Feliz Navidad!

Happy holidays to everyone back home! I miss you and love you all. I'm headed to Chile tomorrow for some backpacking in Torres del Paine National Park, followed by some beach time outside of Valparaiso. It's going to be a great break from my time in Paraguay, having recently reached the '1 yr left to go' mark. But I'm also excited to get back and start some real projects during this last year. Overall, I'm really loving my time in Paraguay. As always, there is an open invitation to come visit me to see what it's like!

As we bring in the new year, I'll leave you with some photos that capture my time spent during these last few months. It's been a wonderful year for me and the people and places in these photos are what has made it so special.

Blanca, Lupi and Tati cleaning the cake batter bowl in my "kitchen" window



Upclose of my 4 yr old friends after eating cake batter


Eating with the family and neighbors for the big Virgin of Caacupe Day, December 8



Our new tatakua (brick, wood fired oven) cooking sopa paraguay,
Paraguay's delicious version of cornbread



Putting the 4 yr olds to work cleaning my patio. It was their idea, I promise.



The 'before' photo of the area behind my house



Pouring the cement floor for my new outside shady sitting area,
with the help of my host family, of course



The almost 'after' photo of my awesome new, chicken free, outside place. I haven't finished painting yet, but the hammock is already getting lots of use.



One of my legacies: the hula hoop. Since I made this one, it's been the talk of the town.



Swimming at the nearby forest reserve with my agforester friends who came to
visit after Thanksgiving



Crossing the sketchy bridge along the long walk from the reserve to my house



Along the same walk, surrounded by soy fields


My favorite cow picture. That's one of my host sisters, Andresa, doing the milking



My favorite picture of Tati


Best buds


This pretty much sums it up

Paraguayan Harmony

Yet another blog post long over due. But this one's a good one. Worth the wait. However, before we get into the heart of it, I would like to plug a project that's going on here in Paraguay through a group of very hard working and dedicated Peace Corps volunteers. It is not a project of mine, but that's not important. I thought that some of you would like to get an idea of what's going on down here and have a chance to help out, if you so choose. So check out this link and poster if you're interested:

https://www.peacecorps.gov/index.cfm?shell=donate.contribute.projDetail&projdesc=526-218




And now back to the Leah Show...

One of the many things you can’t escape in campo Paraguay is the sound of life. The outside world and the inside world become one, separated only by thin wooden boards, constantly infiltrated by the noise of the present moment. With the electricity constantly going off and the existence of noisy technological gadgets at a minimum, the sounds around me keep me company. Sometimes they’re soothing and make me truly appreciate this strange land I’m temporarily inhabiting. Other times, however, they’re infuriating and make me long for a place with insulated houses and fenced off, designated animal areas. Either way, the sounds of Paraguay are a unique part of my experience here, deserving of at least a simple blog post. The following descriptions (unfortunately I don’t have sound bites to accompany them) are written as part of a David Letterman-inspired top 10 list of noises that keep me from sleeping when I want to. Because sometimes sleep is the only escape. But I think it is really just the top 10 sounds of Paraguay. Period.

Top 10 Sounds that Disturb My 10 Hours of Sleep a Day in Campo Paraguay

(in no particular order, except for #1 which deserves the honor of the worst sound imaginable)

#10. Roosters.

Remember how we were taught as kids that roosters crow when the sun comes up? Lies. All lies. Roosters crow whenever they feel like it. Maybe at 4 am. Maybe at 2 pm. Maybe at midnight. And when one rooster crows, all roosters who hear it answer with a crow, and then others answer them with a crow. Since everyone here has chickens and roosters, this progression of crowing rarely stops once it begins. Lying in my bed well before sunrise, wishing I was still asleep, I can follow the chain of rooster calls as it moves up and down the line of my community like a wave of nausea rolling in and out and back in again. At this point, I have thankfully developed quite the talent for falling back asleep after being annoyingly awakened. I’ll always have Paraguay to thank for my amazing ability to sleep anywhere at anytime.

#9. Snorting, Squealing Pigs

Pigs may be highly intelligent animals (so I hear… this has yet to be confirmed by my experience with them) but they are also extremely dirty and loud. To the point of being disgusting. If I or anyone else walks anywhere near their pens, they start snorting and jumping around like crazy, creating quite the racket all for the hope of more food which we do not have. These are not skinny little pigs, either. They have plenty to eat, especially when they’re allowed to just roam free like the dogs and chickens. They eat anything and everything and are very loud in the process of getting it all into their bellies as quickly as possible. I don’t observe them a whole lot because they disgust me so much, but I do know that they are noisy at all hours of the day and night. It doesn’t help that our pig pen is about 15 meters behind my house. Way too close.

#8. Full Uddered Cows

The cows usually aren’t so bad, but recently, after their recent birthing season, they cannot wait to get milked in the morning. The momma and baby cows are tied up to different stakes at night so those udders are nice and full when morning comes. And those babies are nice and hungry. Unfortunatley, the cows don’t start moo-ing about this when my morning starts, but instead at around 5 am. Or right now, at 9 pm, right behind my house, as I’m writing about them. The other thing about the cows is that their moo-ing often sounds like the noise elephants make. Where am I again?

#7. The Same Reggaeton/Polka/Kachaka Mix CD Blaring out of the Neighbors Crappy Speakers

I’ve written about this before in a previous blogspost, but it must be brought up again now that I’ve had more time to analyze the situation. In such a rural, tranquilo place, campo Paraguayans love to have their music blaring from the moment they wake up to…..sometimes it never goes off. And we’re not talking about quality songs, chosen to capture the mood of the moment. We’re talking about the one or two CDs most families own or the local radio station, which I think owns the same ones. It’s the same songs, over and over and over and over again. I frequently hear the popular Christmas songs all over the place...in September. To make matters worse, most families own little, crappy, all-in-one tape/CD/radio/speaker stereos that were not made to be turned up full blast. Seriously, I love music but not like this.

#6. De-mufflered Motos

No, this isn’t a sexual reference. I’m talking about motorcycles (‘motos’ here in P-guay) that are custom-made to sound as close as possible to a gigantic airplane. “Oh,” you’re probably thinking, “people do that here too.” Yes, they do, but I bet there they have more than one road to drive on. And it’s probably paved. In good ol’ 4 Linea of Libertad del Sur, we have one, yes one, rocky dirt road that spans the length of the community. And everyone lives about 20 m off of said road. So on Friday and Saturday nights, after they drink a few beers, what do all the young, sexually frustrated, Paraguayan males do? Drive up and down the road, of course, because then all us single ladies can admire their huge...motorcycle engines. If only I wasn’t trying to sleep!!!

#5. Thunder Storms

I have no complaints about the storms here, except that sometimes they scare me to death. My volunteer friend Amy claims her house was recently struck by lightening while she was inside cooking. I’ve also heard that P-guay has one of the highest incidences of lightening strikes in the world (?). And this intense lightening produces some extremely intense thunder. I’ve never heard thunder crack and rumble like it does here. One lightening strike can produce a deafening rolling thunder that goes on for a good 15 seconds. I tend to hide under my covers and hope for the best when they get really close, but the storms are usually way too intense for me to sleep through. But for you storm lovers out there, they are incredible. Especially sitting (or hiding) under a tin roof, listening to the full force of the pouring rain.

#4. Mita’ikuera

Mita’ikuera is Guarani for ‘little kids’. These guys are the light of my life here, but they know no boundaries when it comes to playing. Tati and Lupi (4 year olds) are my closest little buddies, living right next door and one house over respectively. We spend a lot of time playing together, dancing, hoola-hooping, Frisbee, etc. That’s right, I recently made a hoola hoop (which has become the hit of the neighborhood) and I taught Tati to throw the Frisbee I brought with me. The downside is that they have a knack for asking for these toys just as I am laying down for a nap. And they don’t bother with the clapping (see below) but instead just yell at me (in a cute 4 yr old way) through the walls. They also find other ways to amuse themselves, usually in my front patio area. A couple days ago, right at nap time, I heard them making lots of noise outside my door. I tried to ignore it, but after a while it was too much and I had to get up to see what was going on. Lo and behold, they were in the midst of building an elaborate fort out of all the bits and pieces of plastic and metal lying around. Instead of doing this at either of their houses, they of course had chosen the strategic position of my little shack. I guess I kind of take that as a compliment.

#3. Mangy Dogs

As many of you know, I am a dog lover in the states. As many of you may not know, I have become a dog despiser here in P-guay. Dogs are gross here. They’re dirty and mangy and full of fleas and very poorly trained. They also bark constantly, especially at night. Barking = good work for a guard dog, but constant barking = never knowing if they’re really barking at a danger or just another dog. Neighbor dogs love to bark at each other and chase each other of their respective properties. I’m assuming that’s the reason for most of the late night barking, but who knows. I just know that they drive me crazy and I wish they were scared of me so they would stay away from my house. But throwing rocks near them apparently isn’t nearly as scary as actually hitting them, which is how Paraguayans get the upper hand.

#2. Clap Clap Clap

No, not the STD, but the Paraguayan equivalent of the doorbell. Rojepopete (‘we clap our hands’) to let people know when we’re standing outside of their house and want to come in or just say hi, and in front of the almacens (mini grocery stores usually in the front rooms of people’s homes) when no one is at the window ready to take your order. It was a little weird for me to get used to at first, but now I fully embrace the custom and put my own little rhythm into my claps so they always know it’s me! The problem with the clapping is that when you have an almacen in the front of your home, as my host/neighbor family does, there is no break to the claps. Clappers don’t observe siesta time, bed time or have not yet woken up in the morning time. If they need something from the store (and yes, cell phone minutes count as a desperate need), they will clap at any time of day. If drinking is involved and they’re there to buy more drinks, the clapping may not stop for a good 15 minutes even though all windows and doors are closed, all lights are off and no one is acknowledging them. ‘Taking a hint’ is not a phrase that makes any sense here.

#1. Guinea Fowl aka Satan’s Little Helper

Oh, the guinea fowl. How I loathe thee. I had never heard the call of a guinea fowl before I came to P-guay and I hope to never hear it again after I leave. It is awful. And relentless. The funny thing is that my family has only 1 guinea fowl (thank god), while many other families have upwards of 15 to 20. I don’t know what I would do if we had more. I don’t even like to imagine it. I’ve tried to come up with an adequate description in words of their cry/call/scream for those of you unfamiliar with the sound, but I don’t think it even comes close to capturing the essence of it. The best I’ve got is a cross between nails on a chalkboard and ‘the most annoying sound in the world’ that Jim Carey makes during the movie Dumb and Dumber. But in an up and down, wavelike rhythm. Waves that never stop and feel like they’re prodding your eardrums with their colliding swells. Over the last year, motivated by both my hatred and admiration of such a horrible sound, I observed and practiced and can now imitate the guinea fowl with high precision and accuracy. It’s my Paraguayan party trick. Don’t worry, I’ll bring it home to share with all.

Almost Spring

I have no idea how 6 months turned into 11 months so quickly. And without a single blogpost (sorry!). I think I was so miserable during the winter that I chose to ignore it completely, and that included talking about it here. But now that we´re finally moving into spring, I can tell some of the stories of the past few months.

Although Paraguay has very little altitude and lies in a subtropical region, it still gets cold here in the winter. There´s no snow or sub-zero temperatures, but there´s also no heat or any way to escape the coldness that dominates July and August. Like I´ve said before, I live in a shack, like everyone else in my community and like many other volunteers here. The shacks generally have cracks in between boards and almost always a space between the top of the walls and the roof, allowing for ample wind to blow right through. The coldest nights we had hovered around 0 Celsius, with the days not getting too much warmer. My sleeping bag was my best protection against the cold. And every layer of clothing I brought with me. It was so cold in my little shack that my bottle of olive oil would solidify overnight and not thaw out for days at a time. Showers were totally out of the question because we only have cold water, so I willingly turned to bucket bathing instead. At least that way I could heat up the water beforehand, but it was still a miserable experience to pour water on myself in my outdoor shower in freezing temperatures. Luckily, it was not just me who was chilled to the bone. I could commiserate with my neighbors and fellow volunteers because we were all feeling it together. Sometimes I would go to my family´s house next door for a couple hours before bed and sit in front of their wood burning stove with them, drinking mate and watching novelas. The schools here take a two week winter break in July but this year they extended it for an extra week because it was too cold for the kids to sit in unheated classrooms at 7 in the morning. I read in the newspaper that during the height of the coldness, somewhere around 8 people died in the country of hypothermia. And this is in a place that will soon be so hot that I won´t be able to think straight! The good news is that most of us made it through and now we get to enjoy the extremely pleasant, albeit brief, spring weather before the heat becomes suffocating.

But don´t get the idea that the winter was all bad. The cold and early darkness allowed for a lot of down time which equals lots of yoga and reading for me. I figured out that doing an hour or so of yoga when it started to get dark kept me warm for a while and kept me from getting into my sleeping bag at 5 pm with a long night ahead of me. I was also able to read quite a bit, disovering two of my new favorite authors: Isabel Allende and Haruki Murakami. (I highly recommend The House of the Spirits and The Wind Up Bird Chronicles, respectively. ) My garden held up like a champ, aside from my tomatoes which have some sort of virus or fungus. I´m harvesting a ton of broccoli and cauliflower right now, the cabbage is just about ready (for those of you out there who know an easy recipe for kimchi and/or sauerkraut, please please please send it my way!), there´s lots of peas waiting to be picked and the spinach is doing great. My favorite part of all of this is getting Paraguayans to eat new vegetables. They get really stuck in their ways (don´t we all?), especially when it comes to food, so they generally only plant carrots, cabbage, lettuce, radish, tomatoes and sometimes beets and swiss chard. I didn´t plan well with my broccoli and cauliflower so I had about 4 heads of each all ready at the same time. That meant vegetable giveaway time. I found families who weren´t completely opposed to trying them out and got to spread the joy of vegetables. This happens with my lettuce a lot as well, because there´s no way I can eat all that I planted. A lot of my Paraguayan buddies are really intrigued by the spinach I have growing when the come over to check out the garden, so I´m always handing out spinach leaves for them to try. And they usually like it so much that they want to plant it in their own gardens, so I also have a lot of spinach seeds on hand. My family next door planted a bunch of beets but they don´t really know what to do with them, so I made them a Russian salad (?) recently with a lot of other veggies from the garden and they loved it! So far, the garden is my one of my favorite parts of my job.



But back to the good parts of winter. For me, the most wonderful part of the cold season was the bananas. Apparently, bananas are ready to harvest around here in the winter. And when they´re ready, lots and lots of them are ready. My family has a good little banana orchard to the side of the house so I would help them cut down the banana bunches when it was time. Every few weeks or so we would trek on in there and find the ones that were ready, chop the huge banana bunch off, and then machete that whole part of the tree down. Banana trees are strange, barely trees at all and more like a huge, water filled grass stalk that produces delicious fruit. When one stalk produces a banana bunch, it´s life is over in terms of fruit production. You machete that stalk down, and another stalk begins to sprout up almost immediately. In these tropical and subtropical areas where bananas grow, decomposition happens rapidly, so the downed banana stalks are just left in place, quickly becoming incorporated into the soil. Needless to say, with small, family banana producers, the banana orchards are very fertile places. With every banana harvest with my family, I was given at least one huge bunch to hang up in my house. We cut them when they were still green, so we would hang them up inside until they were ready to eat. One downside of this is that all the bananas on one bunch ripen within a week or so of each other, and we´re talking about at least 50-80 bananas per bunch. When they start ripening, all I eat are bananas: in my cereal or oatmeal, with peanut butter, banana bread, banana pancakes with banana topping, just bananas. I do everything I can to eat them before they go bad, but it´s almost impossible on my own. Fortunately, chickens and dogs enjoy overripe bananas (as does my compost pile) so they help me finish them off. If you haven´t noticed from this long paragraph about bananas, I absolutely love them. It makes me extremely happy to eat them when they´re grown 20 m from my house and not shipped half way around the world. It´s going to be a sad summer without them, but I of course have a huge ziplock full of them in my freezer waiting to be made into smoothies when the heat starts to become oppressive.






Another great thing about this winter was my recent trip to Buenos Aires. That is one great city. I´m going to save the stories and pictures for my next blog post (I promise it will be soon), but wanted to put the idea out there for all those potential south american visitors. If you don´t want to come to Paraguay, I´ll totally meet you in BA. Think about it....

Ciao, Leah

Happy 6 month anniversary to me!

Hello all. Once again, I have taken way too long to update the blog. Such is life when living in campoville, Paraguay. Which, by the way, I have now officially been doing for a full 6 months!!! There were the 3 months of training in the beginning that don't really count and since then, I have been living in the strangely beautiful Libertad del Sur for 6 months. When reflecting on this initial time as a volunteer, I can say two things for sure: 1) I don't have nearly as many tangible results to prove my existence and work here as I thought/expected/imagined I would and 2) My guarani skills have greatly improved (but there's still a long way to go to being fluent) while my spanish skills have, unfortunately, have vastly diminished. On the scale of Peace Corps volunteer greatness, I would say I'm at about a 5. Right in the middle. I actually feel really good about this because I have a year and a half left to ramp up my work and effectiveness here and because I am still here giving it my all. Our agroforestry group started out with 8 and now we're down to 6. Not a great completion rate so far, but I'm pretty certain that the 6 of us left will be here to the end.

Back to Reflection #1 - How I Spend my Time. The last couple of months I've been working at the escuela basica (elementary school) in my community a couple days a week. They really want me to teach the kids English, so I've been working at this with the 5th and 6th graders. I enjoy teaching the kids because they're so forgiving and helpful with my language barriers and most of them think I'm pretty funny, which eases any tension I may have. However, I feel like teaching them English is not the most relevant thing I could be doing with them, especially when I realized recently that a lot of them cannot read. Can't read at all! The Paraguayan school system loves having the teachers write things on the board that the students copy down into their notebooks. And that's it. So these kids can copy words like no other, but they have no idea what they mean. It's very sad. So, I humor them for a while with the English and then try to get them outside by working in the school garden or planting trees.

June 20 was Dia del Arbol here in Paraguay and there was a big campaign to plant thousands and thousands of trees across the country. I jumped on board and had the 5th graders plant some trees with me at the school. There's a community vivero (tree nursery) down the road from the school so the students and I walked down there, picked out our trees and carried them back to be planted. There were only 6 kids there that day (it rained the day before so nobody showed up, very typical here) so there was a lot of interaction between all of us and I think (hope) they got a sense of ownership for their little arbolitos. They loved getting out of the boring classroom and actually doing something, as you can see from the pictures. I had them all working at once, hoeing, shoveling, planting, watering, whatever. I, at least, had fun and am planning on doing this more often with other grades. At the end of the morning, I even got them all to pose in a picture with and for me!



In addition to the work at the school, I also spend large fraction of my time in my kick ass garden. As I've written before, I'm sharing the garden space with the family next door (I pretty much consider them MY family here in Paraguay) so Cristino (the dad, who is the only one of the family who has any interest in actually gardening) and I hang out there quite a bit, exchanging ideas, experimenting, weeding, watering, etc. It is by far the best garden in town and we get compliments all the time. Cristino loves this, as do I, but what I love even more is that their family is eating more vegetables than they ever have. We're also providing an example to others in the community that this type of family garden is possible and can provide a substantial amount of the family's diet for very little cost. I am also growing some vegetables that no one's ever heard of or that no one knows how to eat (like spinach, arugula, broccoli, and zuchinni) but my willingness to grow and eat them is piquing some interest around town. As for my personal benefit, I no longer have to haul loads of vegetables back from the city with me or sustain on beef and pasta for weeks on end. I frequently make salads with at least 5 different greens in them. I have carrots, radishes and beets ready to be pulled whenever I want them. My peas are just about ready to pick. There are a lot of green tomatoes that I'm hoping will ripen before the threat of a frost heads our way. I have so much cilantro I don't know what to do with it. And I managed to pick one huge, delicious zuchinni already (pictured below, along with a giant radish) and there are more on the way. I am absolutely loving this part of my life here.

The daily grind

A million apologies to all my loyal blog followers out there for the lack of updates over the last two months. It’s not that I don’t want to fill you in on my exciting life here, it’s more that there’s been an extreme lack of excitement. After 5 months in site, the adventure aspect of this Peace Corps stint has officially worn off and in its place is the reality of life in Paraguay. So I guess that’s what I’ll tell you about now, the daily doings of Leah. I apologize in advance if it bores you. Sometimes it bores me, too, but there’s still always challenges and confusion which makes things fun.

Mornings: If I’m in the mood to exercise, I’ll get up and out by about 6:30 am. I like to run (jog) for about an hour but that’s been put on hold lately due to the massive amounts of rain we’ve been getting. A week and half ago it rained for 6 days straight and in the land of tierra roja (that’s what people call the soil around here), that means serious mud. Mud that sticks to absolutely everything. If you try to walk around in it, your shoes will immediately pick up at least an extra 5 pounds, and that’s only if you can actually walk, which often times you can’t because it also gets as slick as ice. And the mud stays mud for days after the rains. So in muddy times, the favored mode of transportation is barefoot. I haven’t yet tried the morning barefoot runs. Instead, I opt for the jump rope/sit up/ push up workout, yoga or just sleeping in. After working out or sleeping in, I make some coffee (thank you so much to all who’ve sent the Starbucks instant packs—it’s so much better than Nescafe!) and breakfast, usually oatmeal or granola and yogurt. I sit outside on my porchy area eating and drinking for a while, usually listening to a Wait, Wait Don’t Tell Me or Cartalk podcast and constantly yelling or throwing things at the chickens which, unfortunately, never leave my sight. This is also the time when Tati, the 4 yr old from next door, like to come over and see what I’m doing. She often brings her new Super Champ bicycle (training wheels are already off after only a few weeks—she amazes me) and rides it in circles on my little cement patio. We chat (she totally understands me) and sometimes she’ll actually try whatever I’m eating (a rarity for the taste-deprived Paraguayans). Mid-morning until lunchtime is probably my favorite time of day. It’s the perfect temperature for gardening, which I do a lot in the garden I’m sharing with the family next door. This past week, there’s been a few meetings in town that I’ve wanted/been invited to be a part of around this time, so I go to those and try to decipher as much of the Guarani as possible. Sometimes I do laundry. You may think that sounds like a simple task, but trust me, it is no small feat to handwash sheets, towels and clothes in a place where very red dirt/dust gets absolutely everywhere. When I’m feeling ambitious, I go visit neighbors, chatting and drinking tereré with them. Soon, I’ll be spending a lot of this time at the local elementary school, helping with the school garden and teaching English to some of the older grades.

Afternoons: Paraguayans eat their biggest meal of the day for lunch and the women generally spend all morning preparing it. I, on the other hand, usually just make something small or eat leftovers from the night before. I try not to be at someone else’s house around lunchtime for fear of what they’ll want to feed me. My family next door recently slaughtered a pig and they really wanted me to eat some of the head. I refused. Apparently it’s somewhat of a delicacy. I disagree. After lunch is my other favorite time of day—siesta. It’s just what I need to continue working on the garden, visiting neighbors, chatting with whoever drops by and/or studying Guarani for the rest of the afternoon. Kids get out of school around 4:30 and some of the neighbor kids like to come by and see what I’m up to until it gets dark. I’ve also been learning to crochet with a neighbor and spend some of this time with her. I have hopes to crochet bags out of plastic bags as a means of creative recycling. I’ll let you know if that works out. Another new project I’m starting is to distribute the trees that are stored in the community tree nursery to the actual community. No one really knows or understands that they can go and get these trees to plant on their own land anytime they want, for free, so I’m taking it on myself to get the word out. And then I’ll hopefully be able to help them plant the trees, as well. So a lot of my afternoons are going to be dedicated to this.

Evenings: It’s getting dark pretty early these days, like around 5:30 pm which leaves A LOT of down time at night. Paraguayans are in the habit of bathing/showering towards the end of the day and I’ve picked this up as well. So right before or after it gets dark, I brave the cold air and cold water for a brief shower. During the summer, this was an activity I looked forward to all day to finally cool off, if only for a few minutes. Now, however, in late Fall, showering at night is no fun. But it must be done to minimize the sheet washing which I probably despise even more. I just recently spent a night at Procosara (an NGO in the San Rafael Reserve about a 2 ½ hour walk away from my place) and the thing I enjoyed the most was the hot shower. What a luxury. So anyway, after I recover from the chill of bathing, I spend the rest of the night doing whatever I feel like. Sometimes I’ll cook a big dinner (favorite dinners so far: falafel with homemade tortillas, eggplant parmesan and lentil stew), other times it’ll just be popcorn or grilled cheese. I read a lot, 20 books so far. I’ve also recently brought my computer to site with some movies and tv shows taken from other volunteers, so there’s been quite a bit of nightly Seinfeld or Weeds episodes. (By the way, if anyone out there wants to make some DVD’s of some tv series’ and send them to me, I would LOVE it). Sleep comes early, usually around 9:00 or 9:30 pm, and is often interrupted by the chickens who share a wall with me, and the dogs who like to bark for hours on end for no reason at all. The next morning, it starts all over again, but I’m never sure what the “it” is going to entail. That’s what continues to make this interesting and stimulating, the unpredictableness of every hour of every day. What I’ve described here is how a day may go, but there’s no guaranteeing anything.

On my own again

Hola from down South! It´s about that time for my monthly blog post and I just happen to be in Encarnacion to make that happen. My peace corps life is moving right along here, with me feeling more and more like a real part of my community everyday. Even though I still can´t speak Guarani too well, and can understand even less, I´ve been meeting more people and working with more people and have a very encouraging future ahead of me. One of the NGO´s working in my area, Guyra Paraguay, has just started a new project in my community working with the women and families on the home gardens. The Paraguayan woman in charge of the project, Claudia, is my age, I´ve met her before, and we get along really well. We converse mostly in Spanish but she´s determined to switch me over to Guarani, which will be a huge help. And the best part is that she wants me to be her partner in this endeavor which means that I have some actual real work ahead of me! She lives in Asuncion but is going to be traveling to my site for at least 1 week a month. The last time she was out she handed out garden seeds to every single house. Now, while she´s gone, it´s kind of my job to walk around and check up on people and see if they need anything or any help and just make sure they´re following through with the garden. Then when Claudia comes back, we´ll go around and talk to everyone together and do some more checking up and who knows what else. It´s just nice to have something concrete to do, and continually over the next few months.

Last Wednesday my ¨boss¨ from the Peace Corps came out to my site to do my site presentation. This is where they come in, after my being there for 3 months, and officially introduce me to the community and try to help explain a little bit more about the Peace Corps and about my work there. Paraguayans are really into getting invitations for these types of things, so I printed some out and spent a week and a half walking around handing them out. In the process I met a lot of new families who were extremely excited to have me around. One family didn´t let me leave until they had given me two big bags of dry beans, a bag of homemade cookies and a big bag of bananas from their banana trees. They´re awesome. So I probably handed out about 20 invitations or so and tried to talk it up as much as possible, just so people could get their questions answered by a native Guarani speaker instead of me bumbling my way through in half Spanish, half really bad Guarani. When I got to the school, where the meeting was, there were at least 50 women there, lots of kids and about 15 or so men. It was a huge showing, especially since alot of people live pretty far away and the women rarely leave the house. The fact that they were all there in one place at the same time was extremely rare, and extremely encouraging for me. I think they´re all really excitied to have me around and are looking forward to working with me. The meeting went well, people seemed interested, my host ¨dad¨ Crisitino said some really nice, positive, motivating things for me and the community, I got up at the end and said some things in Guarani. It was a really good day......

What made the day even better was that Ellie, my boss, also brought a Peace Corps issued bicycle for me!!!!!! I can´t believe I haven´t ridden one in 6 months, but now I´m about to be a bikin´ fool once again. Now I´ll be able to get out of my community for supplies and what not without having to hop on the 4 am bus. And now that I´m about to move into my own place, I´ll be needing to get out and buy vegetables a lot more often. That´s right, I should be moving into my own little casita by the end of next week. I just finished painting the place (looks spectacular, see photos below), Cristino and I are going to pour a new cement floor in the next few days, electricity has been installed, I´ve killed most of the rats, I have a stove/oven, a refrigertor is going to be delivered very soon.....ah yes, it´s all coming together. Now my independent Paraguayan life really begins.

I finally brought my camera out to site so I took a few pictures to give you all an idea of where I live. The pictures are uploading strangely so I can´t write captions below, but here´s a brief overview:
1) a view of my house (the purple wall and yellow window) through the kitchen window of the family´s house where I currently live now. The blue tank up on posts is the water tank, which allows us to have ¨running¨ water.
2) Carrie, the 17 yr old in my house, and Tati, the 3 yr old, hanging out in the kitchen on a very rainy Sunday. Tati is definitely my closest friend :)
3) The stove in the kitchen. I think these things are so weird, like what I imagined the pioneers in the states using. It looks like a desk, but no, it´s a stove
4) Tati, my language tutor and Juniper substitute
5) The view from out back
6) Just an example of the beautiful sunsets I see every night. And I´ve never seen a contrail to spoil the purity. I wish I could take a picture of the stars to show you how amazing they are, but I don´t think it would turn out.
7-10) My new house!!! The painting was all done by yours truly. I´m really happy with how it turned out. The last photo shows how my little casita is attached to the chicken coop/tool shed. Not too cool considering this is the source of the rats.

When I played MASH as kid, I never thought I would actually end up living in a shack

Long absence from the blog, I know. But here I am, back in action. Usually, when I´m able to get to get to the big city where I can use the internet, it´s only for a night. And I hate spending that free time in front of a computer. Lucky for you, I am now on my 5th day in Encarnacion and actually bored to the point of internetting (yes, that is a verb). I came down for the weekend to experience the last weekend of Carnaval and then it started to rain....and rain....and rain. And when there´s rain, there are no buses to good ol´ Libertad del Sur, leaving me to enjoy the city life for a bit until the roads are once again passable. Who knows when that may be.

As for Carnaval, it was an experience. Imagine listening to really loud Spanish pop music (but only 6 songs that are stuck on repeat allllllll night) while watching beautiful latina girls covered in glitter and feathers dancing on giant floats being pushed by alright looking latino guys (not wearing glitter or feathers, of course), crammed onto bleachers with lots of drunk, spray-happy Carnaval-goers armed with an endless supply of spray foam. Yes, that´s right, spray foam. And lots of it. First warning on the label: Avoid all contact with eyes. Where is the first place people like to spray? In your eyeballs. Especially if you´re American. We were also armed with our own spray foam, but we failed to see the importance of all the safety goggles being sold in the street before walking into the parade area. Now I know, trust me. Within 15 minutes, I was in the first aid tent having my eye flushed out. Those warnings are there for a reason, apparently. But then I bought the appropriate personal protective equipment and enjoyed the rest of the night injury-free. There were a ton of people with tons of energy (and foam) and the parade just would not stop. We were there for about 4 hours and it was still going strong when we left. Almost too much excitement for the typical peace corps volunteer who spends a majority of their days drinking terere and staring at the only road in town to see who´s driving which direction......

As for news from my site, well, there´s not a whole lot. I continue to struggle with Guarani, but am determined to up my language level to that of a 5 year old in a couple months. Maybe. And I think my current 3 yr old language status has manifested itself physically, as well. I didn´t think I was too clumsy back in the states, might even go so far as to say pretty stable and balanced and able to walk and sit like a normal person. Not so in Paraguay. First few weeks in site, my nose made direct contact with the thick-ass wire laundry line in the ¨backyard¨ as I ran, full-speed, inside to grab something. That took me to the ground. More recently, I spilled arroz con leche (that´s rice with milk for you non-Spanish speakers) on a girl´s head as I was serving at a party. That was the one and only time I´ve been given the serving responsibility. Now I´m back to sitting and looking confused. Then, just last week, I quickly cleaned off a chair as I was preparing to sit in it but somewhere between the cleaning process and the me-sitting-down process, the chair fell over backwards. But I was already on my way into the chair so I went crashing to the ground instead. Oh yes, I am a constant source of laughs for my community because these things don´t happen when I´m alone (maybe because I´m never alone), but only when there is an audience. To them, I think I really must be 29 going on 3, maybe 4.

I can only hope that when I move into my own house and am able to cook and clean for myself, that maybe I´ll appear a bit more adult-ish. And when will this be, you ask? I wish it would be soon, like tomorrow, but I think it´s going to be at least another month. The host family I´m with right now has a little casita (that´s spanish code word for shack) right next to them and I´ve decided that it will be my future living abode. But first, a lot of ¨home improvements¨ must be made. Like killing all the rats that live in and around the place (my host dad has already killed 8: 4 with a machete and 4 with a slingshot.....he thinks we´ve almost got them all). We need to build another door and window, run electricity and water over to it, paint the place, build an outdoor shower --- you know, the usual kinds of home improvements that must be made on a wooden structure in Paraguay that hasn´t been lived in for 10 years. The big hold-up for getting this done is a lack of wood. Imagine that: living in one of the most deforested areas on the planet and there´s no wood to build anything. Could my argument for planting more trees get any stronger? Anyway, hoping to get some wood soon if we can find someone to deliver it from somewhere. Sounds promising, right? Right, that´s Paraguay. I also really really want the wood to build a fence around my garden that I will hopefully be able to plant in the next month or so. I need the fence to keep out the pigs and chickens who are always walking around ¨my¨ place and just happen to live adjacent to my future shack. That´s right, I will soon be living with the animals and couldn´t be more excited to finally be on my own. Six months is a long time to live with a family when you´ve lived on your own for the last 11 years. I´ll keep you posted on the progress.

Hope everyone is doing well back home. Happy Fat Tuesday. Happy Valentine´s Day. Happy President´s Day. Miss you all. Come visit. Write me letters. Ciao.

So this is what it´s like to be a volunteer

I'm three weeks in to being a volunteer and this is what I've mastered so far: making it until lunch before taking a nap, sleeping for at least an hour after lunch, not understanding and not being understood pretty much all the time, having my longest conversations with a 3 yr old and explaining to people why I can't ride a moto (peace corps rules). Good work as an agroforestry volunteer, right? I have been working in the fields with my host parents every now and then but I wouldn't say that I've mastered the skill of hoeing quite yet. Every time I manage to hoe down at least a few of the crops instead of just the weeds. Yesterday I took down 3 bean plants, a cucumber plant and who knows what else. No wonder they don't invite me to go with them all of the time......

What do I do with the rest of my time, you may ask? Well, there's a lot (and I mean a lot) of sitting around outside of my host family's house with the family drinking terere, listening to the blaring radio that never stops and chatting (I don't actually do the chatting, I just sit and smile/stare)with the numerous people who are constantly stopping by on their motos because the family has an almacen (a little store) out of the front of it. We've got the biggest almacen on Cuatro Linea, I'll have you know. And back to the radio subject really quick: seriously, the thing is only turned off for a few hours during the night. From 6 in the morning until at least 11 at night, every radio in every house in campo Paraguay is blasting a mixture of terrible reggaeton, Paraguayan polka, and this weird catchy synthesized cachonga(?)crap. The only respite is when the electricity goes out (thank god it happens fairly often) or I get the hell out of site. Like right now. But unfortunately this internet cafe is also playing the same music. Of course. So, back to what I do with my time..........lots of sitting around, I do my laundry quite a bit (which takes forever when you do it by hand---get down on your knees and thank someone for your washing machine immediately!), I walk around the 'hood trying to talk to other families when I build up enough courage, I shuck a lot of corn and shell a lot of beans, I try to study a lot but I usually end up falling asleep.....etc, etc, etc. Exciting, I know. But it's the summer which means it's freakin' hot and no one (not just me) is doing much of anything. So I'm doing exactly what I should be doing--being Paraguayan (at least that's what I keep telling myself).

My Paraguayn host sister, Andresa, even promoted me to the level of a 'norteguaya' (instead of just a 'norte') last week when I was helping out with the family pig slaughter. That's right, I helped slaughter a pig. I didn't do any of the killing, but I did watch it all and helped with the cleaning/gutting/skinning afterwards. This is what I learned: cleaning pig hair off of pig skin is disgusting and it gets everywhere, they keep the hooves but I'm not sure what they do with them (ours were sitting in the kitchen for days before mysteriously disappearing), Paraguayans have mad skills with the machete--just a few whacks here and there and *waalaa* pig carcass is cut up, half of the rib cage is the heaviest portion of meat/bones, there is about as much weight in fat as there is in meat and bones, every part of the pig is used. EVERY PART....... All that fat I just mentioned, yeah, that too. After all the meat was separated into is respective body parts and hanging from the ceiling in the kitchen (I accidently ran into the rib cage of couple of times---gross!!!), the women spend the entire afternoon chopping up the solid fat and frying it into chicharrones. I thought chicarrones were the grossest food imaginable until yesterday when they whipped out this strange meat roll thing all tied up with string. Think jelly roll for image purposes but made out of 'meat'. I asked what it was but everyone refused to tell me, they just wanted me to try some of it, saying it was he'iterei (super delicious). I agreed to a small bite and managed to choke it down, but I never want to eat it again. Definitely not he'iterei in my book. Especially when I figure out (and they confirmed this) that it was the scraps of pig meat rolled up in a pig skin/fat layer. So freakin' gross. I still can't stop thinking about it......never again.

So that's about it on my end of things. I received a bunch of packages in Asuncion in December right before I came out to my site that I need to extend lots of thanks for. Matt--you're so awesome, especially with the added bonus of leftover Halloween candy. I was a huge hit that day. Cousin Sarah--you are also awesome. The folders were perfect and I use the notebook everyday now. Parents and grandparents--thanks, thanks, thanks.....keep em' coming! The only thing I can think of now that I want (don't really need anything at the moment) is high quality instant coffee, like the Starbucks singles I've recently been introduced to. I know, I hate Starbucks just as much as the rest of you but their instant coffee is damn good and a kicks Nescafe's ass (that's all we can really get down here). And letters are always always always always wanted.

Hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas and happy New Year's. It was a very sad Christmas for me being all alone (mentally at least) and away from everyone I love. I spent the new year's with friends by a lake in a forest reserve, so that was much better but I still miss you all and hope that I'll be getting some visitors later on this year!!!!!!!

This computer is weird so I can't label the photos below, but most of them are from the 11 hour walk/pilgrimmage we did to Caacupe on December 8. Hundreds of thousands of Paraguayans make this pilgrimmage every year, so we decided to join in the fun. The first pic is our whole group, Americans and some of our Paraguayan host family members. The next is us walking, still in daylight, followed by us still walking in the dark at the crest of 'the' big hill into what looked like the apocalypse. Then we crashed in the park when we finally arrived with thousands of others. The last photo (if it works, I'm skeptical) is me working with Africanized bees. That's right, killer bees...........