Snapshots from the Westside

San Antonio looks like many things. I wanted to compile some photos for future YAVs interested in a placement here.

Murals near my neighborhood

Year Update

The sanctuary at Divine Redeemer, our host church for the year.

It's been about a month and a half now since the San Antonio YAVs came together in a yellow house to begin a year of service. What have we been doing since then?

Día

Our Lord of Looking Good in Flowers

One of my favorite holidays is Dia de los Muertos, for which San Antonio went all-out this year. San Anto (my workplace) had a modest celebration of its own, coupled with the expansion of our office space and our quarterly artist festival/block party. My job was to decorate the altar (above) and run the cookie decorating table.

Wahoo!

But what I really want to post about is the celebration at La Villita, a small merchant village located along the river walk downtown. San Anto had a pop-up shop there over Muertos weekend, so luckily I had the chance to check out the festivities.

Visión del Futuro

San Anto Cultural Arts is in the business of public art. Our mission is to beautify the community by getting the community itself involved in public art works to build respect for the neighborhood and personal empowerment. To that end, there's a process involved with creating a mural, the steps of which include:

• Finding a black or tagged wall
• Getting permission to use the wall
• Writing a grant to earn money for the project
• Sending a call for artists
• Holding a community meeting to decide the mural's imagery
• Recruiting students and community members to work on the mural
• Putting up the mural
• Blessing the mural at an unveiling ceremony

I may have missed a few steps here and there, given that I have not yet been at San Anto long enough to experience the entire mural process myself. In late September, though, I had the chance to participate in the blessing and unveiling of our latest mural, titled "Visión del Futuro" (Vision of the Future).

November 13

Hello, readers! It’s been a while. I meant to post an update last month, but my laptop was dead for several weeks and I had to wait for a replacement.

So what’s going down? We’re about two and a half months into the YAV year. I’m a little disappointed that time seems to be going so quickly, because I’m really enjoying things here. November in San Antonio is really frickin’ cold, though. It’s as if the temperature decided to shoot down for a permanent stay in the sub-zero range starting November 1st, and our house absorbs the cold like crazy. Even my bed quilt sucks it up. There's a heavy reluctance in the mornings to get out of my toasty covers and brave the chill for my armor of jeans, boots, and hoodie.

In any case, a lot has happened since I last posted. Rogelio has been in and out of the hospital for an old condition that’s flared up. We went camping and adopted a cat. I’ve eaten lots of tacos (yeaaaahhhhh!!) and learned how to make tortillas from scratch. We continue to explore new parts of San Antonio and new areas outside of it. My dad came to visit. I’m reading new books and watering the back garden. We as volunteers are learning more about each other.

I’ll post more in detail a bit later. For the time being, I want to share with you some photos from recent events. Look forward to it!

Caro