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...........

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