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My Time in Quito |
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Friday, 15 May 2009 |
Andrew is a parishioner at St. Peter Parish in Kirkwood and a 2008 graduate of the University of Missouri-Columbia. He is currently volunteering in Quito, Ecuador with a Catholic community center called El Centro para el Muchacho Trabajador, or “The Center for Working Boys.”
 Hello from Quito! I hope you all find yourselves well and are enjoying the springtime. The year is beginning to wind down here and I am already, and I constantly find myself wondering how to make the most impact with what little time is left. I was really hoping to stay down here for another year, but unfortunately with applying for medical school and not having the financial means I will be returning to the States in late July.
This has been happiest year of my life. Never have I been so constantly and thoroughly surrounded by the crazy, loud, passionate, and heartfelt love like I feel here. For 12-13 hours a day I get the opportunity to be tested in a way that requires a mixture of patience, compassion, humor/wit, toughness, and more patience. Through a never-ending stream of successes and failures, I have always gone to bed here feeling lucky to be able to get up the next morning and see my kids again. While I have always had the unconditional love and support from my family, I am dreading going home because I fear the silence of a largely empty house and lacking the feeling of purpose and belonging that I feel here. I know the people here will be just fine next year, with a fresh new volunteer full of enthusiasm taking my place, but I selfishly wonder how I will be without them.
The recession has been hitting the Center very hard. It has reached the point where we have been warned that our Center bus may be out of commission for a while because there is no money for gas, and it may not be possible to get copies for classes soon because we are almost out of paper. This is all I know as a volunteer; I have no idea the true extent of the problem which is at hand. One of the head nuns here will be starting a fundraising trip around the States shortly and we are all hoping it goes well. I dread to see what happens if this dry spell continues.
For my first seven months, I tutored a 13-year-old girl in English, but as of the last month a volunteer has left and I have taken his three girls into my class. I thought this may be a mixed blessing, because I thought my one original student, Maria, would like the company. Our one-on-one was often challenging because I was constantly pushing her and at times she would get overwhelmed and shut down. It was nice because I could always treat her to breakfast or a movie when she had been working hard. Now with a more standard class, she is not getting the one-on-one attention she had been getting before. Now she will often ignore me, come to class late, and pretend to not know answers to questions she already knows. It is also frustrating for me because I obviously do not understand 13-year-old girls, and I am pretty much flying blind when trying to figure out how to diffuse situations in and out of the classroom. This last Friday she told me I was a bad teacher and that she hasn’t learned anything from me this year. I felt like I was back in middle school with girls using words like daggers. What I hate is that as a teacher I always try to stay neutral, but then later I will snap on another class which doesn’t deserve it. Today when I took the new class out for bowling and lunch, Maria pulled me aside to ask if we could have one-on-one class again. What we decided on is recess tutoring once a week, which I am excited about.
As I feel the weeks counting down, I am trying to figure out a field trip every weekend for one of my classes. So far I have promised taking a class to a pro soccer game, having a barbeque, ice-skating, and a trip to the movie theater. I have been feeling guilty about spending money on myself, because my own funds are running short and I don’t want to promise a trip to my kids that I can’t deliver.
I cannot believe that I will be giving final exams in a month. This experience has also been great because I can see the school year from the viewpoint of the teacher. More than ever I appreciate teachers who are passionate about what they teach, and who are able to inspire that passion in their students. I have had a handful of teachers who have truly inspired me with the zeal and energy with which they taught their subjects. They are the ones who have played a large role in making me excited about education, and inspiring me to pursue a career in medicine which uses my unique set of gifts to help others not as fortunate as I have been in life. For the teachers on this list, I thank you for dedicating your lives to the education and general betterment of others.
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Archdiocese of St. Louis: Mission Office
20 Archbishop May Drive, Saint Louis, MO 63119 • missions@archstl.org
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