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