Happy Holidays!

Hi everyone. Things have been rather hectic down here and I´m now living very far away from an internet connection so I apologize for the long delay. I don´t have a lot of time, but I just want to let you all know that I am still alive and well and getting ready to celebrate my first Paraguayan Christmas and New Years. I´m now living in my official site as I´m finally an official volunteer and things are........going. Lots and lots of awkward moments (pretty much every minute of every day), lots and lots of me not understanding what´s going on or what´s being said (pretty much everything) and lots and lots of thick red mud coating everything I own. Right now I´m spending most of my days studying Guarani, hanging out outside with the family listening to them talk about me but not knowing exactly what they´re saying and drinking terere with whoever stops by. It´s a slow start, but that´s to be expected, and I am enjoying myself. I make a fool of myself a lot, but I also laugh a lot. It´s the only way.

Another quick update that I´ve been meaning to write about but haven´t had the time is about this crazy walk a group of us volunteers did on the 8th. December 8th is a big holiday here, the Virgen of Caacupe day, and hundreds of thousands of people walk to the basilica in Caacupe to celebrate. We decided to do the walk, too, and left at 7:00 the night before. We walked 11 hours, getting there by about 6 in the morning. The last 16 km of the walk was a massive procession of people taking up the entire road for as far as you could see forward and backward. Crazy stuff. I´ll post pictures when I have more time.

I hope everyone has a wonderful holiday week. I wish I was there celebrating with you, or you here celebrating with me. I now have a cell phone (but have pretty poor reception in site) so feel free to call me anytime (check my facebook info page for the number), or send me texts. I would love to hear from you.

Freedom of the South, my a**

It’s been a busy time since the last blog post so I have a lot to catch up on. Sorry for such a long gap with no news, but this one will be especially long to make up for it. Here goes:

Two weeks ago, I visited the place where I’ll be a real PC volunteer for the next two years, also know as my “site” in PC lingo. As I said in the previous post, it’s in the Department of Itapúa, way in the southeast corner of the country, in a place called Libertad del Sur. After being there for 5 days, I can certainly say that rich foreigners with gigantic, mechanized soy (transgenic, of course), wheat and sunflower plantations are the only ones feeling this “freedom of the south”, as its name implies. France, Germany, Japan, Argentina and Brazil are some of the countries where these landowners are from. This area that was once completely covered with the subtropical forest known as the “Bosque Atlántico de Alta Parana” (BAAPA) now looks like the mid-west US with mechanized agriculture as far as the eye can see, at least in most directions. In other directions are these small Paraguayan settlements established along long, straight, dirt roads and down into the few valleys that do exist. Apparently these villages began with squatters coming in and setting up camp after the last dictator of many, Alfred Stroessner (who had encouraged the foreigners coming in and owning land), lost power in 1989. Squatting turned into living, and, 20 years later, we have Libertad del Sur. Needless to say, I have a lot of work ahead of me.

My community is along one of these long, straight roads, spread out over at least 5 km. The daily bus to and from Encarnación (the closest big city) goes right past the house where I’ll be staying for at least the first month. At least when it’s not raining. If it’s raining, all bets are off, especially concerning transportation. The soil out there is pretty much as red and clayey as a soil can get. I’ve heard the term Laterite being thrown around, for those soil nerds out there. What this means in practical terms is that it’s impossible to drive/run/walk/bike on when it’s wet, and the red mud sticks to EVERYTHING. So being stranded is a regular occurrence given that I’m at least 40 km to the nearest paved road. However, this past trip I was stuck in just such a situation where it was raining, rain was predicted for the next 3 days, and I wanted/needed to get back to my training community to celebrate Thanksgiving with the other Nortes. Brian, another volunteer-to-be in another community just a few km away, walked to my site amidst the crazy thunder and lightning that happens in a humid climate (way different than storms in the western US……I never knew the difference until now) and relayed the message that we were essentially ordered to get out now or be stranded for days. The daily bus leaves at 4 am, so that was out of the question, and we were informed the only person in “town” with a 4x4 that would be able to drive in the current conditions was a French guy named Pierre. Lo and behold, Pierre drives by a few minutes later so we flag him down and proceed to beg for a ride to the paved road, in Spanish of course. As soon as he found out we were PC volunteers, we stopped talking about the ride and instead began to get ridiculed for being ignorant Americans who have no business being there and don’t know anything. He was your typical aging Frenchman, with lots of opinions and no shame to share them all. After standing in the rain for a good 10 minutes, listening through the car window to this crazy, animated, shirtless, old bald French guy yelling in Spanish, we finally got back around to the whole ride situation. To make a long story short (and least shorter than it could be), he gave us a ride. It was a long 40 km, trying to argue in Spanish about the benefits of having forest over soy plantations and about how I do actually know things and have some experience in life, all the while fearing for my life because his arms and hands were flailing about to emphasize conversation points instead of being on the steering wheel. We made it safely, though, and I ended up really enjoying talking to/antagonizing him. I think he really liked my argumentative nature. Of course, he is the antithesis of everything I’m working for/towards here in Paraguay, but he’s also a good ally to have, especially in emergencies.

Other things that happened on the trip:
-Walked about 3 hours (one direction) to visit an NGO in the San Rafael Reserve that´s working to save some of the last remnants of the BAAPA. It´s run by an awesome Swiss couple who fed us the best food I´ve had so far in Paraguay. They also have a gorgeous lake that´s supposedly free of alligators and snakes. I took their word for it and jumped right in. Anyone who comes to visit me, we´ll definitely be headed here.
-Watched ´From Dusk till Dawn´ dubbed in Spanish with my Paraguayan host family in site while sitting in their dirt floor kitchen. That was strange....
-One of the first conversations I had with my ´contact´ (the person Peace Corps talks to in site who really wants the volunteer to work there and who agrees to kind of help the integration into the community process) was about yoga and geology. And these were subjects he brought up. That kind of progressiveness and awareness out in the campo is pretty damn rare, to say the least. I´m looking forward to talking with him a lot more, especially once I can actually speak in Guarani like an intelligent adult. But that´s going to be awhile.
-Went to meet and visit another of my contacts one day who is the 6th grade teacher in the local school. We chatted for a bit but then he had to leave to go to some work stuff. Before he left, I was invited to stay at his house with his very sweet wife and teach her how to make pizza dough, because we had been talking about how one of my ¨jobs¨ is going to be to cook with the women of the community (trust me, they need new ideas). So me and Jorgelina spent the day in her little kitchen cooking away. To make the sauce, we went out to her garden and picked fresh oregano, tomatoes, green onions and carrots. Then she taught me how to make arroz con leche. We had a great time, and she barely speaks any Spanish. Somehow we managed to communicate effectively. I´m hoping for lots more days like those.

Okay that´s enough about that. You´ll hear many more stories about this place over the next 2 years. I don´t want to bore you yet. Now on to the next subject: Thanksgiving. Half of our traninig group got together and cooked up a huge feast (see pictures below). Chicken was substituted for turkey and there was no gravy, but other than that it was just like the real thing. This was my first Thanksgiving ever away from my family, so it was a little strange and a little sad, but I´ve made some pretty good friends here over the past couple months and they were good family stand-ins. I was also able to Skype with almost all of my family back in the states--thanks everyone for making that happen! It was wonderful to talk to and see you all. I hope we can do it again soon!

I need to give some big shouts out to all you awesome people who have sent me packages. Things at the post office here sometimes take a really long time, so in the last couple of weeks I finally recieved a whole bunch of things. I now officially have plenty of notecards and folders. Thank you sooooo much for responding to my pleas! Aunt Patt--the magazines were a great suprise, and I almost cried when I saw the Alibi--it was perfect. Kenna--you kick ass. I couldn´t ask for a better cousin. Grandma and Grandpa--the folders have let me become an organizing fool. My life feels much calmer now because of it. Nina--how freakin´sweet of you. I can´t wait to read the book and I´m using the Burt´s Bees as we speak (or type). I know there are other packages out there in postal no man´s land that are trying to find me, so don´t depair if I haven´t received yours yet. I will be extremely happy and grateful when I do.

IMPORTANT: If you are planning on sending packages during the next couple of months, I have a huge request. The post office in Asuncion (where I have to go to pick up any packages that are sent to me) only keeps the packages for about a month, after which time they are returned to sender if they´re not claimed. Since I´m going to be living so far away from Asuncion, I will definitely not be making it back there on a monthly basis. So, what I´ve learned recently is that courier services, i.e. DHL, FedEx, UPS, USPS Express Mail, deliver directly to the Peace Corps office where the packages are kept indefinitely. So my request is that any packages sent during the next couple months use one of these courier services, if you want to ensure that I get it eventually. I know they´re much more expensive so I understand if my package supply decreases, but I just want to make sure that I get whatever you want to send me. There is no change for letters. Just send those the cheapest way possible.

The spread

My Thanksgiving plate

After meal fun

Big News

So the decisions have been made and we have finally been informed of our sites for the next two years. Yours truly is headed down to Libertad del Sur. It´s in one of the poorest parts of the country, in the department of Itapua in the far southeast of Paraguay. Apparently there´s been a lot of deforestation going on over the past 20 years to make room for large foreign-owned soy and wheat plantations. What forest remains is the last bit of the BAAPA (I´m not sure what that stands for, but it´s something about the Atlantic Forest--google it). The BAAPA used to cover about 70% of the country, but now only 3% of it is left. Sounds like I have lots of work and challenges ahead of me, but I´m excited about it all. Right now I´m in the city of Encarnacion waiting for the bus to Libertad del Sur. The next 5 days are our formal ¨site visit¨, where we stay with a ´contact´ who is supposed to start showing us around the place. My contact speaks very little Spanish, just like the rest of the community, so there´s going to be a lot of sitting around staring at each other while they talk about me in Guarani and I have no idea what´s going on. Good times..... I´m the first volunteer in this site so no one is going to have any idea why this crazy Norte is hanging around talking about trees and soil. Fortunately, there´s another volunteer just a few kilometers away from me so that´s going to make life very nice when I desperately need to speak English.

For those of you interested in knowing a little bit more about this place, you can google Procosara, which is an NGO working in the area to spread environmental awareness and help save what´s left of the forest. I´m sure I´ll be working with them at some point. In addition, the US Forest Service is actually involved in work in this part of Paraguay and I´m going to be meeting up with them the second week of December. Apparently there´s also a huge garden at the local school and the school also has a worm composting project which they make a lot of money off of by selling the castings to a local cooperative of some sort. I´m very excited about it all right now. My attitude may change after spending the next 5 days there, but I hope not.

I´ll be back in Guarambare next Wednesday, the day before Thanksgiving. A lot of us Peace Corps trainees are getting together to make a huge meal and celebrate in style. To all of my relatives reading this right now: I would absolutely love to talk to the fam on Thanksgiving. I´m thinking the easiest and cheapest way for me to do this will be on Skype. I´ll be able to get to a computer and log onto my Skype account around 5:00 or 6:00 pm my time, which is 4 or 5 hours ahead of you (I´m not sure which one). So, wherever everyone is, i.e. Rob and Carole´s house, Hal and Patt´s house or wherever, make sure there is someone with a Skype account. You can easily make one if you don´t already have one. My Skype username is leahguay, so look me up on Skype and add me to your contact list. Also, email me your Skype username so I can add you to my contact list and call you as soon as I get on the internet on Thursday. My email is: leahmro@gmail.com. And keep your computers on and logged onto Skype that day.

Wish me luck this week!!!!!!!!

Campo livin´

One more week of campo livin´ can now be checked off my list. We just returned from what Peace Corps calls ¨Long Field Practice¨, and I am glad to be back with my host family where there are no bugs that leave me looking like I have chicken pox. That´s right, my body is covered in red, itchy spots---and I mean covered and they´re not from mosquitos. This is my first experience with bedbugs or mbymby or whatever these little biting critters may be and it is not fun. I really hope that wherever I end up for the next 2 years does not have the same thing. But enough about my bodily problems......... The rest of the trip was pretty fun and eye-opening and a good prep for our lives as volunteers. We traveled about 5 hours away, some of the trip on horrendous dirt roads, and reached the site of a current volunteer who was our host for the week. He put us up with host families and introduced us to all of the projects he has been working on for the past 2 years. My host family, a young couple with two little boys, was very sweet and, thank god, spoke a little bit of Spanish. The only bad part about staying with them was the horrible bug bits that I must have acquired at their house. It rained A LOT while we were there, to the point that we thought we may be stuck out there for quite a while. But the last day the clouds cleared, the sun came out and the roads dried enough for us to leave. The coolest thing we did was begin the process of building a stove/oven for a family out of sand and clay. It´s called a Lorena stove, for those who are interested, and it starts with a sand/clay block that you let dry and then carve out holes for the the pots on top and a hole in the side for the fire and then tunnels connecting them all. It´s pretty cool and supposed to be much more efficient than cooking over open fires. I hope that I can make more of them once I start doing real projects in my site.

Speaking of, I find out this Wednesday where my site for the next 2 years is going to be. Exciting and nerve-racking, all at the same time. This also means that training is getting closer to being over--yay!!! Until I have more news, here are some pictures..........

The storm rolling in...........

The volunteer´s house at his site. This is the typical style of a volunteer´s house when they build them themselves. We were hangin´out on the porch watching the storm get closer.

A nest of spiders living on the porch of the volunteer´s house......freaky

The two little boys at the house where I stayed. They were very cute and sweet and liked to climb all over me. That´s there dad´s moto in the back, which is the main form of transportation in the campo

Me and Jake mixing up the sand and clay for the Lorena Stove

A nice view of the Paraguayan countryside

Walking back a little late after building the stove all afternoon

A beautiful sunset I managed to capture

I´ve never loved the rain so much in my life

It rained today!!!!!!!!!! I´ve been waiting for this for a good 2 weeks. It rained all last night and all this morning and now the temperature has dropped to at least 30 C. I´m loving life again.

This will be a short post because not much has happened since the last one, but since I made it to the internet cafe today, I couldn´t neglect the blog. Something a little crazy did happen last night that I may as well talk about. Right before it started raining, I was sitting in my room, reading Collapse by Jarod Diamond (which i am really getting into right now and highly recommend), when my host sister, Marianna, opens my door hysterical and crying and saying her mom (my host mom) is not feeling well. I rush outside to where they are and find my host mom slumped in a chair and Marianna screaming at her to wake up. I helped Marianna get her out of the chair and onto the ground, where my host mom then goes unconcious. Keep in mind, I have no idea what the hell is going on and definitely do not have the language skills to ask such questions in a time of crisis. The grandmother from across the yard comes over and is also trying to wake her up and putting cold things on her head. I totally thought she was either dying or dead. I kept feeling for a pulse, but couldn´t find one. I was getting so worked up about it at this point that I almost passed out, too. Marianna kept screaming and calling people on her cell phone, while the grandmother keeps saying her name over and over and massaging her limbs. My host mom is diabetic so I assumed she was in some sort of insulin shock. I also thought for sure that they were calling people with a vehicle to come and get her and take her to a hospital. But no. Some neighbors come by, my host dad finally gets home from who knows where, and truck comes, but no one really does anything different. They just keep putting cool things on her head and saying her name and massaging her limbs. I thought they were crazy and wanted to yell and scream and tell them to get her to a doctor, but I don´t know how to say the in Guarani yet. Or Spanish, for that matter. Eventually, after at least 30 minutes of her being unconcious, she starts to come to and they´re able to move her to a chair and one of the first things she asks is if I still need my tea (I had not been feeling well that day). I assured her that I was fine, relatively, and that no, of course I don´t need any tea right now! The whole situation was absolutely crazy and I had a very difficult time sleeping last night. When my language teachers came for our language class this morning, I asked them to talk to my family so they could explain to me what the hell happened. Apparently, she had just worked herself up into a frenzy and passed out, maybe a panic attack, unhealthy conditions, she had been at the funeral of her uncle the day before, her son was being confirmed the next day, etc., etc., etc. I still don´t really buy it, but I guess that´s what happened. Hopefully it does not happen again. It really opened my eyes to some of the health problems I may be witness to once I´m out in the campo, where a trip to the doctor is not an option. (Except for me, of course. Dont´worry. I can always call the PC medical people and they´ll come pick me up immediately). I hope I can help if the need arises, at least more than I did last night.

We´re all leaving for what they call Long Field Practice next week for the whole week. We´re going to another volunteer´s site to get more of a taste of what it´s like to be a volunteer and practice some of the things that we may be doing as volunteers. The host family I stay with will probably only speak Guarani, so it should be interesting, to say the least. The week will be full of awkward sitations. But that´s what the Peace Corps is all about.

Until next time----

Hakueterei

It is HOT down here. The title of this post, “hakueterei”, means “it’s really hot” in Guaraní. And that’s pretty much what everyone says at least once an hour, if not more. For the last week or so it’s been hovering right around 40°C (~105°F) with no rain and it doesn’t cool off much at night. What’s really bad is that it’s only Spring right now so I can’t imagine how I’m going to survive the Summer. Wish me luck.

A few of us from my agroforestry group decided that we needed to spend last Saturday afternoon drinking some beer to help battle the heat and to celebrate Halloween. It’s a good hour walk into the nearest town where this can occur, and we have class on Saturday mornings, so of course we didn’t start walking until 3:00 pm. Did I mention how hot it is? Especially in the middle of the afternoon? Anyway, we managed to complete the trek all nice and dehydrated and ready to drink some liters of really light, weak Brahma beer. The local favorite. And the only option, I might add. We had a great time, spoke lots of English and in general recuperated from the past week of language and technical classes. Before we knew it, it was too late to walk home (not supposed to walk in the dark) so we decided to stay in town for the Paraguayan Halloween fiesta that was going on and take a taxi home later. Fiestas like these don’t really start hoppin’ until pretty late at night, like 11:00 or 12:00, but by 9:00 pm we had nothing else to do but help start the party early. The bumpin’ music led the way to the big, open field where we paid the admission and started dancing to the odd mix of reggaeton and polka. Keep in mind, however, that there weren’t many Paraguayans there yet at this hour and the ones that were there were sitting in chairs surrounding the obvious dancing area in front of a huge stage. If not for the stage and the music, you would not have been able to tell that this was a big outdoor fiesta. But that did not stop us Nortes from dancin’ and dancin’ and dancin’, with all Paraguayan eyes on us because there was no one else on the dance floor for a good hour or two. I can’t imagine what they were thinking, nor do I want to. Eventually the party really started going and we were joined by others, but that did not help hide the obvious American-ness of us. At their dancing max, Paraguayans tend to move around about as much as my grandma (no offense, grandma) which is encouraged by their regular dancing formation of two long lines facing each other. Needless to say, us Nortes did not join the lines and my flailing hippie dance must have shocked and appalled the onlookers. But it was by far the most fun I’ve had so far. We danced and laughed so much for so long that my whole body was sore the next day. Even without costumes, that will be a memorable Halloween.

To top off a great weekend, I went to my first real fútbol game on Sunday. Olympia vs. 12 de Octubre (lots of things are named after dates around here, like towns and streets and fútbol clubs). Our group consisted of a few Americans and a few Paraguayans, so it was quite the cultural experience. We had to take a couple buses and walk a lot to get to the stadium where we sat for at least an hour, in direct sun, before the game started. It was so freakin’ hot I thought I was melting (I told you, we talk about how hot it is constantly). But I didn’t melt and the game began and the crowd in our section was on their feet the whole time. They also sang. The entire time. Complete with drums and waving flags and banners. Seriously, the energy never let up, even though “our” team lost. It was a very cool experience. I especially enjoyed watching a player from the other team trying to make a corner kick while at the same time dodging flying bottles being thrown over the fence from the heckling crowd. And then watching the police riot squad escorting the referees out of the stadium after the game. I love Latin America.

One last note: If anyone is dying to send me anything, I could REALLY use notecards and folders. Normal, school folders with the pockets on the inside do not exist here in Paraguay and I have so many loose pieces of paper from training that I´m about to go crazy. The notecards are for flashcards, also made of a material that does not exist here. Thanks, in advance, if anyone pulls through....

All´s well

Not much to write about today, but I´m catching you all up with some pictures that I´ve been meaning to post for a while. My health is back up to par, no need to worry. I´m taking Ciproflaxin, so anything living in my stomach or intestines is bound to be dead by now. Our agroforestry group spent the weekend at a sweet agroforestry demonstration farm so now we´re all pumped as to the possiblities when we finally get to our sites. Anyway, here are the photos:

My hose mom (left) and aunt (right) in the kitchen with some of the dead, or soon to be dead, chickens

One of our many dogs, Monito, chewing on a chicken foot. Priceless.

Part of the mess of the chicken harvest. In an obviously very sterile environment....

This is me milking my first cow. I was pretty bad at it (it´s much harder than it looks for you cityfolk out there) but I´ve since done it a couple more times and have definitely picked up the skill

This is a wall in one of the houses at the volunteer´s site whom I visited a couple of weeks ago. Those are armadillo shells hanging on the wall, some painted green, because that´s what they hunt around there for fun. I think it´s just funny.

This is what that volunteer´s site looks like. It´s in one of the prettiest areas of Paraguay, so I hear.

Part of the agroforestry gang, drinking beers at the local bar, Papu´s.

A sweet picture of a butterfly I took today when visiting a tree nursery at a University near Asuncion

While at the university, we also went to the taxidermy museum. So this is me with some weird stuffed animals.

Let´s discuss, then discuss how we discussed, then evaluate the discussion of the discussion

Kind of a long title, but that has been the theme lately down here. Even though it´s easy to forget sometimes, the Peace Corps is a government organization and that means that the paperwork never ends. And I mean never. I think I´ve filled out at least 5 different evaluations in the last week, one of them taking over an hour. We have to evaluate our language trainers, our technical trainers, ourselves, how the training is going overall and on and on and on. They keep telling us that every minute counts during training, but I´m not so sure those minutes are counting for much.

I have yet another evaluation coming up next week, but this time someone else is evaluating my language skills. Yikes! I need to reach an intermediate-mid level in Spanish so I can move on to the Guarani classes. As much as I would like to continue in Spanish and become much better than a mere intermediate, knowing Guarani in Paraguay is essential if I ever want anyone to listen to what I have to say. I´m feeling confident that I´ll pass, but who knows, I may totally freeze up and forget how to say ¨My name is.....¨. That´s happened before. But I´ve been speaking in at least 3 tenses regularly and my vocabulary is improving and I tend to get the gist (most of the time) of what people are saying. I´d say I can communicate pretty well with 10 year olds, and that must be an intermediate-mid level, right?

I actually have plenty of time to write this blog post right now, which is in stark contrast to the weekly 20 minutes I have to dash into the internet cafe during lunch when we go into Guarambare for the day for classes. And why, you ask, do I suddenly have so much time and on a Friday, no less? Well, I´ve been feeling pretty bad lately, physically, alternating between absolutely nothing coming out of my body and weird, not good things coming out. I´ll spare you the details. But I kind of freaked out yesterday and finally called the PC doctor. The 200 or so of us PC trainees/volunteers in Paraguay have 2 full time medical doctors on hand 24 hours a day to deal with whatever problems we may be having, so they´re pretty attentive. Anyway, the doctor thought we needed to do some tests, so I was driven to Asuncion last night and Dr. Luis totally hooked me up with a swanky hotel (on the US Govn´t tab, of course). I got to sleep in a real bed with a real mattress (which I didn´t leave for about 12 hours), take a real shower with hot water, watch a flatscreen TV, eat an awesome breakfast and now get the use of free, non-rushed internet time. Ahhhh, the life. I´m feeling so much better already, in part, I think, because I haven´t had to eat a plate full of starch or fried food for the last 24 hours. Seriously, this has been a huge problem for me. It´s not the meat that´s so bad, it´s all the freakin´starch. My body can´t handle pasta twice a day, every day, with very, very few vegetables. I´m still waiting to hear from Dr. Luis about the results of my blood test, but he thinks it´s some kind of bacterial infection, like E. coli or something. Easily treated with a nice dose of Cipro, killing every living thing inside of my stomach. But at least I don´t feel like I´m going to die, which I´ve felt before in other countries. That should make all you worriers reading this right now (i.e. parents, grandparents) feel much better :)

Thanks for all the comments I´ve been getting on these blog posts! I´m sorry I haven´t responded to any of them, but my internet time has been so limited that it´s been impossible. But don´t let that stop you from leaving more because I love to hear from all of you!

A real live PC volunteer

I just stepped off of the bus from a 4 day long trek into uber ¨campo¨ Paraguay. ¨Campo¨ is how they describe backwoods, rural living here in PY, and I didn´t have a clue what it really meant until this most recent trip. If you all thought my current living situation with no running water, a wood fire for cooking and an hour walk into ¨town¨ was campo, you thought wrong. I visited a volunteer named Doug who is first time volunteer, meaning he is the first volunteer to ever live in his site. It´s in a beautiful part of the country, with rolling hills, some volcanic features, wetlands and lots of trees (at least where they haven´t been cut down yet). It´s near the town of Ybucuí, for those of you wanting to see it on a map. Doug met me in Ybucuí and then we rode the bus for another two hours, mostly on very red dirt roads. Where the bus dropped us off, we had another 2 hour walk before we finally made it to his site (and this is what he does every time he wants to leave). His community is set in the bottom of a narrow valley, with steep walls on either side. There are about 25 houses, total, and all are made of wood planks and most have grass roofs. There´s electricity that runs up the valley, but most families cannot affort it. Everyone speaks Guarani and hardly anyone speaks Spanish, so I communicated very little with them, except through Doug. He also lives in a thatched roof, one-room wooden structure that he had to have built after living there with families for awhile. It was super comfy inside (he let me sleep at his place while he slept at his neighbor´s) but also kind of like camping for two years. The latrine is just a hole in the ground out back behind his house, with no walls around it and he told me I could dump some water on myself back in the trees to shower, but I just decided not to bathe for a few days instead. Like I said, just like camping.

All the families we visited were very friendly, of course, and very welcoming. We made bread one day in a fogón (an efficient wood-burning stove/oven that a lot of NGO´s push out here) while the rain poured down all around us. We visited a few of the farmers he has been working with and I was amazed with what they´re able to accomplish with many of their fields on the steep hillsides. We also just drank tereré and chatted (well, he chatted) with a handful of families because that´s one of his main jobs as a first time volunteer. They only way they´ll ever listen to anything he has to say about agroforestry is if they trust him, and that only develops if there is lots of communication and obvious effort on his part to get to know them. Doug also has an awesome vegetable garden that we raided daily so I was finally able to eat something other than starch and meat. Yay!!! He also has a french press and coffee from the states, so my mornings were a dream.

All in all, it was a great time. Being a peace corps volunteer is not an easy job, that´s for sure, but I´m pretty sure I´m up for the challenge. These next 6 months are going to be super busy and full of ups and downs, but I think I can make it past that to the point where I make Paraguayan friends, have a real community, get to cook for myself and get to sit in a hammock and read for hours every now and then. Until then, however, it´s all business. And right now, that´s what I´m getting back to. Ciao.

Chickens and Capital Cities

This will just be quick note because I don´t have much time to internet today, as usual. They keep us quite busy during this 3 month training period. We´re in Asuncion today, the capital city of Paraguay. We´ve been matched up with another PC trainee and given tasks to do in the capital to make sure we´re not completely ignorant. Figuring out the buses has been amusing, especially knowing when to get off the bus because there are no signs for anything. And all I know is the name of the place I´m supposed to go to. But it´s worked out so far and being in Latin American cities is always an experience not to be missed. This little excursion is in preparation for this weekend, when we´re all going out to visit current PC volunteers in the country. And we´re all going alone, so that will definitely lead to more stories for the blog next week. Stay tuned.....

As for last weekend, my family slaughtered 15 chickens on Saturday for a big feast/party they had on Sunday. I told them I wanted to help out with the process and they took me seriously, kind of. At first I was only given the job of pulling feathers out of the dead birds which I was content with for awhile. But then I expressed my desire to actually kill a chicken, and they were all about laughing at the Norte as she tried to do this. My aunt handed me the chicken and I did what she had been doing all afternoon--grabbing the bird by the head in one hand and the legs in the other hand and then twisting the head around the body a few times, follwed by pulling the head away from the body really hard until the neck broke. That may be a little much for some of you, but that´s how it´s done down here. However, I must have done something a little wrong, liked pulled too hard or twisted too much or something, because I the head was barely attached to the body when I was done. And that´s not how theirs were. I also caused a lot of blood to be involved, which they also did not do. And the next day, the other PC trainees in my community told me the rumor going around town, which they heard from their host families, was that I totally beheaded the chicken. Which was not quite true, but that´s how it goes in the gossip mill. So...that was the only chicken I killed and my family had a good laugh about it. I was then demoted back to pulling out feathers.

That´s all I have for now. Gotta get back to running around Asuncion.

Talk about awkward

Okay, here´s a long one for you all. I wrote it earlier this week so it´s a little dated but I hope you enjoy:

Even though it’s been less than a week, I have become quite the carnivore since entering Paraguayan life. Almost every lunch and dinner has involved meat somehow, usually as the main part of the meal. I was somewhat expecting this, so I tried to prepare a little before coming, but I had no idea that the meat would be this abundant. I think all of the meat I’m eating at my host family’s house is from their animals (cows, chickens, pigs), so I feel a little bit better about it, but I also feel kind of like a cannibal. Weird. If I’m lucky, there are some vegetables scattered here and there but I get the feeling the vegetables are added to make the Norteamericana happy. Which I am.

Saturday night introduced me to the Paraguayan social life, complete with lots and lots of meat. Asado to be exact. My host mama’s cousin’s baby (or some derivative thereof) had a baptism earlier that day so there was a “party” that night. Party is in quotations because it is nothing like what we’re used to, aside from getting lots of people together. First of all, everyone was related (cousin, second cousin, aunt, uncle, niece, nephew, sister, brother, etc.). Second, there was very little mingling amongst the sexes. When we got there, the women immediately sat down in chairs arranged in a somewhat semi-circle (but more of a line, where no one was facing anyone else) while the men went over to the fire pit where they were roasting a sh*t ton of meat (pork and beef). This arrangement continued for at least 2 hours. I have no idea what went on in the men’s circle, but the women’s chair line was fairly uneventful. We chatted, I was introduced to all my mama’s relatives, we all drank soda out of the same glass, we stared at nothing and on and on, all the while Paraguayan polka music played in the background. Finally (and I mean finally) the food was ready. This was the big moment when the sexes got close enough to talk to each other, but only from across the table. Did I mention they eat a lot of meat here? They prepared a plate for everyone with some sort of beef steaky thing, pork ribs (I think) and a piece of sausage. The sausage was by far the best. And the knives were really dull, so I was practically ripping the very-cooked meat apart by whatever means necessary to get it into bite-sized chunks. Once again, feeling like a cannibal and surely making a fool of myself in front of the boys sitting across from me. Who, by the way, did not say a word to me and would barely glance in my direction. Very Paraguayan, from what I’ve gathered so far. After dinner, we all resumed our respective positions and there was more chatting and staring from the women’s chairs. At some point, someone broke out the Reggaeton (which the young crowd LOVES down here) so that livened things up a bit, but still no one moved from their seats. Another hour or so went by, the cake was busted out, we ate it and then got a ride home in someone’s truck. We only live about a 5 minute walk away, so this amused me quite a bit. And that was that. The typical Paraguayan party. Rock on.

Sunday presented more typical Paraguayan stuff to me. I woke up fairly late (8:00 am is late when everyone else gets up around 5:30 am) and it was pretty hot already (we’re moving into Summer) so my host sister and I started drinking tereré almost immediately. I’ll get into the details of tereré in a later post because it’s pretty involved, but for now all you need to know is that it’s cold yerba mate. And, of course, everyone in the tereré circle drinks it out of the same cup so you fill up the cup, drink it all, fill up the cup, pass it to the next person, etc. We sat on the patio and drank tereré for a good 3 hours, with different people joining and leaving the circle. But I stayed the whole time (what else did I have to do?). There was lots of chatting, both in Guaraní and Spanish. I, of course, was only speaking Spanish (if you can call it that) and saying “Que?” and “Como?” constantly whenever people tried to talk to me. All I can say is that my language skills can only get better. But everyone is super nice and patient and they like to learn about life in the US, so they’re willing to wade through my incomprehensible Spanish to get the answer. Surprisingly, sitting around doing nothing when it’s really hot (besides drinking tea) really works up an appetite. So then we ate lunch, which was my favorite so far. We had noodles and chicken and salad and orange soda (we have orange soda with every meal) and it was deliciosa. My mama suggested I rest after this (because I had done so much earlier) so there was more sitting and chatting, this time under a huge tree in the front yard area. My host sister doesn’t like to do ANYTHING except sit around when it’s hot (and it was only about 80°F today) so I sit around with her. I broke out the binoculars and watched some birds, I wrote down a lot of Spanish/Guaraní words I don’t know, we drank some more tereré, etc. Talk about a lazy Sunday. Just when I was about to lay down and take a nap (because I was exhausted from all the activity), the rest of the volunteers in my community (there are 8 of us here) showed up at my house with a huge group of local kids. The kids wanted to take us all to a fútbol (soccer) game that was going on, so we walked to a nearby school and watched some fútbol. I don’t have many little kids around my house, so it was fun talking to them and being around them. We drank more tereré at the game and us Norteamericanos were definitely a spectacle. Fun times.

All in all, a very fun/awkward/interesting/educational weekend. I look forward to more, especially this coming weekend when I´m going to help my host family kill some of their chickens and then eat them on Sunday. Woo hoo!

Here are some more pictures of what I see everyday. I don´t have any from the asado or the futbol game because I didn´t want to be that foreigner with the camera. Maybe later.....

Some oxen I see on the walk to Guarambare. They use them to pull carts, like you can see in the background

My favorite part of my house, the well. The door to my room is the one you can see in the background

A huge mango tree that´s right outside of my house. I cannot wait for mango season, which is sometime around December and January

This is the place where I have language classes every day. It´s about a 30 second walk from my house :)

I made it

I am safe and sound in Paraguay, in case anyone was wondering. I have officially entered a whole new world and am excitied about it. As soon as we got into Py (Paraguay, from now on), we were whisked off to our host families´ houses which are in villages outside of Guarambare, which is outside of Asuncion, the capital. I am living with a family in the village Senda. They´re really nice, of course, but speak mostly Guarani instead of Spanish. That´s not so nice. I have a 17 yr old host sister, Marianna, and she does a lot of translating for me between Guarani and Spanish. Keep in mind, though, that my Spanish is pretty weak so the translating only goes so far. I have high hopes for language skills with enough time....at least that´s what I keep telling myself. There´s no running water at my house so that means bucket baths. Haven´t quite figured out the best method with the bucket but I´m sure it´s an acquired skill. We do have electricity, which I don´t use much except for light, but my family watches a lot of novelas at night and listens to a lot of music during the day. Today I watched a Beyonce video with my host brother, and for those of you who know how much I love Beyone, this really made my day. We have a well outside the house, fully equipped with a bucket tied to a rope and that´s how we get the water. Very surreal for someone who´s always had water from a faucet. My family also has 4 cows, a pig and lots of chickens so that means I get fresh milk every morning (in cocido, the morning tea drink) and fresh eggs in some of the meals. There´s no stove in the house so my host mom cooks everything on a wood fire in the ¨kitchen¨, which is just an open room on the side of the house.

Things are cool. This is going to be quite an experience, to say the least. Apparently Py doesn´t have many water-borne diseases, so they (PC staff) are recommending that we start drinking unboiled water immediately so that we can get used to everything. I´m anticipating that means I´ll be sick very soon, but not that sick. All the other volunteers (actually trainees for the next 11 weeks) are fun and excited and nice to have around to speak English with and talk about our crazy experiences. The last couple of days have just been an introduction to the rest of our training period and the real training starts on Monday. I´m sure I´ll have more to talk about then. I´m attaching the few pictures I´ve taken so far so you can get a sense of the scenery and my home. Lots of love-

The side of my host families´house. My room is to the left when you walk up onto the main patio

My room..nothing special, but enough room for my yoga mat thank goodness

Some scenery on the walk from Senda to Guarambare

More scenery on the walk. Apparently the thing on the right is a shrine to some kids who did not fare so well after jumping into the ¨river¨

Hasta la vista!

Well, this is it. I'm sitting in the Miami airport waiting to fly to Asunción in a couple of hours. It's been slightly overwhelming the last five days trying to prepare for this moment. First there was the fabulous good bye party at Nina's, with lots of black dresses, cocktails and volcanoes, as you can see in the photo. I spent the next day recovering in some hot springs up in the Jemez, which was a perfect way to end my time in New Mexico. The day before leaving I spent all day at school running around trying wrap things up for my degree and I think I succeeded. We'll see in December if it's official or not. This all left little time to officially prepare for my trip, so I was up until 2:00 am packing the night before I flew out of Albuquerque. I managed to fit all of my belongings for the next two years in a big packpack, a duffelbag and two smallish carry-ons. My checked luggage weighed in at 81 lbs, and we had an 80 lb limit. I'm pretty proud of how close I got and there was no complaints for the extra pound, thank goodness.

I met up with the rest of the group headed down to Paraguay at the hotel here in Miami. There is a grand total of 42 of us! We had a really useless orientation earlier today where we were treated like 5 year olds. I'm not looking forward to more of that as the training continues. But I think the group is really good, overall. There's one woman over 60, the rest under 30, 18 males, the rest female, 1 married couple, lots of people leaving behind girlfriends/boyfriends, others who don't know Spanish all that well and a lot of different states represented. I'm the only one from New Mexico - woo woo! It's really nice to be around so many people who understand why I've made the decision to join the Peace Corps, with no judgement or criticisms. We're all in this together.

And whatever "this" is feels very strange right now. I'm leaving behind everything I know and love to enter a world of who the hell knows what. But that's all part of the adventure. Grad school was really draining on me, slowly sucking the lifeblood from my soul. Now it's time to re-energize my spirit and enjoy life as it comes. That part is exciting. The rest is immensely terrifying.

Once again, I want to graciously thank all my wonderful friends and family for their support and encouragement. I hate to make it sound like I'm dying (and trust me, that's how the last few weeks have felt at times), but I love you all and I hope you know how important you are in my life. Please please please write me letters, send me stuff and come visit!!!!!!!! When else would you ever go to Paraguay? Now is the time......

Here are some more pictures of my last few weeks in the states, visiting and hanging out with my peeps.

The gang at a music festival in Pagosa Springs
(Me, Austin, Leanne, Matt, Maarten and Liv)

My adorable and photogenic niece, Juniper

Me and one of my best friends, Betsy, at the beginning of a crazy night in Crested Butte


Me and another of my other best and oldest friends, Leah

The awesome TA-Team
(Lyman, me and Zach)

And the reality sets in....

Whoa, what a whirlwind this past week has been: defending the thesis, celebrating being done with the thesis (hence, the picture on the right), garage sale, packing up house, cleaning up house, and moving my life into random places. I'm officially homeless and ready to spend these next few weeks really enjoying and appreciating the people in my life.

Leaving Albuquerque today (but don't worry, I'll be back before leaving the country) left me extremely nostalgic and a little lost. It's been home for me for the past 5 years and I've really grown to love it. I love going down to the river or up to the mountains within minutes. I love that you can go skiing in the morning and mountain biking in the afternoon on the same day. I love riding my bike downtown to go to yoga or to the El Rey and hippie dance my bootie off all night. I love playing croquet in the backyard and sitting on the porch for hours. Most of all, though, I love the people who have become a part of my life and shared all of these activities with me. I've been surrounded by a real community and I feel so fortunate for that. To all those special Burqueans reading this----Thank you for all the support, encouragement and help over these past few weeks and thank you for your friendship over the past 5 years. I feel very loved right now and I owe that all to you. I will miss you immensely (but I'll get to tell you that in person in 2 weeks).

Will my adventures ever begin?

As I procrastinate finishing my thesis, I though I'd set up this blog in anticipation of what awaits me in a couple months. In late September, I'll be embarking on the next adventure in my life by joining the Peace Corps. All I really know right now is that I'll be working on agroforestry projects, among other things, and learning Spanish AND Guarani. For those who don't know where Paraguay is, here's a little map. And for those who are looking for an adventure in the next couple of years, come visit me!!! Put it on your calendars now....