What's up

Oi, so it's been a long time since I've written about what I've been up to, so I figured I should, since I just so happen to have free time.

Honest to goodness, 100% genuine free time!

I mean, I hate to keep harping on about this, but I have free time. Days off. Even several in a row (coming soon... but they really are going to happen) (most likely, because I really like my job and just might go in and work with my teens even though I don't have to) (but even if I do, it won't be for the 10 to 15 hour days I've been working lately, it'll just be for a few hours of playtime) (honest. I'm NOT going to overwork myself during my holiday) (I'm not that much of a masochist).

My last month-and-a-half has been almost entirely take up by three big events.

The first one completed was a class given by the Red Cross about How to Teach Other People About HIV Prevention. Now, granted I've been doing this for a year, but um, I wasn't "officially" trained to do it until earlier this month (Don't tell anyone). Now, it was actually a pretty cool class (and by the way, did anyone else know that the founder of the American Red Cross, a woman, pushed Congress to ratify the Geneva Convention?) (or that even without medication, women who have HIV are only 25% likely to pass it on to their children during childbirth, and with medication, the likelihood drops to 1-2%?). But the class was also 9 hours a day for five days sitting in an office building with other adults. And they were mostly cool people, by adult standards... but damn, was that one of the longest and most tiring weeks I've had since I've been in Chicago! I went home every night just exhausted. The only days I got home with a bit more energy were the days that I went in to work after the class... it made my day longer, but at least I got to do energetic things with my teens rather than just sit and learn and discuss and workshop all day. The day after the class was over, I had a fifteen hour day of Guadalupe Play (see below). I expected to be wiped out completely after that, but I found that when I got home that night, I was a much more satisfying form of tired than I had been all week, which just confirmed to me once and for all that I am not a 9-5 office job sort of person.

The second event was the Guadalupe Play. My theatre group wrote it, helped me direct it, put together costumes, everything. They performed it five times between 8 in the morning and 11 at night... actually, I think the performances were between 9 and 10, but I was there between 8 and 11 making sure everything went right. And it did. It was so spectacular. I can't even tell you how proud I am of my theatre group for getting that together-- especially when two people dropped out the night before, after our theatre meeting ended and everyone had left, and then two more people picked up their parts and learned them in order to perform them 12 hours later. That just absolutely rocked.

We dove straight into the Pastorela after that. That was the play that I was in. The Diablo Pereza. And the Rey Gaspar. I had to swap reyes with Quintiliano because I couldn't pronounce Valtazar's line. Trouble with the double R's. Not so big a deal when I'm the Diablo de Mal Sueño, and prone to laziness (speech included)-- but kind of a big deal when you're trying to bring Myrrh to the Baby Jesus, but instead you bring him Look. Anyway, we had a week and a half to pull together a 45 minute play, which may sound easy, but it's not. At all. It's actually a whole lot closer to chaos, especially when you can't get everyone together to practice At The Same Time until 2 hours before the show. Oh, and one of the cast members dropped out two days before the show, and we brought in another girl who's name I didn't know until after I got her to agree to do the part (She was awesome--memorized her lines quick and is a natural actor). It was nuts. Luckily, I was prepared for that, so I just had fun rather than fussing. I knew it would all come together. And it did. Spectacularly. The audience was amazingly enthusiastic. I guess I'm still used to performing for white-people audiences, which (sorry to all my white-people relatives) really just aren't as much fun. You get a lively show like a Pastorela and you couple it with a Mexican audience and what you wind up with are cheers for every joke, every fight scene, every appearance of the Arcangel Gabriel, every scene change, and well, anything else that might possibly in some way or other seem slightly of note. White-people audiences are just so boring by comparison. Maybe, MAYBE you'd get a polite smile or a smattering of applause, but this was a fully interactive show. It was wonderful.

We've been asked to do it again on January 6th at 7:00, and we're going to have it filmed, and there's a group of women who have volunteered to help us set up and to bring refreshments, etc.

I love my job. Have I mentioned that?

Anyway, Michael and I are chillin' right now. Tonight I have a Christmas party with my Theatre Group, and before that I'm taking Janet to the airport. She's going home for good. Her daughter is sick and she needs to be with her. So now the community is 5. Next month Suji leaves for the Peace Corps, and we'll be 4. So, yeah.

Anyway, Michael and I are looking into placements for next year. Maryknolls didn't work out, but hey, that's life. Maybe later. We clearly belong somewhere else for our next placement. Who knows what the future brings, except for some free time in the next two weeks. Like, real free time.

All in all, life is good.