Found my Rhythm

If I blog about my disappointments and struggles, my moments of self disgust, I must too write about the moments of triumph I experience. Today was one of those days. A day where I choked up in class, not out of frustration, but out of emotion, out of connection with my students when two openly cry 'why? why did this happen?' A day where my biggest problem child sits quietly through my lecture, and is the first to put his hand up when I ask if there are questions. A day where when I assign homework, each child eagerly writes down the info they need to begin their research. A day when I felt like not only was I teaching my kids something important, but we were all learning from each other what it means to see suffering in others, and ask why it had to happen. Today I taught a lesson in each of my grade 7 classes (100 kids) on childhood and child soldiers in Sierra Leone. We watched an interview with Ishmael Beah on the Hour, and a documentary filmed a few months after the end of the war which interviews both child soldiers and child amputees. We had a long discussion about what it means to be a child soldier, and that they still exist today. Next class, we have decided to create an awareness campaign, and my students will be designing posters to inform their school about the issue of Child Soldiers. Through the sorrows of others my kids and I found our rhythm. Their outraged questions and discussions today showed me we need each other.

Lost

It's been a while. Sometimes I have no desire to write and share my feelings. Right now, I really wish I could talk to someone instead of write out what I'm thinking. However, I'm in Mexico on a student placement for school, and 2 weeks from talking with my normal 'talk things through' people. Skype keeps dying, so that option's out, and somehow discussing what I'm experiencing right now via msn just doesn't seem good enough. First, let me say that I am lost. How or why, I really cannot comprehend. I just am. I have walked in the door after a weekend that has left me turned around and wondering what I'm doing with myself. I went to a region of Mexico called Sierra Gorda. It's a huge biosphere nature reserve thousands of kilometres big. We drove 3 hours into the mountains on the scariest roads I have ever been on. For 20 kms in the middle of this mountain reserve, we decided to count the number of crosses/memorials to road victims. After 11 in 20 kms, I stopped. Saturday night was actually filled with my shooting awake in the midst of a nightmare which has me falling from a cliff. I don't think the nightmare is simply a manifestation of my experience driving on the craziest roads on earth (pictures and video to come). Falling off a cliff and the sensation of falling, ever falling with no clear bottom under me, no real ending, just seems to be a great analogy for my life. Where is this coming from? Did I not just spend two glorious days hiking, swimming in crystal clear waterfalls and gorgeous jungle with beautiful rivers filled with peace, calm and joy? Yes. Never have I felt more at peace as I do in the woods along side a rushing river, dancing over stones. I sat in El Puento de Dios (The Bridge of God) for 2 hours today, just drowning in the calm. However, this reserve is also home to some of the poorest people in the state of Queretaro, where I am. The beautiful log cabin which I slept in for the weekend shared a cliffside with some of the poorest shacks I have ever seen. Dirty children offered to guide us to our hiking destination for a hundred pesos. I asked one boy where he goes to school through my host's boyfriend, my spanish not being anywhere good enough to ask this. He mentioned a town 10km away from his home on the cliff. Driving through the countryside and mountains taught me just how UN normal my host city is. Queretaro is filled with the wealthy upper and unheard of mexican middle classes. It's full of modern stores and American SUVs. It seems wonderful, until you see what most other people are living like. I have felt a bit of uncertainty about my desire to come here, and my purpose as an educator in an american independent school full of well off children. I learned earlier this week that my students experience a different kind of neglect, and that my empathy for them shouldn't be diminished by their aparent status. That is now something I have to make a part of my time here, trying to get the most of the experience for me as an educator, and to give as much to them as I can. But I sit here thinking, I am teaching the wealthy, and going on fun excursions on weekends...where is the good in this? Where is the Kelsey that wants to fix things, and stand up for the good of others? Why didn't I pick a placement that forced me to get dirty, and truly serve others? Who am I serving here? Myself? Who am I helping? What am I doing? WHO IS THIS WOMAN? I was suppose to sit down tonight and write my statement of intent for my PhD. Except, every idea, every potential research issue I thought I wanted to explore flew out my car window this afternoon as I stewed. I cannot sit here and benefit from an amazing learning opportunity that is being given to me, and do nothing worth while with it. I will not accept this from myself. Researching video gaming culture when kids are living in the street? When children live in homes where two walls are made of plastic sheets? When young people are passed through classrooms and left to literacy class at 18 and barely able to write because no one wanted to deal with them? Who do I think I am? Why do I deserve to get paid to do a 4 year degree with NO purpose? No fixing, no serving of the young people I'm suppose to care about? I do not deserve one penny of scholarship money if I think for one minute I can do that. If I forget again what it means to serve and fight for the betterment of others, for young people who deserve so much more than some pretentious academics idea of what video games mean to their social interaction. Shame on me. Perhaps I'm being left alone in my own head a little too much here. Maybe I'm being harder on myself than I normally am. This weekend, however, showed me beauty beyond imagine, and I loved every moment of that experience. But it was a painful, hard weekend too. One that left me crying in the bathroom when we went to dinner, careful to hide my heart from people trying to show me a good time.