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March 11, 2010
Joe Easton
As a skinny white guy growing up in Wadsworth, I have very rarely been a minority in society. However, I spent the long Valentine’s Day weekend with 13 other students and a couple of teachers doing just that in a poor town in northern Mexico.
In February of 2009, I visited the small suburb of La Luz, in the city of Monterrey, Mexico for the first time with group of 12 students. Most of my trip included wondering what the elderly Mexicans were saying to me and wishing I could take longer than three minutes in the shower, but I still enjoyed the experience. Luckily enough, I had the chance to return in 2010 with a whole new group of students – some that I had known since my freshman year and some that I had admittedly never talked to before.
On the plane to Monterrey, I tried to remember everything about my previous trip. Unfortunately, my bits and pieces of memories did not do justice to the raw experience of the immersion trip. I remembered poor neighborhoods, but I didn’t remember shower curtains being used for doors. I remembered going to Mass, but I wasn’t aware that we were going to spend a combined three and a half hours of worship on the Sunday of Valentine’s Day. I remembered trying to speak Spanish, but I still got tongue-tied by seemingly simple words and phrases.
Don’t get the impression that a “Mexico trip” means that we went to Cancun for a week. I slept in a room smaller than my bedroom at home, and I shared that room with two other guys. Several of the houses that I visited had only two or three rooms at all. I met children who were delighted with gifts of stickers and Dum Dum suckers. No students were allowed to bring suitcases to Monterrey, so we had limited space to pack our clothes in our carry-on backpacks.
The trip was a lot like a grade-level retreat or a Search/Kairos weekend. Most every night ended in a group reflection and discussion about the events of the day and any lessons learned through the Mexican culture. The Mexico trip also reminded me of a retreat in the ways that I connected with everyone else involved. When I went to Search in November of my junior year, I made friends with students at Hoban that were complete strangers to me beforehand. Likewise in Mexico, I befriended both guys and girls, my age and younger, although we had little or no previous encounters.
On the other hand, I certainly had some experiences that Search couldn’t offer. I had heart-to-hearts with a bilingual priest and a couple of lax bros, witnessed a man join the religious family of Holy Cross by taking his perpetual vows and still had enough time to hear a mariachi band play for almost an hour.
Being a minority everywhere I went in Monterrey and not being able to speak the same language as everyone else took me way out of my comfort zone. However, to have the full experience of immersion in another culture, it can’t be any other way.
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