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 :)