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.