My Ex-Boyfriend, Boliva

(This is a revised version of my last blog, after getting feedback from a great writer and friend, Jess Edgerton. For all those interested readers, I plan on beginning to blog weekly, or more (which will also mean shorter posts! yay!) when I return to Chicago in a couple weeks. So stay tuned.)

Bolivia is wondrous.  It is wispy morning clouds partially masquerading magnificent mountains on my way to school every day.  It is thousands of city lights perched as high as stars, illuminating my way home at night.  Bolivia is fantastical dream-like landscapes I never knew existed on planet Earth.  It is eating juicy ripe mangoes year-round that I swear momentarily transport me to heaven.  It is swimming alongside pink dolphins gliding gracefully beside me in the Amazon River.  It is swinging at a playground, feeling like my toes are touching the mountain peaks.  Bolivia is hands raised and voices blending in Spanish praise every Sunday.

Bolivia is beauty, but it does not boast.  It is humble and simple, and for that is unknown.    

Bolivia is disastrous.  It is a bus with broken headlights that is lost in the middle of salt flats, the driver desperately asking for help and flashlights.  It is passengers pushing the bus when it gets stuck in the non-road we are on—3 times.  Bolivia is school closing at a moment's notice because of blockades and protests and whipping and tear gas from angry workers.  It is keeping my eyes closed while crazy taxi drivers weave back and forth in traffic and pass cars as if they're playing a video game.  It is a speeding bus driver who doesn't let his passengers pee.  It is a bumpy bus rocking on the edges of cliffs in the pouring rain and thick darkness.  Bolivia is my traumatized soul sobbing on the edge of a rock by the river after making it through the night alive.

Bolivia is harsh, and it does not soften.  It is unbelievable and unrelenting, and for that I throw up my hands.

My love-hate relationship with this country has grown stronger this past year as I have experienced this beauty and harshness more intensely and more repeatedly.  It reaches out and loves me or hates me and I love it or hate it back more than I did before.  A reciprocal love and hate, I think.  I'd compare it to an ex-boyfriend I want to hang out with again because of all the nice things he did for me and the fun times we had together, but that I also want to slap because he betrayed my trust.  There can be such intense feelings on either side of the spectrum. 

I've always diminished in my mind the amount of give and take, passion and conflict I can have with a place.  And I've diminished in my mind the way a place can have a hold on me, can reach out and take my heart sometimes just as much or more than a person can.  This happens because places hold moments.  Moments that can happen in illumination and shadows, health and sickness, fellowship and loneliness, and in praising and cursing. 

Now, my intention is not to elevate "place" or my relationship with "place"—Bolivia or otherwise.  Places and our relationships with them are not worthy of exaltation. When I look at the mountains from the view of a top of a hike, I am not in awe of Bolivia, but of God. When I reflect on the experiences that have shaped my last two years of life, I don't thank Bolivia, but I thank God, the giver of beauty, the wellspring of life. The glory goes to God for giving us places to hold moments and stories and for allowing us to feel this strong relationship with place, for allowing places to change us, and to mark out seasons of life. And so I give glory to God for Bolivia.

When I return to the states, or wherever I may end up in the future, I will not think of Bolivia as a country in South America, but a season of life God gave me in order to change me profoundly through these wide-spectrum experiences. I will remember back to a season of endurance, of self-discovery, of grace, and recall feelings of love, anger, frustration, jealousy, joy, and grief. Upon hearing the word "Bolivia" it will evoke memories of blundering Spanish, 6-year old chubby faces calling inanimate objects "he" and "she", and near-death experiences with friends I call my sisters. "Bolivia" will make me think of recess conversations, lighting matches and changing the gas tank to cook food, getting hit with water balloons, saltenas, running in the mountains, leading worship, tedious lesson planning, and wise mentors. This place has burrowed its way into my heart and taken root, and I thank God for that as it shows the last two years in this place have held meaning.

And now, may I begin to grieve and rejoice and grieve some more over the loss of this wondrous and disastrous place.

My Love-Hate Relationship

Bolivia is wondrous.  It is wispy morning clouds partially masquerading magnificent mountains, city lights perched as high as stars, fantastical dream-like landscapes, and pink dolphins gently gliding in the Amazon.  It is juicy ripe mangos year-round that melt in your mouth.

Bolivia is beauty, but it does not boast.  It is humble and simple, and for that is unknown.    

Bolivia is disastrous.  It doesn't know efficiency.  Bolivia is a bus that is lost in the middle of salt flats and rocking on the edges of cliffs.  It is worker strikes and corruption and violence in the streets.

Bolivia is stubborn, but it does not care.  It is traditional and stuck, and for that it lags behind. 

~~~~~~

My love-hate relationship with this country has grown stronger this past year.  It reaches out and loves me or hates me and I love it or hate it back more than I did before.  A reciprocal love and hate, I think.  And this of course results in stronger attachment.

I've always diminished in my mind the amount of give and take, love and hate I can have with a place.  And I've diminished in my mind the way a place can have a hold on me, can reach out and take my heart sometimes just as much or more than a person can.  

I think it's because a place holds inside it moments.  Moments that can happen in day and night, sickness and health, solitude and fellowship, and in praising and cursing.  

Now, I don't want to glorify "place."  I want to glorify God for giving us places to hold moments and stories and for allowing us to feel this strong relationship with place.  I want to glorify God for allowing places to change us, to mark out seasons of life.

When I think of Bolivia now, I will not think of a country in South America.  I will think of a season of endurance, of self-discovery, and of grace.  Upon hearing the word "Bolivia" I will now recall feelings of love, anger, frustration, jealousy, joy, and grief.  It will evoke memories of blundering Spanish, 6-year old chubby faces, and good friends.  "Bolivia" will make me think of conversations, laughter, cooking, playing, singing, reading, writing, running, and teaching.

I thank God for this place that has burrowed its way into my heart and taken root.

And now, may I begin to grieve and rejoice and grieve some more over the loss of this wondrous and disastrous place.

Body-Surfing

A couple weeks ago, I found my soul's new home in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Chile. It was glorious and exhilarating to be next to the ocean, the sound of the waves easing me each night into the most peaceful sleep I can remember having in a long while, and the enticing water inviting my body (which I think was a fish in another life) to swim in its refreshingly cool depths.

                 

On one particular day, my friends and I got caught up in the splendor of the waves towering over us and crashing onto the shore. Laughter abounded and our swimsuits began falling off from the force of the waves, and we were forever grateful we did not bring men on this trip. (Of course, we also didn't know any men we could bring with us…).

                  

I've always loved playing in waves. My many Lake Michigan experiences, of course, are a little different from my few Pacific and Atlantic Ocean experiences, but in any case, I have come to know that you have to beware of the undertow. And on this swimsuit-shifting wave day, it got a little scary.

                 

Now, we were trying to ride the waves, you know, like body-surf. I've done this for years now when I play in a body of water, however, I can't say I'm very good at it. I often jump too soon, or am met with an unexpected wave and jump too late. When this happens, inevitably, you get sucked under the wave, its undertow somersaulting you and doing what it wants with you. When that happens, there's no way of fighting back, no way of gaining the slightest bit of control. The wave has all the power and you're being tossed and turned at its will.

                 

I could take a few hits, at first. I was only being sucked under momentarily. But then one wave caught me off guard and sent me swirling as if someone were shaking a bug violently in a bottle of water. It's a scary phenomenon if you've never experienced it; it left me shaken and sent me walking back to the beach.

               

In my shaken state, for some reason I began to connect the waves with God. Maybe because God has left me in a shaken state many times, much like the waves had just done.

                 

It got me thinking about God and his power and control: When we move with him, we'll be riding with him, just as when we move with the waves, we'll be riding with them. He'll carry us and we'll enjoy his pleasure just as we do the wave's pleasure. But when we jump too soon, not waiting for his timing, or ignoring his voice, or not seeing the need to jump and thinking we can withstand the wave, we inevitably lose total control.

                 

There's an art to body-surfing just as there is an art to listening and feeling and moving to the rhythm of life and God.

                 

In body-surfing and in life, I doubt I'm ever going to get the hang of jumping at all the right moments. But just after the wave crashes, it stills. And so life will feel like its crashing down on me—I imagine many more times than it already has—but it will result in stillness. It will result in me seeing the error of my jump or my avoidance of the wave and then prompt me to move when God moves with me the next time. 

                 

Thankfully, looking back on my life and my past decisions, it seems I'm getting better at mastering the art of body-surfing, metaphorically speaking. I know in the past I've jumped too soon in relationship decisions, and I know I've stood still when God was prompting my heart to move or speak. But I know I jumped at the right time in my decision to come to Bolivia, and I feel like I'm moving with the wave once again in my decision to go back to the United States.

                 

I think, and hope, that our body-surfing ability just keeps getting better with time. That each wave that comes crashing, whether we ride it or not, brings more wisdom. And maybe by the end of our lives, we'll do a little less gymnastics in the ocean and our suits won't fall off.

                 

Esperanza

It’s hard to paint a picture for you of what my life is like here…of what goes on in the day to day, and in my mind and in my heart. Sometimes I feel so distant from my family and friends, not just because I am physically hundreds of miles away, but because it’s hard to express the craziness and greatness of my life here and reconcile it with what I knew before and who I was before Bolivia.

I’m sorry I haven’t written too many details on this blog. I am not the kind of person that enjoys writing facts and details. I am not all that practical, logical, fact-oriented. I am a dreamer, a thinker, a processor. A definite INFP, I’ve come to realize. (Oh, Myers Briggs, you fascinate me.) So when I begin to write, it’s hard for me to write details of my day-to-day life for you. If you ask me factual, practical questions, I will answer them. But I’d rather write about what I’ve been thinking and learning and how I’ve felt God work than what each day looks like. 

So, without further ado…

My life lately could be characterized by hopefulness. Let me explain. 

There are a lot of upcoming events—known and unknown—in my life. And God is teaching me to have peace and relinquish control. I am naturally a very laid back person, a peacemaker, very flexible and adaptable. But at the same time, I do like to take control of my life and plan for the future. It excites me. I feel like I can be the “captain of my ship” and steer myself in any direction I’d like to go. And in some sense, I believe I can. We have free will. I can be anything I want to be, do anything I want to do.

But lately, my plans have continually been changed. To quote Of Mice and Men, “The best laid plans o' mice and men often go astray.” So true!

Originally, I was going to stay in Bolivia through November 1^st and do a program called Sustainable Bolivia. My plane ticket is still actually booked for that day. I was sure this was going to be great. I was really excited to try something different for awhile and be in a new city, meeting more new people (I love meeting new people—I think people are awesome and so interesting), learning Spanish, living with a host family, volunteering with at-risk children on the streets. And then I would be back with so many stories in time for Thanksgiving…

Then, my brother, to my complete surprise, proposed to his girlfriend over Christmas time. They decided the best time for the wedding was in July.

The options became: Come back home in July, then go back to Bolivia and come back again in November. Or, come back 4 months earlier than I had planned and stay home.

After some thought and prayer, I felt like this big event was calling me home to stay home. It was definitely earlier than my own timeline, but I knew financially and emotionally it would be really hard for me to go back to Bolivia yet again for just a few months more.  (I have already done the back and forth from the U.S. to Bolivia or Bolivia to the U.S. 6 times now in less than 2 years and it is so difficult.) I felt peace about this change of plans, and soon realized that starting ESL/bilingual classes in September would be advantageous…and oh how I love and miss fall in the midwest!

So there came shocker number 1. My time frame at Sustainable Bolivia went from 5 months to 5 weeks.

Sometimes you gotta roll with the punches.

I know God’s hand is always in my life, but a lot of times I can’t see it. However, in early March, I could clearly see it.

The sermon at my church on Sunday, March 3^rd, was about having peace. Then, I went to a gathering of some friends of mine who meet every Tuesday night. That week, on March 5^th, a friend of mine picked out a Tim Keller podcast for us to listen to….on attaining peace. I thought the Tim Keller sermon was especially interesting because he challenged the approach of “thinking less” and “freeing your mind” to achieve peace, and instead said something to the extent of “the MORE you think, the more peace you will have.” He was saying the more that we dwell upon the basic truths and principles of Christianity, the more peace we will have. If we preach the gospel to ourselves—that Jesus died for us and we don’t have to do anything to earn our forgiveness and salvation—it will bring us peace.

Then, that next morning, Wednesday, was my turn in our teacher rotation of prayer that we had just begun. Everyone was in my classroom to pray specifically for me and for my class. I asked for prayers for peace in whatever was next for me after school ended. I had just been having some restless thoughts about going to Cochabamba to do Sustainable Bolivia that were more persistent just the night before. I felt like I needed to stay in La Paz for my last 5 weeks in the country. But I was trying to shrug off those thoughts, thinking that after all this time of planning on Sustainable Bolivia, I was supposed to go and couldn’t change those plans.

And guess what? That very same day, I randomly decided to empty out my spam folder (something I don’t do very often) and discovered a misplaced e-mail from Sustainable Bolivia in it, saying that because of the program capacity and the desired needs of their partner organizations, they couldn’t give me a volunteer placement. (Upon further inquiry, he said there were lots of applicants for this summer and could only accept volunteers who could work 3 or more months and had a high level of Spanish.)

I was shocked. I had been in contact with the communications director for months. We had talked logistics, he told me I’d make a great candidate, and now he was saying that they couldn’t accept me. 

The craziest thing was, I had peace. I KNEW God was making this an easy decision for me. It was so extremely apparent that he had been preparing my heart for this. I knew he had given me the restlessness and the desire to stay in La Paz at just the right time, so this news wouldn’t devastate me. And further, I knew it was right. I knew I needed to finish where I started. I knew I needed to spend my time with people I’ve already developed relationships with. I knew I needed to rest more. But I don’t know if I would’ve made the decision to stay in La Paz if not for God clearly closing this door for me. Closing the door on this program was something I don’t think I could’ve done on my own, even if in the back of my head I had my doubts.

So that brings me to my reason for hopefulness. My Bolivia plans have changed numerous times, not just the 2 most recent times I told you about. My hope lies in the fact that God knows better than I do and he also has way more control over circumstances than I do. And that’s really quite fine by me because I don’t often know what in the world I am doing.

I hesitate to even say I plan on taking ESL/bilingual classes to get an endorsement starting in September and ending in June at National Louis University in Lisle. This is my plan. It seems to be good. It seems to make sense. But I’m not going to place any hope and confidence in these plans. I think I will wait to register until August, with the track record now of my plans changing… 

But I have hope. Hope that God will continue to guide me, and change my plans if need be, when I don’t know where the hell I’m going or what I’m supposed to do. I have hope that my parents and brother’s visit in La Paz at the end of May will be wonderful. I have hope that my last month in La Paz once school ends will be exactly what I need. I have hope that someday I will be bilingual. I have hope that I will find a good community of friends once I am living back in Downers Grove with my parents. I have hope that I will find a job I really enjoy. I have hope that I find a Spanish-speaking church I enjoy and reminds me of my church here. I have hope that I will write and read more, cook more, play music more, and finally get around to scrapbooking my college years. I have hope that God will take me on new adventures and stretch me more than I thought I could be stretched.

And I am hopeful for the rest of the school year. 2 months not to survive, but to truly make the most of--in my classroom and out of it. 2 months to enjoy being in this Highlands community that I know I will miss immensely. 

Finally, I am hopeful for Chile! I am hopeful for true rest. For a week to get out of the city and onto the beach. For quality time with friends. For reflection. For rejuvenation.

God is good. God is peace. God is hope.

And with that, I will bid you Buenas Noches.

Thanks for reading,

Julie

Yo confio en ti.

I’m sorry it’s been so long since I’ve updated my blog!

Not much can top my Rurrenebaque story (see blog post below!) but I will inform you of some happenings in my life in La Paz!

Let's see, last weekend we had a staff retreat (also in a jungly part of Bolivia) a few hours away from La Paz.  It was really nice to get away and experience the warmth and humidity of a lower altitude, play and rest and talk by a pool, and especially worship together and be fed with truth.  I appreciated it a lot and was really blessed by it!  Unfortunately, the cold that I had turned into a nasty infection!  (I'm blaming the maybe not-so-chlorinated pool that I chose to put my head in when I had a cold.)  But really, it was so hard to resist.  I'm not the kind of girl that's concerned about keeping her hair dry or something.  My mom has referred to me as a "fish" before.

My first graders and I have had a pretty good start to the quarter.  I gained one more student, Anett, just last week—making the girl count now higher than the boy count (9 girls and 8 boys).  It’s always challenging having a student come in the middle of the school year, especially with no English.  I am trying my best to engage her and encourage her, and right now that can really only be done in Spanish.  I’m glad I am at the stage where I at least can say most basic conversational/1^st grade level words and we’re able to communicate.  She’s had what seems like a pretty easy transition to Highlands since the other girls in my class quickly befriended her.  At least, she hasn’t cried and smiles at me often!  :)

It’s still challenging and exhausting teaching 1^st grade, but it definitely is a privilege that I often overlook.  I’m becoming a better teacher and it’s nice to hear from the lead elementary teacher that I’ve grown so much since last year and am a great teacher.  There are always a million things to do outside of the actual teaching part of my job too.  I think those other areas (weekly planning, grading, unit planning, preparing tests/worksheets/homework, and completing all I’m supposed to leave behind for the next teacher) take the backburner a little bit when I just want to use my 1 planning period a day recuperating from teaching/disciplining/dealing with problems!  I wish there were more time in the day.  Don’t we all.

On that note, I am looking forward to this upcoming 4-day weekend (for Carnaval) to fully rest and recuperate from this crazy nose/throat infection I have, catch up and get ahead with some school work, hang out with friends, read, and watch movies!  I wanted to go to the beach in Arica, Chile but I am feeling good about my decision to rest and stay home especially after this sickness that has taken over my body!  I hope I will have another chance to go to Chile—maybe once school ends.

And that brings me to my next subject!  I am really looking forward to the end of May, because my parents and probably my youngest brother (Paul) are coming!!!!  And then school ends and I’ll be an emotional wreck but I’ll have my parents there to comfort me!  So once school is out and I’ve officially said goodbye and turned in my key and have all my checklists checked off, my family and I can enjoy some quality time in La Paz together.  Then, they’ll go down to Cochabamba, Bolivia with me and I will start my next adventure!

As I’ve mentioned before, I will be going to Cochabamba to be involved in a program called “Sustainable Bolivia.”  I am going to take 4 hours of Spanish a day, live with a host family, and do some volunteering.  I originally was planning on doing this for about 5 months, until November.  However, my brother (Dan) is getting married at the end of July!  He just proposed a few days after Christmas.  So, of course, that caused an unexpected change of plans, and I’m going to have to change my flight from November to mid-July.  I thought about coming back to Bolivia after the wedding, but I think it would be really hard emotionally and financially to go back and then leave again.  

My plan for what’s next is to live at home while I take classes for an ESL/bilingual endorsement at National Louis University and work part-time.  I know 1^st grade is not my favorite, and while I’ve thought about upper elementary, I think what I’d really love is to be an ESL teacher, still allowing me to teach (which I really love) but not having to deal with so many kids at once and having all the responsibilities that come with being a classroom teacher.  I’ll take the paperwork and testing of kids over the amount of planning and discipline that comes with my current job.  As an introvert, it’s truly exhausting.

So that’s me.  That’s my life.  I’m enjoying life now and am also excited for what’s to come.  It surely will be a bittersweet goodbye when all of this is over.  Bolivia will always be home in a way.

I appreciate prayer!  Big time!  Right now I’m struggling some with the fear that I’m making the wrong decision and I need to stay in Bolivia.  I felt at peace when I decided to leave, and I need to keep remembering that, but change and big events freak me out and make me so emotional.  I will have to grieve the loss of it, just like I did leaving Taylor, and I don’t want to go through that.  Please pray for me in these upcoming months of transition.  

Love from Bolivia,

Jules