The Inheritance

I need to write something because I really still want to try and write every week. There is always something to say about my time here and truthfully I do this for selfish reasons. If I don't write on this blog once a week, I know I won't write or keep track of my experience at all.

"Even the disciples of Emmaus, living in front of Jesus, had the same experience. It is still the Lord who makes "their hearts burn" as they were walking with "a sad look” (Cf. Lk 24:13-35). While not recognizing the risen Jesus as they journeyed with him, they felt their hearts burn in their chests, beginning life again, so that when they got home, they "insisted" that he should remain with them. "Stay with us, Lord" is an expression of desire that throbs in the heart of every human being. This desire for "big things" must be transformed into prayer. The Fathers believed that praying is just the shift in yearning for the Lord."

http://www.ilsussidiario.net/articolo.aspx?articolo=107806

I have everything. I really do. Everything I really want or have asked for I have right now and it's still not enough. I have an amazing family. I have a beautiful relationship with my girlfriend. I am healthy. I have a Fulbright Scholarship in Colombia. I am living in Latin America (where I have always felt more at home than in my own country). But it's not enough.

The other day I was trying to buy a plane ticket with Aires for Bogotá to see a good friend of mine, who is Colombian but studies in Canada and spent a lot of his life in the states, there on vacation visiting his family. I had no idea when else we would see each other and so I decided to go for it. Do me a favor, don't ever fly Aires, its cheap...until they rob you of your time. It took me an entire day to buy the ticket. First off, if you want a "deal" you have to buy the ticket on the internet...the only problem was that the website was full of bugs and didn't work when I tried to buy my ticket. Eventually I had to call them and of course they told me I had to pay some absurd price since I wasn't buying the ticket on the internet. The price they listed was the same price I would have paid for a ticket on Avianca, which is reputable company that you can actually trust to arrive on time to your gate. Anyway, I finally got someone on the phone in customer service who hated the company as much as I did and eventually got the ticket. His name was "John" Jaramillo and his English was about as goo as the customer service I received (both were great). Mind you, it was about 6 hours too late since by the time we were through with the process my entire day was essentially wasted. After that, I was walking home (becuase when I first called customer service I had wasted ALL of the battery of the portable phone and had to go to my host families mother's house) and I was seriously pisssed...at pretty much everything. I was pissed that I had so much work to do in terms of planning for the English classes I am teaching for Fulbright and how I didn't have time....I was worrying for God knows what reason about the "job" I need to get after Colombia that will hopefully be in Italy, and I was stressing about my thesis that is due in two months and about the fact that my mattress is made of slate. Everything...I was cursing everything. In 5 minutes my life, which I swear is everything I want, felt like a really heavy bag of smelly shit that I wanted nothing to do with. Even my trip to Bogotá seemed like it wasn't worth those 6 hours (which later turned into many more on Thursday since my flight was canceled at least 5 times).

Anyway, I went back home and had forgotten that I had a skype date with a good friend of mine João who lives close to São Paolo in Brazil. While I was talking to him I explained how annoyed I was and he said, "You know we are a lot alike. We both have everything and yet it isn't enough". And I knew he was right. At that point I began to think a lot about what a priest we both know used to say when quoting a favorite poet of his. He said that for some reason man was convinced he was owed something, that somehow he felt in his heart of hearts that "everything" was promised to him.

And it's true. We as humans believe for some reason we are made for happiness, to be loved, for justice. And yet, the priest asked, just as the poet did (and I am butchering this), 'Who promised us that we would have it? That we should have everything? That we deserved happiness? Who wrote this on our hearts?'

Either there is a response or or there isn't. Either that fulfillment that our heart demands, especially when shit just isn't going right, exists or we are delusional, led on by false hopes and a vanishing point that we never quite reach. Saint Augustine understood that.

At least for me that demand is real, that need to be loved, to be happy, to do great things and to live a fruitful life...that tension...it's there. And that day talking to my friend I really felt it. Most things don't go "right" here. There is a lot of waiting and a lot of frustrating questions regarding your ID (the ID I have here is for foreigners and was given to me by the almighty DAS) when you try and buy anything...wireless internet...a mattress...yeah, you need an ID (often two forms of it) to buy just about everything here. And then even if you get past the whole ID step...you better hope what you bought actually works becuase the "returns" process is a bitch.

But I mean the point is, why put up with life if you are never satisfied with what you have and if what you get is never exactly what you expected (I mean is it ever? Is it ever how you expected...)? The only way it makes sense is if that question we have, that expectation, has a real response that we can't really predict...that we can sense but that we still haven't quite entirely reached or have only partially reached in the day to day. If you think about it, that desire, that tension between desire and having that desire fulfilled is what makes humans great. It's why we get out of bed, it's why fall in love. It's what makes humans do things. The problem is that a lot of us don't expect to be happy, or to really be loved or to find it...and so many times we try and kill desire as a result. But when we give up on it we die too. With desire goes man. As far as I am concerned that desire is part of a story and it won't go away until it meets something big enough to fulfill it. An infinite for our infinite. It has to be that way, otherwise all of this is pointless and my 6 hours on the phone with Aires was worthless.

So, I have everything and during these past few weeks I realized its not enough. My generation often wants the best internship, thinks they deserve the best job, or to go to the best school...or to get the best scholarship...and then we get it, and I swear we don't know half of the time what to do next. It's almost like it was just about getting the damn thing, not about what comes with it. Getting the Fulbright isn't just about getting the Fulbright, it's about the work that comes with it. Thank God I had my friend João that day because I realized talking to him that when we get what we want the first thing we realize is that we don't really know what it is we signed up for, but that that is part of the adventure. The situation we find ourselves in is always much bigger than we expected, more than we signed up for...like having a baby. These days I just say "Driver, surprise me" becuase I am pretty sure reality is about a relationship and that reality speaks to you and that my only job is to respond with a yes.

So that's what I am doing here, trying my damnedest to continue to say yes. I teach three conversation classes a week and once a month a lead a discussion about the "American Dream" through the eyes of cinema. I have told my kids repeatedly that learning language isn't about grammar and that its about relationship. I can memorize the word love and its definition but that doesn't mean I understand what it means...and it certainly doesn't mean I know what it means in another language. No, to learn a language it has to be felt and experienced. I tell them that's why I am there to teach them, because I have that experience and its something they need it fi they want to really learn English. I do teach grammar, and I do teach vocabulary but always in relationship. The other day I gave a lesson on art. We spoke about Hopper and Rockwell and used a lot of vocabulary and grammar to compare them, and to look at the different ways in which they portrayed life, and American culture in particular. They really enjoyed the lesson...one girl even wrote me and told me "thank you" for taking them seriously as students and not just doing the same old activities that everyone always does. These kids want to speak English they don't want to learn about what you find in the Kitchen.

The last thing I will say is the Medellín is a wonderful city. The weather here is wild though. In the same day you go from thunderstorms to blue sky...and no one every brings an umbrella because no one ever expects the rain to last longer than 20 minutes at a time...and it doesn't. They also have a metro here. It's immaculate and takes you to all the main parts of the city. I use it everyday to get too and from work. I also live right next to the major stadium in town where the most important soccer teams play like La Naciónal and Medellín. The entire area surrounding he stadium has every type of sports facility you can imagine, even a skate park, and was redone for the South American Games in 2010. I run around the stadium about 4 times a week. In general I can run whenever I want, but usually I don't go after 10pm. At that point most people have gone home and the only time you aren't safe in Colombia is when no one else is around but you. Sounds like any city doesn't it? Well that's because it is. Colombia is a safe place with a very bad rap. The more I am here the more I realize that people have no idea what they are talking about when Colombia comes to mind. I recommend Medellín and the general Antioquia region to anyone interested in traveling somewhere that is still under the radar. I also reccomend traveling in the Boyaca region near Bogotá which is home to Villa de Leyva, a truly picturesque Spanish colonial town where the lighting always seems be perfect. Colombia is a beautiful country and I still have a lot to discover.

The post have been coming in slow because I have been really busy with classes and also with my thesis. Come November (when the thesis is due) I should be able to turn one out every friday, just like I had promised.

In the adventure.
tim

Two weeks and ticking....

Two friends of mine woke up to a huge blast last Thursday in Bogotá. When they first peaked out their window to shards of glass that littered the entire street, I am sure it seemed possible that Colombia really was the Colombia that we had all been warned about.

When we arrived at Hotel Los Heroes two weeks ago today, hardly a week before the explosion that rocked the 4 blocks surrounding Colombia's most well know radio station, all of us had the same stories to tell:

"Is you mom scared shitless about you being here too?"

"When you bought the Lonely Planet guide to Colombia did the kid at the register ask if you were really going there?"

"Well at least the ambassador thought it was prudent to give us the direct line to the Marine on call at Post 1 out front of the embassy...I mean that IS a good thing right?"

And yet I promise, all of us would also tell you that after our first 14 days here, Colombia is not the God forsaken country everyone in the US think it is. Instead it's a complicated country, a country much more complicated than any I have ever been to in my life (except maybe for Italy). For one, Colombia is intensely regional. Each of its 6 regions has its own cuisine, dance, weather, music, and "type of people". Colombia has mountains and the Amazon, the beach and snow, indigenous tribes and a European past...and the first ones to point out these differences are the Colombians themselves. Even the most recent rewrite of the constitution highlights the fact of diversity and commits the state to its protection. The most amazing thing is that even though every region expresses itself differently and has a people, almost all are adamant (and very vocal) about the fact that they are all Colombian. Second, the constant balance between "security" and freedom is not just something for the politicians, but also something that the people here are constantly grappling with on a more personal level (and it's one of the first things you deal with as a foreigner here as well). They have a phrase here in Colombia, "no dar papaya", and it basically means that the quickest way to find yourself in trouble is to ask for it. That means that walking around like a tourist and examining the "weird" money for cool water marks right in front of the ATM is a bad idea...as is "exploring" without friends. In Colombia you have to do your best to do as Colombians do, it's as simple as that. Obviously I need to point out that I have only been here for two weeks. I am sure that the longer I am here the better I will be able to grasp and go deeper into the complication of which so far I have only been given glimpses.
However, there are two things that I can say at this point with total certainty; one is that everyone I have met here is welcoming and very interested in our choice to come and live in Colombia. Second, the variety of fresh juice here (90 percent of which are not fruits we are familiar with in the US) is mind blowing and each is delicious. Oh and though "saldo" (money to recharge you phone/use the internet in 3 star hotels) continues to be a problem, Colombia is (far MORE often than not) a very warm country looking to welcome foreigners with open arms. As for my take on Uribe and Santos, Plan Colombia and the security situation in Colombia you will have to turn in next time....for this post I want to walk more on the lighter side.

First of all I have never been with a group like the one assembled this year by the Fulbright Commission in Colombia. Everyone is here because they are interested in knowing the real Colombia, or at least seeing it for themselves. They are from all over the country and from various universities like the Claremont Consortium in southern California and Kenyon College in Ohio as well as Alma College in Michigan, and their interests range from the fine arts to social welfare and informal recycling. All of them are good listeners who are genuinely attracted by life and more specifically by life in Colombia. Everyone involved is interesting. I sincerely mean that. It's actually not what I expected to be honest. I mean usually in Latin America you get two types of gringos/euros, those who have all the answers and want to save Latin America from impending doom or those that are trying to escape the commercialized and spoiled north for an alternative lifestyle of back packing and indigenous tourism (while avoiding showers at all costs since its bad for the dreads and the alternative image) in the south. Instead, we came to learn and for the most part it is clear that we have very few pretensions about what we supposedly already know. The more I spoke with (and consequently became very close to) those on the Fulbright in Colombia, the more it was evident that we came to Colombia because we didn't know something (or didn't trust what we thought we knew) and wanted to find something out. That kind of openness is not normal today (especially in academia where everyone knows the answers and has stopped asking questions) and I am excited to see the kind of stories it will generate amongst us during our time here in Colombia.

As for me, well I am doing well. I arrived in Medellín after my first week in Bogotá and am already loving the change in the weather. Bogotá is a rainy city with constantly cloudy weather. Medellín has its clouds but there is also always sun and it deserves its reputation of being the city of the Eternal Spring. This coming week I start teaching my classes and it's been stressful to be honest. I think life can be a really shitty thing if everything depends on you. For me life is a constant struggle with thinking that it's all up to me and then realizing that it's not. Which reminds me, one of the best parts of my time here has been coming across friends of mine that belong to the Catholic lay movement of Communion and Liberation. I say friends and yet I met all of them for the first time once I arrived and still it was like I knew them from before and our meeting was more like a reunion. A friend of mine in Milan had warned them that I was coming and the way they received me when I arrived is something that just isn't normal and something that demands explanation.

For them my arrival was an event, and I was the focus. Christians believe that everything is a gift and that even our mistakes or the bad in the world is something that is FOR rather than against us. This way of understanding reality is born from Christ´s experience on the cross, where even the most tragic of events was a necessary sacrifice to defeat death and sin. That is why they pelted me with questions from the time I got in the car with them that first Wednesday night to the end of the car ride home...they wanted to know about my life and who I was...and they wanted to know this because they knew that my arrival in Bogotá was just as much something for them and their lives as it was for mine. I live for the kind of conversations I had that night. The best part is that they are people I trust and people I know that I can ask about Colombia and get answers that, even if not perfect, desire to get to the very heart and depth of things rather than remaining on the surface. The same is true here in Medellín where a small group of the same lay movement also exists. The fact that they are here, in the same city where I am working is really a miracle for me...and I know it is FOR me. My friend Simon and I have a saying about coincidence...and that is..."What if coincidence happens everyday?". Well for he and I and many Christians it does...and for that reason it is a sure sign of God. In Colombia they call it Diosidencia.

There is more that I could say but I covered the most important bases. I'll continue to keep updating once a week. Probably on Fridays.

Oh, and the university where I work is the best public university in Colombia...its size and the seriousness with which it faces education reminds me of Berkeley and I already feel at home.

In the Adventure,
Tim

p.s. I want to take pictures but still not comfortable enough to do so yet...when I do I will post them

Is it Possible to Live This Way? An Unusual Approach to Italian Existence | Vol. 1 Patience

I don't like getting email updates and if you've sent me one before I probably haven't read it. I swear we are friends. It's just I'd rather talk to you about your trip instead. I like being involved. Also not all of us are talented writers, and if I am going to sit down and read two pages about how you spent your first day in Alaska deep sea fishing, it better be either a really enthralling big fish story or an email you sent specifically to me because something hella funny happened to you that would make ME laugh and not 25 other additional people. Even better if it's both. That's really the main problem with study abroad mass-emails, they are boring (bad writer) and have nothing to do with you (the person receiving).

With that in mind, I decided to post about my time in Italy on this blog. That way if you really want to hear my thoughts about living and studying in Italy you can just check a website at your leisure. You don't have to feel bad about archiving my email or even promise yourself that you will come back and read the email later seeing as I am "your good friend and all"...instead you can just come here and skim through my bad writing whenever you want. And truthfully I might not even post anything after today.

So, Italy.

I arrived almost 3 weeks ago now. I don't really remember my first thoughts because I didn't write them down. I do remember getting off the plane and waiting for three hours for Stefano to come pick me up at Malpensa, but other than that I don't have a whole lot to say about my first moments in Milan.

You know what was cool though? I sat next to this guy on the plane who is from Oakland and that works for Motorola. We became friends and talked a lot about various high profile prescription drugs that he'd tried and more importantly about if they really do what the advertisements say they do. Viagra? Yes. Cialis? Different, but yes. Lunesta? Yes. Ambien? Yes, but make sure you get your full 8 hours and don't drink to much Cognac. We also talked about Japan and how cool it is and how I should go. And then we talked about people who say they were born into the wrong body, which in this case meant people that thought they were born the wrong gender. I obviously had my opinions on this. The good news was, I kept my cool. This paid off too. Because, as it turns out, he was a Star Gold Alliance Member and when we landed in Munich he got me into this sweet lounge with free beer on tap and good food/internet/every newspaper available in Berlin (also for free). After we said our goodbyes I spent the rest of my layover in the lounge and kept thinking about how God is always really good to me. Not only did I get to see what a Star Alliance Gold Member lounge looked like in Munich, but I also learned about pharmaceuticals that I know I will never use. Plus, the guy was just really nice and, when you have to sit next to someone for that long of a trip, getting a nice guy is really a blessing.

I spent the next couple days with Stefano at his home in Pavia. His family is really wonderful and I felt at home as soon as arrived (actually as soon as I saw Stefano's face at the airport I felt at home). From the moment I walked in, the house was filled with gunfire. His two brothers and cousin were glued to the TV playing the latest Call of Duty on Xbox and my first thought was that American culture is not something you can escape. My second thought was that I was glad they choose to be American and not Russian. That first night I ate everything Ste put in front of me. Everything was healthy, nothing was processed, and it all tasted amazing and decidedly not American.

My second day in Italy I went with Stefano to visit Don Pino from Genova (not the famous Don Pino of Cattolica). The first thing the man did was hug me as if he already knew me. We were invited in his study and conversed for about an hour. Toward the end of our time with him he poured us all some terrible whisky and told me I had to write to Traces Magazine about how I met the movement of Communion and Liberation. He said that kind of story has to be told because people need to know that Christ is a living Presence and one that has unmistakable features. He couldn't believe that an American was sitting in his study who had met CL in Chile. God really is great, and we really are witnesses to an incredible mystery.

Then Stefano dropped me off at the Metro and I made my way to the San Babila region of Milan

where I live with the Raimondi family. The first person I saw was the dad who is a hilarious guy with a great sense of humor. I got along with him from the moment I met him last summer. Actually the entire family is really incredible and living with them in their home has really been more than I deserve. They treat me like a member of the family and everything about my life with them is comfortable and enjoyable. I am really without want. They even took me to St. Moritz in the Swiss Alps.

That Alps were really something else. They're just like you'd imagine they should be, big. The are overwhelming, scrape the sky and put you in your place. You recognize you're human in front of the Alps, finite and yet still capable of grasping and affirming their beauty. They take over the entire horizon and you say to yourself "yeah, they should be like this, they should be huge and powerful and magnificent. I want them to be just like they are." I couldn't think up a better version of the Alps even if I tried.

We stayed there for three days, each of which we skied. I snowboarded, which was incredible. The snow there is so dry and has so much give. I had never experienced anything like it. The whole trip to the Alps was like that, everything was new, something I was experiencing for the first time and maybe even for the last. Everyone should see the Alps before they die, they are humbling, the epitome of God's grandeur (and if that sounds cliché its because you haven't been there).

Most of the time in Milan post-Alps/honeymoon period has been a trial in perseverance and patience. The bureaucracy here is a nightmare. I spent at least a week trying to get a "permesso di sogiorno" which is basically the government's complicated way of making sure that they know you are here and, more importantly, that they know you have verifiable fixed address. It's safe to say they have an illegal immigration problem here. I basically went to the post office like 50 times because that's where you have to go to turn all the paper work in and seriously no one ever knew what I was talking about. The only post office where people actually understood why I was there was the central post office where all the other immigrants hang out. It was kinda cool actually because while I was waiting in line I met this Korean girl who had lived in Manhattan and gone to fashion school and who was now doing a masters in jewelry in Milan. We didn't become such good friends that I could ask here if getting a masters in jewelry was really something you could get your masters in, but she seemed trustworthy. Anyway after I turned the paper work in they gave me a receipt with the date and time of an appointment with the police. So needless to say, it's still not over. Surprise.

The master's program I am in seems legit but I still have yet to see. The professors seem excellent and the course itself is really well organized and will be useful for the kind of work I hope to do in the future. However, I wasn't necessarily blown away by the caliber of my peers. I hope they prove me wrong in the next few weeks though, alumni is an important part of this whole thing.

Also the School of Community that I am supposed to attend is made up entirely of Africans. I'm sure I'll be returning to this subject in future posts.

There are obviously a lot more details that I could go into about the time I have spent here but I wanted to give an overview rather than going overboard, because that's something I also hate about travel emails, they are too long. I enjoyed doing this though so look for more posts soon.

And now its time for my favorite part of the post,

Things American's will find absurd about Italy

1. Sure, it's no longer strange to encounter a European that enjoys a good game of "basket" but naming your basketball team "Armani Jeans"? Absurd.

2. In Italy you won't find a single theater showing a foreign film in its original language. They are all dubbed. Every film, every television show, is dubbed and there is never the option for subtitles. If you ask to watch a film in its original language, usually English, with Italian subtitles Italians will complain but begrudgingly yield to your demands because they want to practice their English, that is, unless they are tired.

3. This is related to #2 but deserves its own paragraph because it is equally as absurd. In Rome you can find various schools devoted to teaching their students the art of "dubbing". That's right people go to school in Rome to become voice over "actors". It is a profession, and a quite lucrative one at that. In fact, a Italian voice actor ( or "doppiatore") makes his career voicing over a single actor and essentially "becoming" that persons voice in every one of their film. For that reason Italians will tell you that when they hear an actors real voice for the first time their gut reaction is that it can't be their "real" voice.

4. The song "Tik Tok" by Keisha and "Sexy Bitch" by David Guetta feat. Akon are extremely popular here. I know, that's absurd enough by itself, but the best part is that: (1) most people have no idea what the lyrics mean and inevitably sing the most inappropriate parts in public making me uncomfortable and (2) it confuses their English. I can't tell you how often people ask things like "Why does Keisha sing 'But the party don't stop' instead of 'will not stop'." To which I try my best at a decent expalnation of english meter and rhyme scheme (all of which I learned from Santi and my friend Sam) and "street culture" (from Everett)...but usually fail.

5. You can do everything at the Post office in Italy. They offer mobile service, bank accounts, immigration services and even health insurance. Oh, and they will mail your stuff. If you think the lines are bad at the post office in the states you obviously haven't lived in Italy.

6. 55% of the people in Milan own a Montcler Jacket. So does Kanye.

I keep a running list of these things and will continue to put up at least five every post. At this point it does not look like I will ever run out.

Also, I can't believe I live in Milan. I can and do walk to the Duomo whenever I want. I often say morning prayer there. I go to mass in Churches that have been there for centuries and walk along streets where I know Saints have been before me. I live in the city where Fr. Giussani began a movement that changed every part of my life. I'm learning Italian.

We really are given more than we deserve.