Little by little, things have been looking up. I honestly do love being at San Patricio, despite the chaos.

One day, after a particularly tough bought of homesickness, when I had been in the midst of that punched-in-the-stomach pit of loneliness, and was seriously asking myself what I possibly thought could be gained from this, an adorable eight year old named Luisa presented me with this:

Who knew a sticky note could have so much power 🙂

I instantly felt better, and reminded myself why I’m here

It’s hard. And it’s supposed to be hard. And that’s part of the point. But the little moments like these remind me of what I want to learn from this experience – figuring out at least some parts of the life I really want for the long–term. And I’ve discovered the insanely refreshing beauty of doing something for work that genuinely makes you smile every day – and that this possibility actually exists.

Even the days when I’ve been thrown unsuspectingly in with the tiny demons (especially the second graders…), I take a deep, solid inhale (after 5 un-interrupted hours of insane stress and adrenaline), and I smile. Hell, I even laugh.

“Meees! How do you say ‘el shopping’ in English?”

“Um, ‘Shopping Center’, Olivia. ‘Shopping’ is an English word.”

“Meees! In my holidays, I go to Deeeesnay with my fam-i-lee, and we stay at Howard Shonson”

“Wow, that’s great, Facundo, but can you say ‘Howard JOHNSON’?”

“Howard SSShonson”

“Meeees, sos de China?”

“Ummmmm…..no, Maria Luz, what do you think?”

I can just have finished four hours of screaming “Coco! Toto! Felipe! Santiago! Santino! MARIA!!! SIT DOWN AND STOP HITTING EACH OTHER!”, and one of the kids (even sometimes one of the trouble makers I was yelling at an hour earlier) will come up and give me a hug and I feel 10x more fulfilled than I ever did leaving my old office building.

Luckily, these hilarious and heartwarming moments are mixed in every day with the bad and the ugly.

Some of these kids are so messed up, and have serious issues, and the lack of even the slightest enforced discipline or regard for authority for some of them makes me worry for their future and wonder how a society can function with kids that are brought up like this. These kids are 100% at the top of the social hierarchy in this town, so I can only imagine what kind of messed up issues some of the kids in some of the poorer public schools here come in with, but the rich kids have their own brand of problems.

Moms and Dads who are never emotionally present (and constantly jetting off to New York while a family 100 yards away lives in a plastic shack…), yet shower their kids with the newest iPad or whatever, resulting in their child doing whatever it takes to be noticed. I can only imagine how some of them must behave at home with their poor niñeras. If their parents don’t give a crap and let them do whatever they want, (even if its purely by lack of being there to say “no” or model what good behavior is), how they hell does anyone think they are going to listen to a teacher telling them to follow the most basic classroom rules like sitting in their seat, not yelling over others when they try to talk, and not hitting their classmates?

Since when can a seven year old look at an adult with the eyes of an arrogant, pompous grown man and make you feel like an insecure, blithering idiot??? Since when does a kid blatantly and intentionally ignore a teacher who is calling him by name and making direct eye contact from just across the desk? You can spot these kids from a mile away, and after you’re done being infuriated by them, it’s impossible not to feel incredibly saddened. By yourself for caving in to yelling, but not knowing what else to do as an alternative, at their parents for raising them this way, at the school for allowing this shit to fly, and at them for being a tiny asshole! And at the fact that this is where our society is heading (at least a whole bunch of it…)

But so many of them are so, so, so freaking sweet, smart, kind and funny. And watching them learn and grow and improve even on a week-to-week basis puts a huge smile of my face.

I used to feel like I was stuck in an endless rat race, like I was spending countless hours doing nothing but slowly getting older, and not gaining much from it. Pry myself out of bed, painfully exhausted, race to work, spend all day in a weird purgatory of the longest day ever in which nothing happened at all, waiting for the countless hours to pass before I could race home, stress out, stay up too late watching stupid reality TV as I tried to forget my woes, and then go to bed anxious and exhausted so I could do it all again the next day. At this school, I feel happy and excited and like I’m really LIVING and doing something that matters every day. I can see my efforts paying off, and the reasons why I’m there are right in front of me with their goofy (sometimes devilish) gapped smiles.

Knowing that there’s even a shred of a possibility that something I said or I did made a tiny impact on them makes me feel like I’m doing something real – a huge, huge change for me, and one I need to hold on to.