I haven't figured out how to just quite yet.

College-Bound

Last night was a slightly surreal experience for me, but it was a lot of fun at the same time! At 5:30, I got on a bus with 65 college-bound CRJ students, and we drove across the city of Houston from quaint little CRJ to big prestigious Strake Jesuit.

Strake, as I think I've mentioned before, is the St. Joe's Prep, Chaminade, or Hendricken of Houston: an elite all-boys Prep school in Houston. It shares a campus with St. Agnes Academy, the Dominican Sisters all-girls school where Sister Mary works. Strake hosted a college fair last night, open to students of Catholic schools in the Houston-Galveston Diocese.

There were a HUGE number of schools represented- over 200! Our students were a little overwhelmed at first- a lot of people, a gorgeous campus of a high school, and colleges all over the country. They knew they couldn't talk to every college, and had a few ideas of which schools they wanted to talk to, but we were there for a long time. Many students kept coming up to me to ask for more recommendations about where to look: "I want a small school, not in Texas, and I want to study Psychology." "I want a huge school, outside of Texas, and I want to be a lawyer." etc...

I sent my fair share over to check out PC of course, but many of my students had already met with Fr. Iri during his visit to Cristo Rey earlier in the day. It was fun to try to match students up with different colleges they might like, and even more fun to see them come back with excited smiles on their faces. For many of them, last night was probably the first time the conversation about them going to college actually became a reality, and I so enjoyed watching that happen.

My job was mostly to walk around the fair and be there for students who looked a little lost. They were easy to pick out in their CRJ uniforms :). I got to do a lot of people watching in the mean time- I noticed which college representatives were engaging and excited, as well as those who were not. As I mentioned before, this fair was for any Catholic school student in the area, and so while my main focus was on my own students, I couldn't help but notice their competition.

The other students were a lot like me- the girls, while wearing a St. Agnes uniform, looked like they could have gone to Notre Dame. They had noses turned up at schools like Sam Houston State and University of Houston, but were eagerly in line for Notre Dame, Georgetown, St. Louis University, Penn, Elon, Emory.... you name a tier one or two school, and its table was swarming with girls from St. Agnes, Incarnate Word Academy, or boys from Strake. My students were a little overwhelmed by them at first, especially when they were trying to talk to the same schools, but I saw them all gain confidence over the course of the evening.

One of many advantages that the other students had over mine was the fact that usually, they were not alone. They had helicopter parents engaging the representatives in conversations, pushing them toward certain tables, and knowing lots of good questions to ask. Most of our students' parents were not in attendance, so the other teachers and I took on the helicopter parent role when we could. We spoke with reps, stood in line with our students,  and pushed them towards tables of schools that they might not think they can get into, even though we know we can.

So why was last night surreal? It was the first time other than Kairos that I was able to see my students experience something that I also went through in high school, and how differently they had to experience it. I was so extremely proud of them, and had a lot of fun in the process, but it was definitely another step toward solidarity with my students: I'm beginning to understand how differently their lives are than mine.

Mission: Community

Happy Tuesday!

In college, Tuesday was the best day of the week. I'm hoping that it lives up to its reputation today, as it's the first day of my week!

I spent yesterday on a JVC Day of Reflection with my community and Katie, our JVC Program Coordinator. We were at the Cenacle Retreat House, where I spent my day with Sister Mary a few weeks ago.

We talked about the four values of JVC, spirituality, simplicity, social justice, and community, and how each of them is playing out in our lives as JVs and in our community as a whole. We did an activity about which value we most identify with in certain situations, and which one our house engages with the most. It was interesting to see where we each stood on different values (literally, we moved to the four corners of the room depending on the value we were discussing), and how much we knew about each other and which answers weren't surprising to us.

We then created a mission statement for our community- and honestly, it's pretty beautiful. I love it a lot. We all contributed our ideas about community, and chose to model it after Karen's sorority's creed: we make promises to the world, to one another, and to ourselves.

Casa Rulitio Grande 2012-13

We are stewards to the world. We promise to use our gifts and talents to promote social justice. We are committed to seeking the truth, being a voice for the voiceless, and fostering a welcoming atmosphere for all.

We lift each other up. We promise to build a house with love, respect, and understanding. We will encourage each other to be open to challenges and sacrifice.

I am on a lifelong journey. I promise to have an honest, open heart, and a willingness to grow. I will be gentle with myself, and I will be open to vulnerability and new perspective. 

We are servants to ourselves, one another, and the world.

We're so poetic, aren't we? I love the mission statement, and we're planning to create a piece of art with the words and hang it above our couch in our living room.

The day of reflection was a nice break from the daily errands and business that we end up having to do, even on our days off. It was lovely to be able to hang out outside in the beautiful 75-degree weather, and in the morning when it was still "cold," we enjoyed some hot chocolate on our porch. 

Speaking of the "cold" in Houston, the universe finally listened to me and sent some cool weather our way! Sunday evening, we went to Hermann Park to a celebration of Gandhi's birthday, and sat at the outdoor theatre to watch a dance drama of an Indian tale called Manav Kanya. It was a nice night to be outside if a bit chilly, in the low 60s/high 50s. A sweatshirt and yoga pants kept me nice and toasty, but when I looked across the lawn and saw a woman wearing a giant puffy coat, I had to laugh. I checked my handy dandy iPhone- 63 degrees. Her coat was like the one I bought for New England winters from LL Bean.... Oh, Texas.

We're back in the 80's today... and I'm taking my students to a college fair at Strake Jesuit College Prep tonight (think St. Joe's Prep of Houston). I'm excited to see them interact with different college representatives, and especially to see Fr. Iri Andujar, OP, who will be visiting from Providence College! He's stopping by Cristo Rey Jesuit today, and I'm really excited to see him. I'm all decked out in my black and white today, a little taste of Providence on this terrific Tuesday!

The bigger your hair, the closer you are to God.

While watching Friday Night Lights on Monday evening with Karen, that line stood out to me: "The bigger your hair, the closer you are to God." This is so Texas in every sense of the word. If you're a woman in Texas, your hair is big. It could be big because you put hours of effort and pounds of hairspray into it to make it that way, or it could be big just because you're in Texas and it's 195% humidity.

So yes, my hair is big today. It's in a ponytail... a big ponytail. I guess that means I'm pretty close to God, which is a nice thought on this Friday afternoon.

This was a LONG week. Monday seems like it was so far away, and I am so looking forward to a relaxing weekend. I was out to dinner Tuesday (at Chris and Ryan's again, where I had an amazingly delicious dinner again...), and last night we had a JVC fundraiser at Block 7 Wine Bar, which was a lot of fun, but waking up this morning was not.

We got to meet a lot of FJVs who live in Houston last night, and it was really fun to talk to people who used to live in our houses and know exactly how we feel and what we're going through. It was also so lovely to have a huge representation from CRJ at the event- our principal, some board members, as well as other CRJ supporters were there, and when I introduced myself to the whole room, they were clapping and smiling to cheer me on. Yet another reminder of how amazing this community is :).

Wednesday was a tough day- my drama kids failed a test (for the most part), so I was disappointed in them and simultaneously questioning my own teaching abilities, I had to emergency sub two classes, and I wasn't feeling 100%. Soccer practice was fun (there will be a whole post about soccer later...), but when I got home, I received a text message with news no one ever wants to receive. A good friend of mine from high school lost her mom on Wednesday, and while I had been griping about having such a bad day, my whole world got put into perspective.

Sure I had a frustrating day at school, but the people who mean the most to me in the world are all happy and healthy. Though it's challenging, I'm doing good work every day, and I had a wonderful, supportive community to go home to. A glass of wine and a movie with my roommates followed up by phone conversations with my parents and Tom made me feel a lot better, but I'm definitely so ready for this weekend!

I'm cat/apartment-sitting for Chris and Ryan while they're at a wedding, which means that tonight I'll be on my own, eating food that they have left for me, and enjoying some amenities that I don't get in my every day life as a JV (a new kitchen and cable TV!). It will a nice mini-vacation for me, and the perfect way to relax after a long week.