You Open The Window, And You Wait For The Breeze

at the camp where i'm a counselor, the red flag is reserved for incoming campers who will, for some reason or another, require more attention or even potentially create problems for people around them. the reasons for a red flag can vary, from behavioral problems, to a past history of violence or giving counselors trouble, to even physical or emotional syndromes. it's not unusual for bunks at camp, which have 12 campers each, to have 1 or 2 kids with red flags.

so that's why, when our 2 week session started this past sunday, we were a bit concerned when 8 of our 11 campers were labeled as red flags. this bunk was actually so potentially problematic that they switched me into a different unit in camp so that i and another veteran counselor could be with the bunk. when i heard, i was excited, because i felt like it was a huge honor. and also, of course, a huge challenge.

here are some of the bunk stats: two of our kids have aspberger's, a form of autism. about 4 or 5 have add or adhd. one is in therapy for anxiety. another has minor physical cerebral palsy. one is in therapy for anger management, and was just kicked out of school and is currently living with his aunt, who forced him to come to camp. oh yeah, and he's one of two black kids in a pretty much all white, all jewish camp. another kids is catholic. and two of the kids, upon arriving, kept asking if they could be switched from our bunk, or alternately, things you could do to get kicked out of camp and sent home.

fast forward now to tuesday. day two of the session. camp, where so much happens in one day, makes two days feel like you've been here a very long time. the first couple days were a definite struggle. i was in a state of constant awareness, making sure the kids with aspberger's weren't wandering off, making sure there were no fights, both emotional and physical. trying to steer some of the kids away from their general mode of being hurtful and disrespectful.

so our first block of the day was rockhopping along the river. very physically challenging. i forgot to mention that one of the kids with aspbergers, eric, is 12 years old and clocks in at 6 foot four, 250 pounds. all of us had rock hopped ahead, and as we looked back at eric, we see him take a huge fall. the lifeguard manages to pull him up and eric is sitting, hunched over. and then spontaneously, less from one kid and more from some spirit of love and compassion and unity that had been brewing unseen, erupts the most beautiful thing i had heard all day, maybe all month: "Eric, Eric, Eric." All the kids are cheering, yelling, for this strange, removed, unusual looking kid who was slowing them down, yelling for him to get up, yelling that he could do it. Oh my, it was beautiful. Aaron and I, the counselors, exchanged an amazed look.

and then fast forward a bit more to tuesday night, last night. we had been hopeful about the group all day, and we took them on a trust walk, where they line up single file with their eyes closed and hands on each others' shoulders, and walk around camp. the point is to trust the person in front of you. at one point, james, the kid with the anger management, said, "i don't trust anyone in this group." eric asked us to stop because he felt uncomfortable. i've been trying to remove the word failure from my vocab, but it sure felt like it.

i sat us in a circle in the grass to debrief. it was twilight, that transitionary time of day that always seems a bit magical to me. i said to the kids, how did that feel? what made it hard? and after a couple insightful comments, sai, one of the kids with aspbergers, obsessed with fictional tree warriors and sometimes making uncontrollable grunts, says just quietly enough for us to hear, "i have aspbergers."

i wish you could have been there. come with me for a second to a patch of grass right outside of the national park, in a two week camp with eleven 13 and 14 year olds, 8 of them labeled "red flags" by camp. sit in the circle as sai adams quietly tells a group of his peers, kids he has known for 48 hours, "i have aspbergers."

when we sit in the circle and have conversations, i like to tell the kids that the circle is a special way to sit and talk. a circle is unbroken, continuous. it creates a space for everyone to be held, to be trusting with one another, to say things like i have aspbergers to a group of kids who you don't even know how they they'll respond. i titled this "you open the window and you wait for the breeze." the circle is the open window. you create a space for these 11 kids, so many of whom have labels, who have been pigeonholed into a certain way of thinking and doing and being, and you let them be. you wait for the breeze to pass through, and when it does, you let it brush your face and your arms and your body and you say thank you for special moments like this.

so sai told the group what he had, and mitchell followed by telling the group he also had aspbergers. then matthew told the group he had cerebral palsy. and some kids talked about having adhd. they shared what it was like to live with these different things, the challenges they faced. matthew told the group he could only run a 12 minute mile on his best day because of his cerebral palsy, and the group gave a sympathetic moan. and they all listened like i had never heard them listen before, kids who sometimes couldn't make it through a 30 second round of instructions.

every bunk at camp has a theme. the theme aaron and i created was, "yes we can." we thought it was pretty funny, given that bob the builder and obama, and many civil rights groups, have adopted it as their mantra. i don't think we realized how appropriate it was for this group of kids. and at the end of our circle, when we got up, with everyone holding onto the magical talking shoe, and yelled out together "yes we can" at the top of our lungs, i learned again that the kids are always teaching me more than i'm teaching them. i learned that if they can, then i can, and you can, and we all can. no matter if we have aspbergers, cerebral palsy, depression, or just a plain bad day.

thank you for reading this, and for being a part of my circle.

love,
ryan

Why I Want To Be A Preschool Teacher

I recently began volunteering at a pre-school in Berkeley. On Tuesday I had a realization that my calling is to be a pre-school teacher. Today I was riding on the SF BART train when I began writing. Though at first I faced a very uncooperative writing utensil, I managed to get a start. By the time I reached Berkeley, I was so into what I was writing that I raced to the library, desperately found a bathroom, and sat and wrote like a madman, like I was a leaky vessel and someone was pouring water into me and I was just leaking all over the page. By the time I was done, I realized what I had written was a declaration of why I want to be a pre-school teacher.

 

Thinking about “allowing” related to children and then adults

 

As we grow and form our values and fears, we essentially take the stance that certain things are allowed, and others are not. Often we use the language of “should” to express this allowance and disallowance. “I should be this way.” “I shouldn’t think or feel this.”

Here are my questions: why do we do this? Does it work? And how does it make us feel?

 

Why we do this

When we’re kids, we are told explicitly and implicitly by parents, friends, media, musical, cultural and religious influences how we should feel, think, act, what is better and worse, what we can and can’t do. Basically, what is allowed.

Rarely are these phrased to us as ideas, or developing processes, as one possible way to do things. Instead, they are the way. We learn one language and one accent, and that is how to speak. We learn one way to treat sickness, and that is the correct, the only, way.

So we learn absolutes. Right. Wrong. What is allowed.

And unless we happen to travel, live with diversity, be exposed to open-minded people, we often don’t find out there are other ways, other viewpoints, other possibilities. Other right ways.

So if we don’t fit into this system of what is allowed, if even part of us doesn’t fit, two unfortunate things tend to happen. One, we rebel against what isn’t allowed, which can sometimes be excellent. Rebellion is what the civil rights movements, Gandhi’s salt marches, were. But in rebelling, we so often lose ourselves, angrily lashing out at what we perceive as oppressing us, filling ourselves with sadness or rage, losing sight of the original purpose to express ourselves. We end up hating. We conform by anti-conforming.

Or, option two; we go along with the system, burying that part of ourselves that doesn’t fit. But this takes such a terrible toll to hide it, it produces such a shame and closing up and distance. Just think about something you don’t like about yourself. How does it make you feel when you try to not be that way, not feel that way, when you try to fit into what you’re supposed to do and feel and be?

Alright, so we have this system, basically what is allowed and what isn’t. Before I go more into if the system has its own merits, let’s look at if it works.

What does it mean to “work?” Is our goal as a people, society or world to get people to be and do and act a certain way? If this is our goal (I will soon address how short this goal falls), then still it doesn’t work.

Take young kids. If we tell a kid not to cross a line, and he doesn’t understand why, or disagrees, here’s what happens. If he consents, maybe out of fear, or for a reward, or because he lacks the confidence to question authority or express what he believes, then you have begun to create a child who does things out of fear, or out of incentive, or due to lacking confidence.

And if he refuses? Often, especially because of how young he is, and because of the adult’s reaction to this disobedience, so much is lost. We lose his reasons for disobeying, we lose his courage to face authority and express what he believes. What could have been an empowering situation, what could have turned into a conversation about values and differences and understanding turns into an unconscious power struggle.

Here’s a crazy idea I just had. What if, as adults, we’re sometimes just plain wrong? What if we tell a kid not to cross a line, but that’s actually the right thing for him? Can we at least admit we might, sometimes, maybe, be partially wrong? That there are upwards of 6 billion human beings on this planet and there might be 6 billion right ways to do something? That throughout history knowledge and beliefs have constantly changed? That the only constant is that people almost always believe that their way is right? Leeches were once the right way, said Western science, to cure sicknesses. We laugh at this today but at one time this was right, according to them. Do you think they’d listen if you went back and told them they were wrong?

So how does all this allowing and disallowing make us feel?

Well, if our goal, as I suggest it at least partially should be, is to raise empowered, happy, safe children, then most certainly allowing/not allowing does not work, even if it does get people to fearfully or ignorantly comply. Because when the child agrees not to cross the line without knowing why, when he sees the adult doesn’t care to include him in the knowledge and process, or if perhaps the child wants to cross the line but is too scared to speak up, a whole paradigm is set into place: control. Disempowerment. Only allowing certain party of yourself. And excuse my language, but how the hell can we leave certain parts out? How can we not let ourselves be whole?

Back to adults. So when we’re adults, we internalize all of this “allowance” and “disallowance,” unconsciously. We are at times angry or sad or apathetic and we don’t know why. What we have inside is an army of “shoulds,” of allowed and not allowed. I am right. You are wrong. This part of me is right. This part of me is wrong. We feel all this pressure, because ourselves, our friends, our religion, or maybe just aliens from outer space, said so.

Our thoughts and emotions all come with positive and negative values. “I like girls.” I can think this. Good. Positive. “I like boys.” I can’t think this. Society and religion says it’s bad. Negative. And the negative thoughts come with a whole negative story attached. “I am sad. It’s bad to be sad.” Now we feel worse. We’ve created a whole story, an endless chain of thoughts, to go along with our “negative feeling.” We don’t understand this and now we feel out of control. Disempowered.

Would it be possible to live like we’re partly still kids, like we’re still learning, like we don’t know it all, like maybe we learned some things in a way that doesn’t suit us as well? When we’re kids we can say we don’t know. What makes us think we know any more when we’re older? Isn’t it possible we just know different things, that the kids know some stuff the adults forgot and they can teach us just like we can teach them?

So what happens when we embrace, when we allow? I see it on the faces of the kids all the time, the boundless, radiant joy, the most joyous smile you’ve ever seen. Something special, pure, beautiful. Something that melts your heart. Something that will change you. Something that will change the world.

It would be against the spirit of this to say I know all this I’ve said is right. I don’t. I don’t, and that, to me, is a beautiful thing. Can we find the joy in the process, not just the product? In the journey, not just the destination? Can we find the blessing in change, in not knowing?

A year ago I didn’t know or believe most of this. Perhaps a year from now I’ll believe different things. What I do know is that writing this has been fun as hell, that the process of growing and testing my knowledge and beliefs, of allowing, is incredible.

And you might believe something totally different. Good. Good. Can we come together and create a loving space where we allow for each other, for each other’s beliefs, for every part of ourselves? I wouldn’t want to live any way but whole. Would you?

And that, in the end, is why I want to be a preschool teacher. Or perhaps I should say, why I want to be in preschool. Because I’m not sure whether it’s me or the kids who are doing the teaching. Sometimes I have this crazy idea it’s both of us. At the exact time.

Silence Is Precious: Unless You Have Four Days Of It....

My nephews Ethan, 2 1/2 yrs old, and Jordan, 3 weeks.

They are unrelated to the following post, except that that they are just so darn cute.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Ah, the joy of talking.

 

I just spent the last 3.5 days doing the exact opposite of talking. (Not talking, in case you hadn’t guessed yet.) I did this shutting of my mouth at a meditation retreat in Marin, CA, about 30 minutes from Berkeley, at the Spirit Rock Meditation Center.

Ooh, you’re probably thinking, meditation retreat. How calm and serene that must be!

Uh-uh. No siree. Guess again partner. Lemme give you our schedule just so you understand:

Retreat Schedule:

6:00 (a.m.) Wake up

6:30: Sitting meditation

7:00: Breakfast

8:30: Sitting meditation

9:30: Walking meditation

10:15 Sitting

11:00 Walking

11:45 Sitting

12:30: Lunch

1:30: Rest (thank God)

2:30 Sitting

3:00: Walking

3:45: Sitting

4:30: Yoga

5:15: Dinner

6:30: Sitting

7:00: Teacher Talk

8:00: Walking

8:45: Sitting

9:15: Sleep

 

Word has it the Dalai Lama himself looked at our schedule and said, “Damn, are you guys out of your f***king minds?”

So yes, that is the schedule we 60 or so silent people, ranging from ages 21 to 65, followed.  How was my experience?  Well, actually, it was really, really hard.

I soon discovered that sitting meditation ain’t exactly my forte. I was an anxious, wiggly-squiggly dude. And when I wasn’t wiggly-squiggly, I was falling asleep, or thinking the most random of thoughts. I mean, this kid named Chris Attisha from the third grade popped into my head. I haven’t thought of Chris in like 10 years! What are you doing in my head, Chris? Especially at a time like this!

The walking meditation wasn’t a whole heck of a lot better. Walking meditation is where you walk excruciatingly slow, focusing on feeling every step. It’s a little easier because you’re moving, but you also have to endure the heckle of snails on the ground passing you, jeering, “Look at these slow fools!”

I know so far I’ve given the impression that the retreat was really tough. And I do intend to keep giving that impression. But I must say, the food was incredible. Mostly vegan, all of it homemade and delicious and creative, I looked forward to those meals with salivating anticipation (don’t tell the teachers, I was supposed to be in the moment). And we couldn’t talk to anyone while we were eating, so we had no choice but to look into our delicious bowls of food and get lost in the wonderful, healthy tastes. (*Side note-only eat this much vegan food if you want to poop 4-6 times per day.)

To give a better idea of what exactly all this meditation business is about, it can be summed up in one word: mindfulness. Or you can call it awareness, consciousness, paying attention, being in the moment, being there. They all point to the same idea: notice your thoughts, notice your actions, instead of reacting or thinking unconsciously, like when you fly into a rage because your child put his used diaper in the fridge.

One way I started thinking about mindfulness is that it’s like having a really good, non-judgmental friend you respect and look up to. So when you start getting angry, or frustrated, or jealous, or expectant, or any of the whole range of emotions we experience every day, you have to tell your friend your thoughts: “Joe, I should be a funnier person,” or, “Joe, it seems like everyone is happier than me,” or, “Joe, I’m in such an angry rage I might punch my boyfriend in nose.” Joe, being the nice non-judgmental friend he is, won’t make you feel bad, or say don’t do that, or laugh at you. He’ll just smile at you and nod, or maybe just say a kind word. And in the mere act of being mindful, of identifying and labeling and acknowledging how and what you’re feeling, like magic much of the emotion disappears, or you at least gain some perspective on it.

But the great thing is, this friend is inside all of us!

Now, this whole mindfulness business is easier said than done. Much of the retreat I was bored, frustrated, sad, or looking forward to being back in civilized life. I kept haranguing myself for being a bad meditator, for not enjoying the experience as much as I thought others were. At many points, I eyed my keys in my backpack and thought how easy it would be to put my backpack in my car, drive back to Berkeley, mindlessly multi-task in peace….go to the cross-dressing party at the new co-op I moved into….

But I was committed. I didn’t go there to have a fun, easy experience. I went to learn more about myself, to be with myself in a way I never had been before. Silently, without distractions, without people.

Funny enough, my best and brightest moments of this retreat were when I made my own noise. There was going off by myself to hike on the trail after lunch, sitting on the ground, and having a 30 minute jam session with two sticks and a rock. Then on the last morning, vigorously humming the Rocky theme song while on the toilet. And lastly, this morning, when in the bathroom alone, breaking into an impromptu Circle of Life from Lion King (coincidentally, the song I played on piano at my first and only piano recital in third grade), complete with body gyrations.

What is to be learned from all of this? For one, I learned that we don’t all fit into a mold. Sitting meditation is a nice idea, and it has certainly done wonders for many people. But that’s not who or where I am right now. And it’s a huge trap I don’t want to fall into to say that I should be this, or I should be that. I know I feel the best when I’m active and physical and with people I love. That’s a precious thing to know, and value, worth a lot more I could ever earn at a job.

I keep thinking about this idea of my path. We so often live with this idea, thrown at us from all sides, that there is a certain way to do things. We get it in moral lessons from things like religion (which also does a lot of good, don’t get me wrong) or the media, or people, or even just our tendency to compare people. Advice is good, especially from those we love and trust. But we’re all teachers, if you ask me. And we’re all our own best teacher, when we’re mindfully in touch with ourselves.

It’s time to own my path. When he was 29 years old the Buddha left his secure life as a prince and went out on the road to find purpose in life. Jesus did much the same, essentially forming a new religion and taking on the Roman Empire.

I think I know what Jesus or Buddha or whoever else you look to for guidance would say, at least my version of them: follow your path, carve it every day in your tears and laughter and rushing footsteps and aches and gains. Follow the beating of your own heart. And don’t ever let anyone, most especially yourself, tell you that you’re anything but beautiful and capable and worthy of giving and receiving love. You are and I am and I’ll fight anyone who says otherwise. Lord knows I’ve fought myself long enough on this issue. You just have to say it enough times until you know it in the core of your being. I am worthy. I beautiful. I am good.

Contained in all this individuality is the most beautiful, unifying paradox I know: that we are one. We are all traveling our own unique path, and yet we are all traveling to the same end. Christians call it heaven, Buddhists call it Nirvana, and Jews call it bagels, lox and shmear (just kidding). Inherent in all these names are some unifying concepts—an end to suffering, finding peace, happiness. You can use different names but if you feel true joy and see it mirrored in the eyes of the one you look at, you know the words all just try to describe that same feeling.

So that’s some of what I learned. I learned you can take 4 really rough days and turn them into something you’ll carry in your heart for the rest of your life.

May you be well J

Ryan

10,000 Words, or 10 Pictures

I have about 10,000 words to say about my experience here in Chile, but I figured, why not just post 10 pictures? You know the equation. So here´s a series of about 10ish pictures which try to sum up my time here..... :-)I posted this in an earlier blog, but it´s a good representation of what a lot of this semester was: reflection. I came here to Curiñanco on Yom Kippur to fast and reflect. One of the most incredible things about my time here was how much time I had to myself, which really let me get to know myself and my thoughts and feelings.
Here you have it, the people of the pensión I called home for about 5 months (minus Diego and la Señora Carmen, perdón). From left to right: Allison, Mati (not to be confused with beverage Mate), Ryan, Jorge, Luis, Manolla (daughter), Jaqui (owner). this was on a boat to an island called Corral featuring old Spanish forts. Damn, it rained a lot. The first month in Valdivia, it rained 29 of the 31 days. I´m still leaking.
Jorge, my closest Chilean friend, and a truly incredible person. He introduced me to mate and helped me get through the rough times. Here we are with a volcano in the background. it´s true, we are in the middle of the road, but we managed to dodge to the side of the quickly oncoming traffic.
One of the best days I spent in Valdivia. Jorge, Allison, Jaqui, manolla, me. We went to the park on one of the first days of sun, played soccer and teeter totter, and ate a lot a lot.
The lobos marinos (sea lions) are one of Valdivia´s main attractions. They have a reputation of biting your limbs off, which is why I look a bit nervous here....
Another of Valdivia´s fames...Kuntsmann, one of the founding German families, has their brewery here. Valdivia is filled with artesan beer, with Kuntsmann leading the way. We had some good times here. Also, the cardboard cutout in which I´m posing isnt so far off...I think I gained about 10 pounds in Chile, a.k.a. land of endless bread.
At our pensión with Alex, me, Jorge. This is our famous "Vamos, Valdivia!" pose, which is one of our inside jokes which will never, ever, get old. It comes from the mayoral race in Valdivia, in which the entire city is covered with huge pictures of the candidates. Alcalde Berger, a gruff looking guy who won, had huge carboard cutouts with him with a serious face and thumbs up, saying Vamos, Valdivia. We are emulating as best as we can here.
Another one of the best nights ever. Me, dressed as tourist. Manola the fairy, Allison dressed as me, other Allison a gypsy. We went to a friend´s cabaña and hung out with gringos, Ecuadorians, Columbians and Chileans alike. They had to drag us out of there, it was so fun.
About 11 gringos gathered at our pensión for Obama election night. Alex animatedly found updates faster than CNN, although he lacked their sweet holograms (still in awe). Notice the celebratory alcohol in the foreground. We were all so excited, Allison actually started crying during Obama´s election speech. One of the times where we all would have really loved to be there for an incredible, historic moment.
Thanksgiving (día de acción de gracias in spanish) at Alex´s Chilean parents´house. The six of us, led by the incredible efforts of allison, put on Thanksgiving, Chilean style, cooking all day. Afterward, we went in a circle and said what we were thankful for. Naturally, I cried. I´m going to post, without her permission :-) what Allison said in reflection about the day:

"In a lot of ways, you could say that our Chilean Thanksgiving was the perfect metaphor for my experience here this first semester: arriving without any sense of what the “ingredients” were, searching unsuccessfully for all the things I had left in the U.S. and trying to replicate the world I had known before, when replication was impossible. In the end, you improvise and you realize that, in many ways, plum sauce is just as good as cranberry sauce and, though you had to abandon the pumpkin pie, it will be waiting for you next year. Though it may be difficult at times, you can still build a life and a community for yourself amongst strangers — beautiful in spite of and because of the differences."--Allison
I am still in complete awe at this entire hike. Up above you can see the glaciar, called Cerro Tronador. We hiked, at extreme peril (sorry Mom!) close to the source to drink the purest water of our lives. Then we climbed up to 6,000 feet and continued to gaze in awe at both sides of the Andes. Just an all around incredible weekend trip, and a nice representation of all the awesome weekend trips we took, from Pucón to Puyeue to Puerto Montt.
Here´s an anecdote for you peoples: Jorge (in the middle) introduced me to the church here, and I went with him about 8 or 9 times throughout my stay here in Valdivia. It was always the incredible music, with the whole congregation singing loudly and passionate, that brought me back. This last Sunday, we all sang a song called "With the Power of Your Love." I was singing at the top of my lungs, and getting pretty emotional, when I look to my left and see a 45 year old women with her hands raised up towards the heavens, praising, and just BELTING out the song, with an incredible beautiful voice that you could hear over the 80 plus people singing. I looked at her and just lost it, the tears started flowing. Afterward they called Jorge and I up since we were both leaving town, and we got to say some words to the congregation. Talk about a first: First good-bye speech in Spanish to Chilean church...that´s something I never thought I would say! Afterwards everyone prayed for us to have a safe return home. This church was truly one of the best things I did here in Valdivia.
Here you have 5 of the 6 kids in the program: Lilly, me, Alex, Adam, Allison (sorry Ian, you shouldn´t have vomited that weekend) in Puyeue, near the volcano peak. We all became pretty close in our own ways, and I feel really lucky to have gotten to share my time here with such wonderful people.
In Cunco with some of Jorge´s family...his 80 yr. old grandma, mom, and cousin. A truly awesome experience to spend the sept. 18 holidays with his family (sept. 18 is similar to our july 4th, but celebrated for about 4 days here). Their hospitality and amount of food they shoved in me will never be forgotten.


And so it is...I suppose I lied, I posted about 13 pictures. It turns out there was a lot a lot of cool amazing stuff I did here. One last thing I want to share.....

This past Sunday, some of us went to the beach for one last beach romp. I suggested we do a little ceremony...we would all say one wish-hope-prayer-whatever we had. Here´s mine:

"I want to take everything I´ve learned in these past 7 months, go to Italy and be with someone I love for a month, and then return to my home, and bring all of it back there. I want to take a semester to learn outside of the classroom, explore, find community and some peace."

That´s what you realize when you go far away from home. You realize your home is where your heart is, and my heart is with someone in Italy and in California, in my country, in my language, in all the people I´ve ever known. As the girl in House from Mango Street says at the end, "I had to go away to come back."

And I see now, I did. I went away so that I could come back, come back to my home, and come back to myself. Here´s to the next stage of this crazy, crazy life :-)

Love,
Ryan


"When you find yourself face to face with something you don´t understand, maybe you should ask, ´"What do you think? Is this a gift?´"--Adam Weisberg (thanks Michal for showing me)

Put A Sock In It

A deadly water bottle assassin killed my computer about a month ago, which has made my blog entries wane. So now I find myself en el "Cibercafe," located in the backright corner, with a sweet view of the bathroom and its cleaning supplies. Talk about inspiration!

This, I believe, will be my last Chile blog. It has been quite a ride, family, friends, and occassional random web stalkers. We have shared bathroom references, more bathroom references, and occassional abstract anecdotes to what I´m actually doing here. So so lovely.

And now, I´m going home.

As most of you were probably aware, I was going to spend a year studying in Chile (14 months outside the U.S. in total). And about a week ago, 6 months into my stay, I hit the wall, and I just knew, all of a sudden, that it was time to come back. I actually went to the forest, a la Thoreau, to write a long impassionaed letter about how I was feeling, my reasons for returning, all of that, which I might still share. But for now, I find it sufficient to say: I had an incredible, incredible time here. I came here to learn Spanish and get to know myself better, and that´s exactly what I´ve done. I´ve had the biggest ups and downs in my life, and in the very end of things, I can say I´m happy for every single moment I had here, that I had a million once-in-a-life-time experiences, that I dont regret a single thing. What else can we ask for, in the end of things?

To better illustrate my feelings and reasons for returning, i´d like to share with you all a little anecdote from this past weekend. With Alex and Adam from my program, I traveled to Bariloche, Argentina, my second time there. Only this time, besides watching people drink mate from the bank to in the bathroom (no joke), we decided to hike a glaciar, called Tronador (thunder) because as you hike you occassionally hear the glaciar cracking and spitting off little gumball loogies into the valley below, which sounds like thunder. It was truly incredible, we hiked into the valley and got pretty close to the source of the water, where we bottled up and drank the freshest water of our life. Screw you, Arrowhead, I´ll get to the source myself!

And after 6ish hours of hiking, powering through snow and giant horse flies who wouldnt even let us stop to pee, we reached a lodge at 6,000 feet where you can stay, and have a 360 degree view of andes mountains in every direction. we havent invented good enough words yet in any language to describe this view. alex and i woke up at 6 am to see the sunrise. the only word i got for that one is dayammmmm.

and finally, here´s the anecdote that describes it all:

alex wakes me up at 6 a.m. i groggily reach up above on the shelf to pull out my two beautifully soft and warm wool hiking socks. somehow, they shoot out of my hand, i fall onto my side like an oval shaped egg rolling around, and when i right myself, i look down expecting to see my two beautifully soft and warm wool hiking socks on the ground next to me. any decent csi bullet spray detective would have shown the only possible place for them to land, based on angle and location of fall, would be on the floor, somewhere around me.

BUT THERE WAS ONLY ONE SOCK THERE......

It was a nightmare. The only Andes mountains sunset of my entire life approaching. An impossible horrific situation...a missing wool sock, without any explanation. It was terribly insignificantly annoying. Muttering to myself over and over again how very impossible and ridiculous this moment was, I turned up every matress and floorboard on this side of the Andes, to no avail. Finally, I gave up, found other socks, and went outside to enjoy the sunset. Then I came back to look some more. Still no results. A couple hours later, I return again, this time constructing far flung theories about how perhaps it landed in my pants, how perhaps Alex stole it, how perhaps it bounced off a floor board, a matress and an errant horsefly and flew out the open window, where an Andes current carried it to the top of the glaciar, where I would be forced to conduct a dangerous life threatening glaciar rescue.

Nada nada nada. At one point, Alex, who kindly helped me search, was like "hey man, you might just have to forget it." It was good advice, at some point you gotta let it go, right? So I decided I would walk to the other side of the room, my last grand search. Nothing again, until Alex, who followed me over there, looks on the ground and sees my beautifully soft and warm wool hiking sock sitting there like a sad lost puppy. He hands it to me, and in the glory of an NFL touchdown, I do mad fist pumps and hop around the room. Glory is mine.

Now, perhaps youre asking me how this crazy long drawn out anecdote has anything to do with deciding to return home. Here it is, two things: the mysterious force of life and persistence. mysterious force of life: I had no idea where this south american journey would take me. i had my ideas, like where i thought the sock would land at my feet, but as tends to happen in life, i got thrown around for an exciting tumble. and here´s where persistence comes in, something my mom has always always told me: its all about persistence. everytime she would tell me maybe i should think about switching programs when i would tell her i was struggling, i would shrug her off. its me, i would say, i need to try harder, make it work. i can be happy anywhere.

And man, I fought. I persisted and persisted, and I had some incredible times here, some incredible highs. But also some incredible lows, the lows of loneliness, missing your language, missing the companionship of those who know you. And then, out of nowhere, appears the magical sock. Across the room, where you least expected it, where you hadnt even looked yet. Persistence isnt always just sticking things out cuz you should, it turns out...persistence is staying with yourself, compassionately, seeing what appears, listening to yourself over and over again. And everything in me is telling me to return, take the semester off Ive always wanted, go and explore and find community and learn about permaculture and rest my tired spirit. Be home in April for my sister´s second baby being born. Get to know my first nephew better. Read and write and learn to knit and reflect on everything these past 7 months has meant to me. Thats where I found the sock, when I least expected it. And I am so so happy for everything...so happy that I put the sock up there in the first place, so happy it got thrown around and I spent so much time searching for it, so happy to pick up the stinky sock and start the next journey of my life. I have about 11 days left here, and Im blessed with the time to say good-bye to something that has just meant so much to me, so very very much. To write letters to the girls at the orphanage, to Jacqui and Manola from the hostal, to all the incredible kids in the program. To walk down Avenida Picarte just one more time, see the blind man in his same white coat play his accordeon as people walk by without stopping, walk down the costanera and watch people rowing on the calle calle river, watch this beautiful valdivian spring, which has brought so much life, spread its seeds to the wind, that giving and receiving that is life itself.

Thank you Valdivia, thank you life, you have given me so so much.

So for some hard facts, so you understand what´s next: I leave Chile Dec. 20, to go to Cancun, Mexico with my family for vacation for one week. From there, I fly Dec. 28 to Bologna, Italy, to visit Kalen for a month. And then Jan. 28 I fly home to San Diego, where I´ll try to plant some tomatoes and make up for my deepening carbon footprint, hehe.

So that´s it folks. I´m gonna put a sock in it for now. There may come a night in the future when I awake from a dream and notice my fingers moving antsily, like theyre trying to write on a keyboard, and Ill sleep walk over to the keyboard and just start typing another blog. Be prepared, peoples, be prepared....

Love to you all :-)

Ryan

"Every night when I go to sleep, I die. And the next morning, I´m reborn." --Mahatma Gandhi

Thanksgiving Is Backwards, Shouldn´t It Be GivingThanks?

We have a tradition in my family. When I was a kid, Thanksgiving was always at my grandparents Arlene and Milt´s house in Palm Springs, land of cousin pillow fight wars. We would gather once a year at the long oval shaped glass table, and each person would say one thing he or she was grateful for.

I live in a family of criers. It´s beautifully true. We´re a bunch of saps, every one of us. You can go through the archives of all of our Thanksgivings, and you won´t find one where at least a couple people haven´t shed tears during this ceremony. My mom, especially, always impresses us, usually by forming tears in her eyes before she can even get a word out.

I´m happy to say that I´m fulfilling the family birthright. As I sit here writing this, I can feel the tears filling up my eyes. It´s my first Thanksgiving away from home, and I´m not just away from home, I´m thousands of miles away, in a different time zone and a different language. I didn´t quite realize how special and crazy that is until just right now, I think.

Today my family is going to gather in our house in San Diego. My grandpa Milt, tall lanky grandpa Milt, died several years ago. So now we gather in San Diego, some new family members, some of them still pooping in diapers (we´re all hoping my brother Adam will move past this phase soon). And everyone will go around to say something they´re grateful for, and tears will be shed, and people will leave the table uncomfortably full. Ah, the beauty of traditions.

I hadn´t even thought about continuing the tradition from down here until this morning, when I received a beautiful email from Kalen, with 5 things she was grateful for. And when she asked me, I was amazed to watch all the things pouring out of me. So here are a couple things I´m grateful for....

1. I´m grateful for you, every single one of you. You are all on this list serve because you´ve formed the fabric of my life. You have all impacted me in ways that stun me. You have all taught me, shown me compassion and love. You have all blessed my life in some way, and for that I am truly grateful.

2. I´m grateful for the tears that keep trying to get out, but I tell them, I won´t cry in the Windsor Elementary School computer lab where I help teach English. Those tears are little liquidy reminders of home, of everything I left and love so much back up in the northern hemisphere. To be able to miss something is a beautiful thing.

3. I´m grateful for my family. I´m grateful for growing up in a loving home, where my dad threw me groundballs everynight in the living room, focusing on my backhand, where my mom asked me every day how school went and cared and endured years where I didn´t feel like sharing, I´m grateful to my sister for always making me feel like I was special even when I didn´t feel like it, I´m grateful to my brother for taking me to costa rica and showing me the joy of exploring the world, for sharing his wisdom and flatulence with me. To my loving grandparents, cousins who hid beanie babies and played red indian, aunts and uncles who always respond to my emails. To everyone.

4. I´m grateful for the struggles. I´m grateful for being made fun of as a kid, for feeling like I didn´t belong, for this semester which has been one of the biggest ups and downs of my life. There´s a quote by Richard Bach that says, "I gave my life to become the person I am today. Was it worth it?" I´m grateful to be able to say yes, thank you, I love who I am.

5. I´m grateful for forgiveness. I´m grateful that my family sat around the couch a couple months ago and had an honest, loving conversation about everything going on. I´m grateful that I´ve learned that to forgive means to embrace and love everything that´s there, even if we didn´t choose it. I´m grateful to be able to start forgiving myself, for not always being how I want, for not feeling how I want to, for not saying something the right way or doing something the right way. And to attempt to do the same with everyone else in my life.

6. I´m grateful for technology. With all the negative impacts it has had on our culture, it connects me and all of us every single day. It allows me to share this with you, to send an email and receive it in seconds, to feel like you´re together when you physically aren´t. And I´m grateful that with all of that, it´s still a day like Thanksgiving, with its most basic elements of food and family, that is the most warm and important.

7. I´m grateful for the longing we all have. It´s a longing for freedom, for joy, to express ourselves and our most basic human nature. I´m grateful to see that no matter what we all do, no matter how misguided or lost we are, that it all stems from that longing we share. I´m grateful to see we´re all doing the best we know how in that certain moment. To love that longing and all the manifold ways it manifests itself, is to love life itself, I think.

8. I´m grateful for health, for my ability to get up in the morning without a problem, go to the bathroom, walk outside, stretch, run, jump, all without thinking twice about how incredible it all is.

9. I´m grateful for what we have...sink faucets that give us water when we need it, cupboards and markets full of food, clothes that cover us, houses that shelter us, people that surround us.

10. And the last thing I´m grateful for, is being alive. I´m grateful to be given this one chance to truly live, to express myself, with all the joy and pain that comes simultaneously. This one wild and crazy life, as Mary Oliver called it. I´m grateful to be able to honor myself, my body, my spirit, and all of you, in everything we all do, even though I´m pretty apt to forget sometimes.

Man, I wish I asked myself this question every single day!

May your Thanksgivings bring you exactly what you need :-)

Love,
Ryan

Don't Cry For Me, Argentina

Left to right: Roberto (chilean), Mari (German), Ryan (buzzed from wine), Walter (crazy Brazilian), Omer (Israeli), Francisca and Antjie (more Germans) at the dinner/barbeque we made.
The group on the hike. Walter undoubtedly saying, "brotha" to Roberto. Read paragraph dedicated to Walter below to understand what I mean.
Omer, Ryan, Walter
The original group: Roberto, Mari, Francisca, Antjie, Ryan. Apparently in Chile bunny's ears behind people in pictures is also funny.


A Chilean, an American, an Israeli, a Brasilan and 3 German girls walk into an Argentinian bar...

It sounds like the start to a complicated and potentially hilarious joke, but it's actually just a good description of my weekend! Let's start from the beginning....

Thursday afternoon found me at the bus stop across from my house, late for class as usual, huddling from the rain as usual. All of a sudden, 3 German girls arrive! They are also exchange students at my university here, and we had met and chatted a couple months ago. When I asked them their plans for the weekend, they said they were leaving for Bariloche, Argentina the next morning, which fortuitously enough, I had planned to do, but had given up because Jorge couldn't go. It was too coincidental to pass up!

So I somewhat invited myself along, bought a bus ticket, and woke up the next morning at 8 a.m. to catch my bus. Or so I thought...

Arriving at 8:46 a.m. for my 8:45 a.m. bus, rather groggy, I became rather alarmed when I noticed my bus leaving, quite rudely, without me. Roberto, the lone Chilean in our group, took the lead as the Chileans are apt to do, and erupted into a dead sprint with my backpack to the top of the street, with me also shouting and following behind him. Fortunately the big bus caught a redlight, so I frantically borded, where I was informed I was on the wrong bus. But fortunately again, it was headed in the right direction, so three hours later I eventually transferred to the right bus. I'm still a little confused about the Chilean bus system...everything else in Chile is late, so why the buses?

Anyway, bus number 2/a.k.a correct bus found me seated next to a 30 year old Irish girl traveling through Patagonia with her boyfriend. She was the first Irish girl I met, and I was pleased to able to tell her my name (Ryan in case you forgot) is Irish. I was also pleased to listen to the Irish accent for 4 hours, which I think is one of the coolest accents. We had quite a shambollucking time (thank you for this excellent addition to my vocab, Irish girl), and I also enjoyed being able to speak English and express myself eloquently.

So we arrived to Bariloche, Argentina, my first entry to the country, singing, "Don't Cry for Me Argentina" (sadly this did not happen, but reflecting on it now, it was one of my life's greatest regrets that it did not), and inadvertently smuggling 3 mandarin oranges across the border. Sorry agricultural protection control!

Then we found the coolest hostal, ever. I met my first Spanish person ever, who had an excellent lisp. I met my first Uruguayan and Argentinian people too, whose accent and ease of understanding compared with the Chileans was also quite nice. The nighttime (which lasted until 4 a.m.) was to me the pinnacle and best of what it means to travel. I had conversations with the Germans, the various Spanish speakers, and this Brasilian guy named Walter, who deserves his own paragraph to follow. All of this took place with the mate being passed around (Argentina, along with the "guys" of Paraguay and Uruguay, are the kings of mate).

Paragraph dedicated to Walter the Brasilian:
Walter the Brasiliean spent 9 months studying in New Zealand, where he learned to talk like a mixture of a rasta man and a rapper. His every fourth word was "brotha" and he often told people not to be haters, even when they clearly were not hating. Just the kind of guy who creates his own interesting show wherever he goes. He and the Israeli had some very funny language exchanges, where they called each other haters in thick accents, and said slightly offensive words, which I have written off as not really understanding what they were saying.

Saturday we assembled our odd group which represented 3 continents and approximately 6ish languages, and headed to a big lake, where we hiked for a bit and traded off speaking English, Spanish, Portuguese, Israeli, and a bit of German for good measure. It was here I discovered my talent for imitating the German language, possibly a trait passed down to me from my father, who also enjoys overdoing the gutteralness of German. Funny enough, in doing this, and saying words like Slcheim and Stineanjf, I accidentally said things that actually existed. The Germans were extremely entertained.

Saturday night is where that first sentence I wrote at the top of this blog actually took place. We went to see a reggae band. Being in South America, it didn't actually start till 1 a.m., and faithful to my grandpa-ness at heart, I fell asleep at the table at 2:30. But Youthful Ryan rebounded thanks to the insistent Germans, and I hit the dance floor after awaking for a solid 1.5 hours! Between the plentiful availability of balloons and Cole family Bar Mitzvah dances, we had a rocking good time. And now, for funniest moment of the weekend recap:

--Me, the 3 Germans, and Roberto the Chilean were at dinner Friday night when I told everyone about when I didn't cut my hair for 1.5 years, and had super long hair. They were amazed, and so I wanted to show them a picture, which happened to be in my money belt, wrapped around my waste, under my shirt. I said, "Check this out," and started to reach for the money belt when I was met by the scream of one of the German girls, saying, "No!!" I looked down and realized that from her angle, it appeared I was reaching down to show everyone my pubic hair. When we all realized what had happened we started BUSTING up laughing, tears flying. It makes me chuckle still as I sit here writing about it.

Well that's about it. An awesome weekend, 4 new friends, a new passport stamp, and the word "shambolluck" in my vocabulary. May you all avoid shambolluck in your life!

And a parting quote:

"Live your life from your heart. Share from your heart. And your story will touch and hear people's souls." --Melody Beattie

Amen, sista!

Love,
Ryan