Community I: John, Housemate and Co-Pioneer

In the next few entries, I hope to introduce a few of the most important people in my community experience here in Chile. Before diving into today’s reflection, I would like to recall the three pillars of the Holy Cross Overseas Lay Ministry program: Mission, Spirituality, and Community. I recall these pillars because there is one person who has been present and will continue to be present for about any important development in these areas during my time in Chile. His name is John Paul Power, and he hails from Fox Island, Washington, which is in the Puget Sound just outside of Tacoma.

(Pause: In Spanish, “John Paul Power from Fox Island” is “Juan Pablo Poder de Isla Zorro”. If you don’t speak Spanish, it’s hard to convey the rhythm and effect of that name, but it rolls off the tongue very easily and the words “poder” and “zorro” are both pretty charged. My teacher/mentor Claudia, after hearing that translation, came up with this image of John wearing a cape, on top of a mountain, outlined by the setting sun…and surrounded by students.)

John graduated from the University of Portland in April, having majored in History, French, and Political Science. He’s lived in the Pacific Northwest for all of his life besides two periods of time when he lived in France. He lived there for an entire year as a junior in high school, and for another semester as a junior in college. You’ve probably already figured out that he speaks some pretty good French. Our combined knowledge has come in handy on occasions when we need to speak without the observation of any Spanish or English speakers. Despite this very cool technique of exclusion, his French more often than not has been creeping into his Spanish conversation. This is John’s first time in a Spanish speaking country, and as a self proclaimed “on-site” learner, he came without much practice but expects to improve greatly after the first few months, and has already made noticeable progress since we arrived.

In many ways, John and I are about as opposite as two people can be and still live comfortably in the same house. He is, in a word, extroverted. Great at telling stories and conversing in general, he makes sure the house doesn’t stay unbearably quiet. Where I prefer having a plan written out, John easily works on the fly. He certainly has more flexibility when it comes to dealing with unexpected situations.

For the few workshops and academies that we teach together, we have found that our skill sets complement each other rather well. Even though the extent of my preparations is still limited due to the lack of knowledge about what exactly we are doing, I’ve been providing a basic structure around which to base the lesson, while John is great about coming up with exercises and keeping things moving throughout class. Another interesting contrast is the ways we each write on the white board. John tends to write haphazardly and without any real sense of order, and I’ll usually make tables, lists, and groups like words together.

At home, we have an efficient system of cooperation in place at the moment. John made it a point, on the day that we met at Notre Dame, to make it clear that we will let each other know if and when we have a frustration with the other. Perhaps thanks to this agreement to be upfront, we luckily have had no major run-ins to date. Not to worry though, we still have over a year together to achieve that.

Even outside of class, for example in handling things with our Chileans coordinators or running errands together, we have come to liken our cooperation to the powers of the Captain Planet team, or the yin and yang. All of this means I am looking forward to the time we will be spending together and growing together over the next year and a half. We’ll get on each others’ nerves from time to time, as may have already happened, but we’ll learn to deal with the small things and not let them get in the way of our little community.

In the mean time, I’ll continue to make sure that doors are closed, that food and other items return to their rightful places, and that we get out of bed in the morning, and John, for his part, will make sure I don’t get too caught up in the small, mundane details of daily life to miss the bigger picture of why we are here in Chile.