Integration by parts

(I wrote this post about 2 months ago, and finally loaded the photos.. sorry for any lag time that becomes evident in the text!)

by which I mean, piecewise community integration. Yes I did giggle when typing the title for this post.

I realized today how ridiculous my life would have seemed to me when I arrived a year and a half ago. And yes, I saw Tses for the first time in August 2012, so it has been basically a year and a half that I’ve been in this place!

Here are a few examples.

Most mornings this term, I get up and run or workout, come back, leave my door unlocked, and go shower. When I come out to make my coffee, there are between 1-5 kids seated in my living room. Finishing homework, sitting and talking, or sleeping in my chairs. While I’m drinking my morning coffee and trying to finish waking up myself, I usually help them with their last few homework problems, ask them questions about school, or do more real-life-y things like tend to their bumps and bruises and arguments. We’re legitimately a family (of our own kind) now.

The other huge change I’ve noticed lately, outside of school, has to do with sports. I’m officially the “sport teacher” at St. Therese now, as my counterpart from last year passed away earlier this year. At the moment, I’m only actively coaching track and field (one hour of practice four times per week) and boys’ soccer (not officially started yet, but every weekend or two we have a match with a team from one of the locations in Tses). IT’S THE COOLEST.

Last year, I was really frustrated during sports. Things are really unorganized so I would get grumpy about waiting around for things to happen… and then when the kids finally showed up for practice, I would struggle to get them to follow my directions. I’m not sure if I didn’t have the authority in their eyes or if I didn’t have the legitimacy, since they didn’t know or trust my training methods yet. Either way, that’s changed. The kids see me training for our marathon every day, and they have experienced my coaching for a year. Now, when I tell them how to improve their form in track, give them workouts, or coach them in soccer, they usually listen! It’s incredible. They’ve started even getting angry if I miss a practice or if I work with another event group for too many days before attending to them. It’s such a great feeling, too. We had our first track meet last Saturday and they performed exceedingly well. I am truly so proud of their hard work, and also so proud of the way we have come to work together to be a real team.

I’m sure you can tell I’m kind of floating on air right now. Things aren’t perfect nor will they ever be… but my place in my community is pretty solid and that makes all the difference.