Learning to give again

Jonathan:
It's hard to believe that we've been in Quito for over a month now, especially since we both feel like we've barely had time to get to know this city. Between studying Spanish, volunteering with local kids, two hour-long bus commutes every day, and few hours of homework each night we've found ourselves using every spare moment to either catch our breath or sleep.

After our first week of classes, which was the last time we wrote, we started a volunteer program with a local organization that cares for children whose parents are either in jail, or otherwise unable to care for the kids on their own. After completing a week's worth of paperwork and an extrememly organized orientation process with the program coordinater at our school, we arrived at the project on our first day almost assuming there would be name badges and t-shirts. I don't know what we expected really, but what we found was that the project site looked deserted, the office was locked, and there wasn't a kid in sight. After knocking on doors of the individual houses to see if we could find anyone who might be expecting us, we managed to find a group of about 6 kids who we were able to spend the next few hours with. For the rest of the morning we asked everyone we saw, including the janitor, if they knew what we were supposed to be doing. We ended up leaving our first day wondering the same thing I'm sure they were--- what the hell these two gringos from the States were doing there.

Despite the vigourous efforts of our project coordinator to encourage the project staff to pull it together, our whole first week seemed to follow that suit-- broken plans, missed connections, and a frustrating array of failed group project attempts. After only two days of pulling our hair out trying to work with the organization (or lack of), we began discussing our options for getting out. It wasn't until I was genuinely considering ditching the whole project without notice that I realized maybe my attitude was in need of an adjustment. I was supposed to be there for the kids-- doing whatever I could to support them, care for them, and help them in any way that I could. Instead I was so wrapped up in my own failed plans and expectations that I was missing the point. The kids didn't care how smoothly things were going or whether our "program" was following the appropriate schedule. They didn't care about the art projects or the poorly explained games. All they were looking for was a little affection from a grown-up-- something that has been sorely missing from the majority their time on this planet. I'm not sure what it was that got me feeling so rash, but I think after six months of struggling to take care of myself, I had forgotten how to give.

After that little realization sunk in, the rest of our time in the program ended up being much easier to handle, but not because everything was running smoothly. We still had the missed connections and awkward changes of plans to work around, but we were always there to be with the kids. The rest didn't seem to matter much. Somewhere in there we managed to pull off a day where we all made paper snowflakes, something the children had never seen before--the paper or the real ones; we taught them how to make smores, the only "traditional" American food we could think of; and on our last day we left each of them with their own smiling plastic flower souvenir which we had diligently crafted the night before with a little help from our host family and a hot glue gun.

Overall the process turned out to be an important and rewarding learning experience for us both. After such a long period of only looking out for ourselves, it was refreshing to learn how to give again. We are very much looking forward to the next opportunity we might have to find something we can offer, and some way to give a little bit of ourselves.

Our time at school was a wonderfully rewarding experience as well. Megan and I were both paired with fantastic teachers and were able to pick up right where we left off after finishing our classes in Antigua over three months before. We still seem to have good days and bad with our Spanish-- sometimes we are impressed by how fluidly we can communicate, and other times we feel frustrated that we still struggle to follow simple conversations-- we rely on the moments of feeling impressed with ourselves to stay in good spirits and motivated.